Madden NFL 11 Demo Available Now, Please Post Impressions Here

[DaveDQ]

Quote: Originally Posted by Texas Ace

Agreed. Personally, I don't care if all 22 guys on the field look like aliens just as long as the game plays great. Lots of people actually care about the commentary and crap like that and I don't know why. If I was lucky enough for EA to come to me and ask for 5 things to implement into the game that would be guaranteed improvements over previous editions of the game, none of those 5 things would have anything to do with what goes on outside of the field. EA has not made a good simulation of football for Madden in many years, IMO. I think they should spend 100% of their time on the actual gameplay and get that to an acceptable standard before they start spending any time implementing pointless garbage like gameflow or worrying if Ray Lewis has the right equipment and wristbands on. There is no excuse for the elite pass rushers of the league to still be completely irrelevant in this game. There is no excuse for their still to not be a animation where a guy can catch a ball over his shoulder in perfect stride without having to slow down like crazy like they have for years. How many years are going to go by before these types of things are FINALLY addressed?

I don't think they can. I'm not saying they don't want to, but with this game's current engine, I don't think the game can properly simulate certain aspects of pro football. Locomotion does not address player momentum. Players still make quick twitchy moves with zero momentum. When one defender makes a tackle, you won't see another join in and sway the offensive runner in another direction. You see more of multiple defenders rolling off of tackles and morphing away from the action.

These things have never been fully addressed, and at this stage in the game, I think it's safe to say they can't do so. This is their 6th showing this generation of consoles and these core gameplay issues remain.

So, we are either going to continue with the mantra of "They may get that next year" or we need to resolve that they simply can't. To me, this demo proves the latter.

[DaSmerg]

LIKED: It really does look great on my honking plasma, even for a demo. A lot of last years graphics look more polished (a.k.a. finished).

DISLIKED: It sure didn't take a lot of game play to figure out that this is another "oooh...look at the pretty birdy" Madden release from Tiburon/EA Sports and that not a whole heck of a lot has changed.

REVILED: Ok, seriously, you spent the precious development time on re-inventing the wheel with this "strategy pad" nonsense. Why on earth did anybody think that the pre-snap controls need anything done to them? Who's wish list was that on?

Let's put it this way, my friend JimmyB summed it up awesomely by saying that it is just really, really sad. I asked him '...why so sad bro?' He responded that because Tiburon and EA Sports have willingly decided that they would rather spend the little bit of dev time that they get for each year's Madden on new menus, new animations and supposedly 'new' features that only marketing MBA's and computer science geeks think are cool that the game play has devolved so much over the past 3 years that this will be the first Madden that we (our group of friends) won't be buying.

After last year's release, this demo is so lackluster and too much like last years in fact that none of us are even talking about renting Madden first and then buying it. It's really, really sad because the 4 of us have been here since the very, very first John Madden Football and now, that's coming to an end.

This wasn't a threat or rant folks. This is just sad, stoned cold reality.

[N51_rob]

Played the demo finally, thought that gameflow wasn't as bad as I had originally thought. So that is a positive, although some of the play calls were questionable to me. Add me to the bunch that is not a fan of the strategy pad.

The demo was a fun expereince, but I just didn't get the feeling of much difference in the demo from Madden 10 to 11, they felt the same, the graphics may have improved, but it's hard to discern that for me personally. I really don't see any improvements that just jump off the screen at me. I'm just at a loss for how to describe the feeling I'm getting from the demo, I guess the word would be underwhelmed.

Overall, I just didn't get any excitement from the demo or the build up to this game thus far, I'm a franchise/Dynasty guy. So that is a huge negative against madden for me. But overally I just felt like NCAA did such a better job of creating excitment for the release of NCAA 11. I hate to say it, but there isn't anythign fromt he demo that I feel can compel me to buy Madden 11 this year, which sucks because I like the direction Ian and Co. are trying to take, the game, but I wonder how 2 years of lackluster sales would affect the current dev team. (Not saying that this years sales will be lackluster, just a thought I had.) I don't know, I'm just not feeling Madden 11 at all, which sucks because I had such a blast with Madden 10 and Online Franchise.

[ryan36]

Quote: Originally Posted by DaveDQ

I don't think they can. I'm not saying they don't want to, but with this game's current engine, I don't think the game can properly simulate certain aspects of pro football. Locomotion does not address player momentum. Players still make quick twitchy moves with zero momentum. When one defender makes a tackle, you won't see another join in and sway the offensive runner in another direction. You see more of multiple defenders rolling off of tackles and morphing away from the action. These things have never been fully addressed, and at this stage in the game, I think it's safe to say they can't do so. This is their 6th showing this generation of consoles and these core gameplay issues remain. So, we are either going to continue with the mantra of "They may get that next year" or we need to resolve that they simply can't. To me, this demo proves the latter.

As I posted in a seperate thread, it is either technologically impossible to fix certain things, or EA does not have good enough developers to do so. Or are they simply unwilling.

[Texas Ace]

Quote: Originally Posted by Only1LT

Had to lol at that one. Unfortunately, this is so true.

It's ridiculous, man.

You can't hit a guy in perfect stride on a deep ball without him losing speed.

You either get an animation where he jumps when he doesn't have to, or he stays on his feet and reaches across his body to catch the ball.

Either way, they both result in animations that causes a major slowdown and allows a DB to catch up to either break up the pass or make the tackle when in real life it would've resulted in a TD.

You have to have like a 5 yard cushion at least to have a chance to pull away after slowing down so much.

Anything less than that and you aren't scoring.

[Texas Ace]

Quote: Originally Posted by DaveDQ

I don't think they can. I'm not saying they don't want to, but with this game's current engine, I don't think the game can properly simulate certain aspects of pro football. Locomotion does not address player momentum. Players still make quick twitchy moves with zero momentum. When one defender makes a tackle, you won't see another join in and sway the offensive runner in another direction. You see more of multiple defenders rolling off of tackles and morphing away from the action. These things have never been fully addressed, and at this stage in the game, I think it's safe to say they can't do so. This is their 6th showing this generation of consoles and these core gameplay issues remain. So, we are either going to continue with the mantra of "They may get that next year" or we need to resolve that they simply can't. To me, this demo proves the latter.

You may be right, and the saddest part is that while we they jumped over to a next gen of consoles, the game engine pretty much remained the same.

Go back and play some PS2 versions and you'll find that the game engine is really not all that different.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I'd have no problem if they didn't release Madden for one year so that they could have 2 years to start over from scratch and come up with a new engine.

There are certain aspects of this game that will never be much improved as long as they are still using the same code.

[GiantBlue76]

Quote: Originally Posted by DaveDQ

I don't think they can. I'm not saying they don't want to, but with this game's current engine, I don't think the game can properly simulate certain aspects of pro football. Locomotion does not address player momentum. Players still make quick twitchy moves with zero momentum. When one defender makes a tackle, you won't see another join in and sway the offensive runner in another direction. You see more of multiple defenders rolling off of tackles and morphing away from the action. These things have never been fully addressed, and at this stage in the game, I think it's safe to say they can't do so. This is their 6th showing this generation of consoles and these core gameplay issues remain. So, we are either going to continue with the mantra of "They may get that next year" or we need to resolve that they simply can't. To me, this demo proves the latter.

I know a lot of people like to throw around the term "game engine" and blame everything on that. Couple of things:

1. There is no "game engine". There are lots of components. There is an animations system, there are systems that handle logic like franchise items, there are systems that handle success/failures with certain actions. There is no one "game engine".

2. Saying they can't because of outdated code or "engine", is a complete copout. Madden was rewritten in 2006. That's not a long time ago... But even still, this is the 3rd animation system we've gotten in the last 5 years. Why is that? It's still not right which is disappointing, but it is better. However, they've been working on it for 2 years. Really? Also, they wrote the code. Saying you can't do certain things because of your own code kind of sucks. What does that say about your development team? No team is going to be able to get everything in or get everything right. However, you need to get some things right, and more importantly, complete. When we deliver features, they do a customer no good if they get it, but it doesn't work, or it's incomplete. Same applies to games. Pro-tak, online franchise, adaptive AI, a real pocket, player movement. All great things, I'm all for it! However, build on them. Don't abandon them before they are finished. That's the fastest way to piss off customers. Looking for the quick buck is not going to cut it.

In short, it's not the "engine", as there is no one game engine for Madden. It's poor design choices and implementation.

BTW Dave, wasn't trying to undermine your post, and if it comes across that way, I apologize.

[Brew]

First Post!

I liked the demo overall. The slower gameplay is welcomed as it looks much more realistic.
At the same time, the locomotion and movement overall is not nearly as good as NCAA 11.
The players feel stiff and you have to anticipate far too early to make quick cuts especially in the backfield and running outside.
Overall, the movement is alot better and more realistic than last year's Madden.

Gameflow is alright for playing the CPU, but it kinda limits your options when playing human opponents. I think I'll stick with the conventional play calling. I like being able to adjust on the fly and Gameflow limits that.

The strategy pad is HORRIBLE!! Ive been a long time Madden player and never saw anything wrong with the original system. I hot route on nearly every pass play after reading the defense and sometimes hot route every player depending on the situation. With the new strategy pad it adds an extra button press for every hot route and doesnt allow me to hot route 2-3 recievers in a matter of seconds. Very frustrating with the accelerated clock.

Overall, the gameplay is good and the presentation looks great!
Though I think I'll be playing NCAA 11 much more this year than in past years because overall I think NCAA has even better gameplay and better features. If Madden had a variation of Teambuilder it would enhance the solo replayability greatly. Ultimate Team is for suckers looking to waste their money if you ask me!