Madden NFL 13 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions Here (360, PS3)

[Dogslax41]

Final Thoughts on Demo
I think I am finally ready to delete the demo and head back to APF2k8 until Season Pass is released.

Top 5 Pros

Anything can happen feel
Love this as this was what kept me from playing Madden in the past after the first two months. The lack of scripted tackle animations gives the feel that you can’t really predict how a play will end up anymore by just guessing one of two animations.

Total Control Passing
The lead/throw to the back shoulder is nothing new so I’m not considering that a plus, but the sensitivity adjustment to the button press revolutionizes the passing game in my eyes because now I can make the sideline over the CB/under the Safety or middle of the zone throws without worrying about the poor trajectory causing an interception on the correct read.

Catch Animations
These are absolutely gorgeous this year. Receivers take the ball in stride or make proper body adjustments to make the catch and DBs go up and meet the ball at its highest point. Very well done this year and actually impact the game in terms of YAC and interception return ability.

DB Play
The secondary is much improved in my eyes. Throws that should be picked off get picked off and contested balls feel like they are just that, contested. Love the safety play (this single handedly kept me from purchasing NCAA this year). Safeties play properly over the top much better than any game since 2008.

Physics
This one is going to appear in the top 5 pros and top 5 cons for me. When it works it is beautiful. When it doesn’t its horrendous. The retail video seems to have found a middle ground but the tighter they made the physics the more it looked like Madden 12. Unfortunately with where it’s at it is a double edge sword. It’s in my pros list for the times it works and what it could mean for the future.

Top 5 cons

Brace for impact animation
I can’t stand this one bit. It looks completely unnatural and breaks up the look of almost every run. In reality when you are about to be hit you don’t drop your head forward, if pro ball carriers did this you would see 20-30 spinal injuries in a game. Needs to be tweaked to be a more turtle animation to look more natural. Its #1 for me because it happens almost every play.

Kicking game
This one could very easily be all 5 cons for me I dislike it that much. Kicks are automatic, might as well not even be in the game. You don’t even need to press forward on an extra point and it goes through the uprights every time. Wish they went with a timing based system like another game made back in 2008 where kicking was nowhere near guaranteed.

CPU AI Play calling
Has always been an issue in Madden and appears that it always will be. The shame of this is when they gave us editable game plans with situational subsets and I went through and designed 32 offensive and defensive game plans that completely fixed this issue and games played out realistically and provided an added difficulty challenge. Then they patched the game and broke the ability to give CPUs custom game plans and it has never come back.

Players and teams all play too similar
The teams playing too similar could be rectified with more team specific playbooks that they adhered to. The players playing too similar to me is an issue with ratings. This was my caveat when they announced no editing, no editing to be able to get the head coach style franchise was perfectly acceptable to me as long as the ratings were spread out and made players unique. Maybe in the retail but I am just not seeing it in the demo. Any QB on the depth chart I play with plays just like the one before and them same with other skill positions. Simple fixes seem like they would go a long way. For example break a QB’s accuracy ratings into buckets. 85-100 Accuracy gets access to all types of button sensitive throws, 70-85 gets lob and bullet, below 50 - 70 gets a generic mid lob every time, below 50 gets a random throw. Pair this with Arm Strength and 85-100 accuracy and 85-100 power get access to bullet passes up to 40 yards down field 85-100 accuracy and 70-80 power can throw a bullet up to 30 yards anything 30 - 50 becomes a normal and >50 is automatically a lob. This would make qb ratings mean something.

Physics
Again this one appears in both because it is clearly a work in progress. Wrap tackles need to be improved tremendously along with other general physics tweaks.

[bucknut88]

Quote: Originally Posted by fjackson18

Tried messing with the sliders. but seems like if you move one either way... it reverts to rookie. not sure if others are seeing this.

Does it actually revert it to rookie? In the past when you messed with sliders is moved it to "Custom". I guess what I'm saying is if you go to All Madden all Human sliders go to 25. If you move one up to 50 and it says "Rookie" now, do the other sliders get re-adjusted? Or are they all still at 25?

Check that. Because they may not have the "Custom" difficulty setting anymore, or in the demo. But the sliders may still stay where you originally selected it. Let me know...

[fjackson18]

Quote: Originally Posted by bucknut88

Does it actually revert it to rookie? In the past when you messed with sliders is moved it to "Custom". I guess what I'm saying is if you go to All Madden all Human sliders go to 25. If you move one up to 50 and it says "Rookie" now, do the other sliders get re-adjusted? Or are they all still at 25? Check that. Because they may not have the "Custom" difficulty setting anymore, or in the demo. But the sliders may still stay where you originally selected it. Let me know...

I checked and played with it for a while today. no matter what difficulty you put it on if you move one slider no matter which it is. and you go back to game options it says rookie. which sucks was hoping to work on finding so sliders for the retail copy. the sliders you adjusted stay the same though.

[bucknut88]

Quote: Originally Posted by fjackson18

I checked and played with it for a while today. no matter what difficulty you put it on if you move one slider no matter which it is. and you go back to game options it says rookie. which sucks was hoping to work on finding so sliders for the retail copy. the sliders you adjusted stay the same though.

You didn't really answer my question lol. It doesn't matter what the difficulty SAYS. Do all the sliders you didn't change go back to the rookie sliders? Or do all the sliders (that you changed and left alone) stay the same? If they stay the same it doesnt matter what the difficulty SAYS. I guess I'll have to wait until I get home from work to see for myself.

[psychraider32]

How often do you guys see receivers fight for the ball? I have seen some nice catch animations and a few time were the receiver would go up to the highest point for the ball but not very often.

One cool thing I did see was my receivers collide on a crossing route and abolish a possible touchdown.

[Dogslax41]

Quote: Originally Posted by bucknut88

You didn't really answer my question lol. It doesn't matter what the difficulty SAYS. Do all the sliders you didn't change go back to the rookie sliders? Or do all the sliders (that you changed and left alone) stay the same? If they stay the same it doesnt matter what the difficulty SAYS. I guess I'll have to wait until I get home from work to see for myself.

The sliders don't change. It just says rookie instead of custom. Doesn't impact performance at all.

[bucknut88]

Quote: Originally Posted by Dogslax41

The sliders don't change. It just says rookie instead of custom. Doesn't impact performance at all.

Thank you! So as I suspected, there really isn't anything wrong here....

[SanDiegoTrojans]

Slants are godly in this game my goodness. I destroyed the zone defense easily. I think reading the defense is easier. Also, the read option is pretty good.