Madden PS2 progression - swaldo's Blog

swaldo's Blog

Madden PS2 progression

Posted on August 18, 2009 at 06:37 PM.

(2)

Note: This is mostly complete but am building 2004 & 2005...

MADDEN 2004

In 2004, problem is that you can't flip a play on the fly on D, which means that sometimes you'll get the odd miss matches in zones in Dime formations, which can be a bit tiresome, but really, other then that, the game play is SOLID AS ALL HELL! A lot of things are done for you on the fly based on player ratings that matter... I.E. A big hitter will light people up all day long as long as he's moving towards the opponent, and things like that... A good WR will make great catches... A good QB will feather passes in there and have pretty decent touch on the ball...

MADDEN 2005

MADDEN 2006

Upgrades the passing game - cover athlete is Philly QB Donovan Mcnabb.

QB vision cone: requires the offensive user to utilize a cone representing the quarterback's vision, or line of sight, when throwing to a receiver. After the snap, players must then pick out the receiver/back and surround them with the vision cone before releasing the ball or the pass is off-target.

Precision passing: basically, by pressing the left control stick left, right, up, or down while passing, you can lead your pass ahead, behind, just above, or just below your targeted receiver's chest. This lets you lead your passes where the defenders can't get them. While it might seem a little odd at first, it's actually a pretty simple mechanic, and it works wonders when done correctly.

NFL Superstar: despite a few AI quirks, is the brightest and most original addition to single-player mode since the Franchise has begun. What superstar mode entails is experiencing the lifestyle of a NFL player off the field, and acquire personas specific to the way the player lives their life. All in all, Superstar mode is good fun for those of you who enjoy Madden's single-player features. If you enjoyed NCAA Football 06's Race for the Heisman, you'll love playing through Superstar, and some version of it will most certainly be around in the years ahead.

Smart Route is another neat addition. Here, by pressing a couple of buttons before the snap, you can tell a receiver to run past the first-down marker before breaking off into his assigned route. This is great for situations where you've got a perfect play picked out, but the ideal receiver is set to run a route that doesn't go past the marker. Though some routes seemingly can't be altered, most key ones can, and, again, this works great.

Receiver's new ability to duck under oncoming tackles from safeties or defensive backs when running routes across the middle. Yeah, how sweet is that.

A couple new tackle animations and the ability to knock the helmet off a ball carrier (which actually happens a lot more often than it should).

Head-tracking: players will now watch the ball travel around the field, meaning no more blind catches by receivers.

Truck Stick. For ball carriers, this is the big new change this year. It's like the hit stick on defense, but instead of tackling, you press the right control stick forward to try to bowl over a defender. Like the hit stick, it requires some good timing to be effective, and frankly, there are times when it seems like the stick isn't really doing anything at all. But then there are other times when you can see your running back knock a guy back flat on his ***. And that's damn satisfying.

Franchise mode has become deeper and more immersive every year and even more so for 2006. The new Spawn Feature allows users to save key games during the season, and play them at a later time (while still able to re-merge these results back into the franchise season). Also, Tony Bruno's radio show has added new callers and segments that give freshness to one of the Franchise mode's major additions of 2005. So if franchise is your predominate mode of play, like it is for many, this year it only gets better.

Online play has been improved this year, allowing for the sharing of files between gamers plus more and comparative matchmaking. Also, players can now check their fantasy scores online, giving Madden 2006 the nice title of being the only video game to offer Fantasy capabilities.

MADDEN 2007

Re-tooled running game - Cover athlete is Seahawks RB Shawn Alexander.

Highlight Stick is a new version of the truck stick used for runners on offense. Now when you hit up on the right thumbstick, the game takes into account what kind of back you are for the specific moves: power runners will drop their shoulder and try to go through a defender, while faster backs will dodge incoming tackles. There are some backs who have the designation of being both, so the specific move will vary radically from step to step. This feels like the natural evolution of last year's truck stick, though most experienced Madden players will be able to get by just as easily using the button-based moves rather than making liberal use of the stick. But if you take the time to learn the stick and figure out how to use it and the button controls together, you can be a very hard runner to stop.

With left and right jukes, players can now use them to setup quick stutter steps to the left or right to evade tackles. If you get in a clinch, an icon will now pop up on the screen directing you to pound on the sprint button to escape and gain additional yardage. The same icon will pop up on the defender's side of the ball, turning the event into a kind of button mashing mini-game. The stutter step and the sprint button escape has been around for sometime now; apparently, it's been codified into the game system.

Quarterbacks have the ability to scramble without having to pull down their targets, just like NCAA Football 07.

Vision cones are still in the game, but you can turn them off if you don't like them.

Lead Blocking is included as a major feature; although you could kind of do this in previous years, it was much more dependent on the AI controlled line and backs to lay some lumber on your opponent. For the most part, this wasn't 100% guaranteed, and more often than not, you'd find one of your teammates playing patty cake instead of clearing a hole for you to run through. That's not so much of a concern now with the lead blocking feature. At the start of a play, you can switch away from control of the quarterback to control of a lead blocker, regardless of whether that's a tight end, fullback, halfback or lineman. Once the ball is snapped, you attempt to set a block so your AI controlled back has a chance to run to daylight. Once you've broken through the hole, you can switch back to the runner with a Matrix-like slowdown moment for a second or two and make a move for the end zone. Lead blockers have a variety of moves that can be employed to jam a defender: you can attempt an impact block, which will bowl your opponent over and count towards your pancake block stats. You can also try to take out their legs with a cut block or a diving tackle, which can also interrupt the pursuit of additional tacklers by forcing them to jump over your player. Finally, you can try to turn or pull a defender to the left or right, and if all things fail, you can hold another player and hope the refs don't see you. At first, you may find yourself unable to effectively use this feature, as setting up the right blocks isn't always the most intuitive thing in the world. But after some time, this control method gives the running game a really interesting new perspective, and those who love finding new strategies are bound to eat this up.

New Kick Meter is probably the most accurate representation of kicking available in a game thus far. With this meter, you use the typical arrow to line up your angle and then press down on the right analog stick to set up your power. The meter quickly fills up, and then you press forward on the right stick to set the power as well as your accuracy. The accuracy is based on the angle at which you press up. If you press too far to the right or left, the kick will get away from you. If you land it within a set space, it will go pretty much right where you want it to.

Team Specific Playbooks the addition of these is nice, and fleshes out various schemes for defenders.

Commit to either the run or the pass on defense gives the ability of your defenders a chance to blow up a play if you guessed right, but getting your defenders completely out of position to make a play if you were wrong.

Rookie Scouting. You now have the option to play through the college all-star game, and to run individual rookie prospects through combined workouts to gain more statistical information about players prior to the draft. Getting more involved in rookie scouting is always a plus, and both these features are a nice touch.

NFL Superstar 2.0. Influence rating is a great and addictive system that actually makes you want to play through superstar mode games rather than just simulate them. This year's mode is exponentially more fun to play with, thanks pretty much exclusively to this feature. While the remake of the Superstar makes the game extremely unique (in fact, it's probably the biggest change made to Madden in years), there's a significant issue with the influence system, which really governs the whole mode: You can perform your assignments perfectly, but if one of your teammates screws up, you get penalized for it, which doesn't make sense.

NFLNetwork Mode is one feature that is new and has a lot to offer football fans. Thanks to Sterling Sharpe, NFL Pro Bowler and analyst for NFL Playbook, fans of the sport will be able to get a better understanding of their favorite teams and even some of their rivals. The Network mode breaks down three offensive and three defensive plays beyond the simple X's and O's on the field, explaining when a specific play would be best used in a game situation. These aren't random selections for each team either; EA Sports tried to isolate plays that best represented those franchises. After you go over the explanation, you have a chance to practice that play as well, giving you an idea as to how that play might be best run, or when you face off against the other team.

A few new tackles and other on-field animations here and there.

MADDEN 2008

This year Madden features a much larger emphasis on casual football fans than the hardcore player. While the concept behind making the game more accessible to casual gamers is a laudable one, the actual implementation of the casual elements over the standard gameplay elements is somewhat lacking. Cover athlete is Titan QB Vince Young.

Read and React �Weapons" system is the big new addition in this year's Madden. This system is basically designed to provide differentiation between specific types of star players. Due to specific icons for each type of player, you can now see the difference between a possession receiver and a big-play receiver, an accurate quarterback and a strong-armed quarterback, a shutdown cornerback and a press-coverage cornerback...you get the idea. On the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, this system was fantastic because you could really see the differences in play between the various types of weapons, and the game itself became about finding mismatches you could exploit on both sides of the ball. Not so much for older console versions. There are certainly some base-level distinctions to be made, but for the most part, players play exactly the way they always have in a game of Madden. There aren't those subtle differences in play styles. Sure, you know the difference between a power running back and a speedy running back, but those have always been obvious differences. Beyond being able to spot who on the field is good and who is not so good, and periodically being able to fix a mismatch you might not have otherwise noticed, it doesn't feel like there's much value to the system on these versions.

Spotlight Receiver: You can now focus coverage on a specific receiver with a quick button press though doing so will draw defensive resources away from other receivers. The defense will rotate over to help deny passing lanes and will frequently result in double or triple coverage.

Hit Stick 2.0 allows players to choose between trucking a ball carrier or taking out their legs. This is really designed to take advantage of the match-up between a defender and a ball carrier's size. If the defender is the same size or a bit larger, you can easily knock someone flat on their back. However, if they're a smaller defender, hitting a ball carrier low is an easy way to take them down on the play and potentially cause a fumble. You may need to be careful, because if you whiff or fail on your hit, a back can take advantage of your mistimed action and break for extra yardage.

Defensive Smart Zones: Any defensive player can be dropped into azoneto the first down yard line in order to help deny the other team from easily picking up that key yardage.

Skill Drills is essentially a series of training mini games against gigantic football dummies. Think mini camp, but with robots. While this is an interesting diversion and learning tutorial for newcomers to the game, as well as a refresher for veterans of the franchise, these don't particularly serve the purpose of explaining why you want to call specific pre-play adjustments to plays, for example. As a result, the casual gamer may learn how to play the game, but not necessarily fully understand what they're doing.

Fantasy Challenge mode, which allows players to pick their favorite teams and either using the preexisting roster, hand picking players from the NFL, or drafting current or hall of fame players via a fast paced mini-draft. Players are given 730 Roster points to select individual and packages of offensive and defensive squads to comprise their team. Once you've built your team, you then attempt to take on other teams in a tiered league system, where players fight through three rounds to reach a four-team single elimination playoff season. Each successful win earns your team skill points, which can be allocated towards increasing the stats of players on your team. It also opens up game challenges where players can wager their skill at a mini-camp challenge against another team's score to gain a new player or lose their best athlete. The overall goal of the Fantasy Challenge is to defeat all the competition and become the champion of each one of the four leagues. While the first three leagues will test you, the Supreme League, comprised of Hall of Fame teams and EA created super squads will challenge you with various quirks like disappearing during plays or continually forcing fumbles during tackles. The Fantasy Challenge is one of those modes that is engaging, particularly because you can essentially field your dream team and try to make them four time champions. However, the team that you start out with will never be the team that you finish up with, whether you'd like it to be or not. As you play through each game, your squad will constantly be assaulted by trade negotiations or offers for players. You can either match these deals with roster points to keep them on your team or you're forced to release them to the other team. What sucks is that you won't always receive roster points if you defeat an opponent or win a mini-camp challenge, so you may find that your squad is somewhat whittled away as you move through each tier without anything that you can do to prevent it. When you realize that you can even receive negative roster points depending on who gets taken in a trade, you know that the system is somewhat skewed.

For the most part, players will still experience the same elements within the Franchise mode, with one significant adjustment: many of the menus have been condensed into a simplified main menu option known as My Week.It's an interesting concept, but the condensing of these menus doesn't actually wind up helping these novice players find their way through the finer details that they'll need to successfully run their franchise. As a result, solely relying on these screens will probably cause that target audience of the casual player to become frustrated when they realize that they don't necessarily know where they need to go or what needs to be done to handle the dipping support of their fans or what to best do in trade situations. This will probably force them to rely on the game much more instead of trying to understand the nitty gritty of Franchise management, and as a result, they'll probably stop paying attention to this mode after a few games. What's more, veterans will probably find themselves somewhat annoyed by this new presentation of the franchise mode, primarily because it will feel like owner mode with training wheels that can run pretty slowly. For example, what's up with pulling up newspapers taking forever in this redesigned mode anyway?

Superstar mode has made a return in this year's game, but there is a significant change to the gameplay this time around: Players can take on one of the players from this year's rookie draft class and attempt to make them legendary players worthy of being enshrined in Canton. That means that you can take the training camp absent JaMarcus Russell and use his abilities to make the Raiders return to their glory days if you so choose. This provides a much larger pool of players to pull from to experience the ups and downs of being a superstar in the NFL, which adds a lot of flexibility to this mode. If you're still looking to create your own player instead of stepping into the cleats of the draft class, you now have some more flexibility to create the player you were always looking for without constantly having to worry about that athlete's parents or the "stats" you'd roll. Players are given a pool of points with which to allocate to different abilities, giving them some new flexibility towards how to best create the player they want to become. Unfortunately, while you've got these new adjustments to the Superstar mode, you'll find that the old issues that plagued the mode from last year still apply. Camera angles, particularly for wide receivers and defensive backs, can still be pretty sketchy when on certain plays. Similarly, players still get penalized for mistakes that they have no control over. For instance, if a receiver drops a ball or fumbles after making a catch, your chosen player still receives an influence hit, even though you have nothing to do with that mistake. That's still extremely annoying.

Some new gang-tackling animations that are actually pretty good.

Axed the informative NFL Network Mode from Madden 07.

Removed some franchise features, such as the Tony Bruno radio show as well as newspaper headlines.

MADDEN 2009

The focus on the PS2 version has shifted to a much more casual, beginner friendly title. This year's game solidified this new direction for the game with fewer gameplay improvements and more handholding elements, which will truly disillusion veterans of the title on the older console. Cover athlete is GB/NYJ QB Bret Favre.

Family Play, a mode that derives its basic mechanics from the Wii's All-Play mode to simplify gameplay for newcomers to the game.

QB avoidance moves, which allows you to potentially escape any incoming rusher from grabbing an easy sack by flicking the right analog stick in any one of the four cardinal directions. If you time your analog stick movement just right, your QB will duck under flying defensive ends, sidestep charging linebackers or perform some other evasive maneuver, buying you a few seconds to complete a pass to a receiver. This can be particularly important once you've gotten out of the pocket with the ability to Direct Receiver by clicking the R3 button, allowing you to maneuver them to a specific location on the field as you scramble. The third and final addition to your receivers or running backs is the ability to string spins, stiff arms and cuts together. Evasive moves like double jukes have been condensed to pulling and holding the L1 or R1 button, so you're no longer forced to try to double tap the shoulder buttons to escape defenders.

The largest problem that you'll find with these elements is that they're not particularly useful or handled well. To a degree, the QB avoidance was included in previous titles and based off of a QB's stats. The fact that it's isolated to an analog stick doesn't guarantee or improve your chances that you'll escape any more than you would in previous installments of the title, making it an almost meaningless feature. Technically, the same can be said about directing a receiver, particularly because players can still perform some of the same "Madden" exploits from the past, such as seven-step drops before throwing on the run with relatively solid accuracy. This somewhat removes the need to explicitly direct your receivers, and while you can still direct your passes to lead a receiver running a route, you may find that the only time you feel a need to adjust a receiver is during a wildly thrown ball. Finally, the improvement to the ball carrier move set is nice but somewhat underwhelming, primarily because the double jukes are the only ones that feel radically tighter and more responsive. Chaining back and forth from a spin to a juke or easily cutting back and forth across the field still feels sluggish and trapped within completing animations before the next move is executed.

Custom Play Memory Feature. Players choose their initial package, and then proceed to make their shifts, audibles, hot routes or zone adjustments as they typically would. Once they're satisfied, they hit the square button to access the audible menu, hit R3 to save the play and a direction on the D-pad to save that configuration to one of four slots. This means that you can immediately call up your favorite plays with its pre-snap adjustments without having to manually go through all of the tweaks over and over again, particularly if your opponent starts constantly trying to run a hurry-up offense on you before you can make your changes.

Supersim gives players the option to fast forward gameplay to the next change of possession, the end of the current quarter or the end of the game.

Choose your celebration when you score a touchdown. Players are given the choice between subdued, over the top and multiplayer options, and by hitting the corresponding button, your player will spike the ball or perform a specific kind of dance or movement.

Franchise Decades Points. This system evaluates your skill as a franchise manager, coach, GM, and owner via scorecard throughout an entire preseason and season's worth of play and provides a set of points for making the right decisions. Depending on how well you do in the game or what accomplishments you achieve, such as reaching the postseason or expanding a player's skills, you'll receive bonus points. These will be tracked and ranked across all of the decades of play, so you'll be able to see just how you've been progressing across the years. However, the largest problem is that this feature isn't necessary, particularly with players that pay any significant attention to how they play the franchise. If you're really into franchises, you don't need an arbitrary point system to tell you how you did � you already know whether or not you had a good season based on your play. Nor do you need some system that doesn't unlock anything or have an impact on franchise play being tracked over multiple years. As a result, it's merely an annoying, useless feature that's glommed onto this mode.

Too many injuries.

Too many helmets flying off within a game (I stopped counting in one match after four players went down).

The ball detection is still shoddy at times � fumbles still take a few moments for anyone to respond to the fact that the ball is on the ground.

Some of the AI issues have been slightly improved, such as the horrible time management after the two minute warning which doesn't occur as frequently.

Franchise mode has a condensed set of menus and information that is designed to make the more complex elements much more "accessible."

Superstar mode improvements: the new twist comes with the team expectations that you're given when you sign a contract with a team -- return. Initially, as you attempt to rise up the depth chart and prove your worth, you're given rather accomplishable goals, such as attending a certain number of practices, getting a certain number of yards or tackles, or other position-specific goals. However, once you've become a starter, your tasks become much more specific, such as getting a certain number of touchdowns, interceptions or fumble recoveries. Depending on how well you accomplish these goals, you gain more points towards your Hall of Fame goals, as well as lock down your position instead of finding yourself being traded or on the outs with your coach. That adds a new twist to the mode and is perhaps the best inclusion found within this year's game but this mode's problems are still evident. Camera angles still are horrible during some passes, making it almost impossible for receivers or defensive backs to make the proper play. Plus, you're still penalized for mistakes that your player doesn't make, such as a lineman getting penalized for a receiver dropping a pass or a running back fumbling the ball. I still don't think that should be included in this mode, and it places much more emphasis on players you have no control over.

MADDEN 10

Last year's Madden was home to some questionable changes to the long-standing formula. This time around EA Sports is sticking to the basics that made Madden so popular to begin with, while still offering some small additions and improvements to what could be the final version of the series to appear on Sony's aging console. Cover athletes are both Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu.

Customizable Control Stick. Here you can assign up to eight moves to every direction on the right analog stick for both offense and defense. You can set moves for when you're playing as the quarterback, when you have the ball or when you're the receiver. The right stick customization isn't an earth shattering revelation for football, but it works fine for as simple as it is.

Fight for the Fumble sadly it doesn't work as fluidly as on Xbox 360 or PS3. Rather than jumping into a pile and scratching and clawing for the ball at the bottom you'll watch as your team clumsily kicks it along and tries to pick it up. All the while you're mashing a button but it just isn't as cool as it is in other versions.

Impact-Cam: causes your viewing angle to shake when the crowd gets loud or if someone lands a big hit. A version of it has been present in Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions for some time, but this is slightly more expanded. It's a very small difference, but one that I appreciate in a game of football.

Individual Momentum is a mechanic that shows you when players are on hot or cold streaks. This will alter attributes for that game and that game only. Again, this is something that has been in past Maddens but there's now a portion of the playcall screen that's devoted to displaying the info.

Icing the kicker has been added to multiplayer games. Here one player presses an assortment of buttons and it causes the screen to shake and the other controller to vibrate like crazy in an effort to throw off their timing and increase their nerves. It's actually pretty cool to have your controller start freaking out when the clock ticks below two-minutes left in either the second or fourth quarter and you elect to go for a field goal.

There is some semblance of Owner Mode in this Madden (why it isn't included elsewhere is beyond me). You'll be able to manage things like ticket prices, reward signing bonuses to standout players and hire your own set of coaches.

You'll also be able to start your franchise with a Fantasy Draft and either participate in a standard franchise setup (but without the point system that was in Madden 09) or play Fantasy Challenge. In Fantasy Challenge you'll need to guard star performers from being lured away from your squad and then turn around and try to buy other players using Roster Points. It's a very simple game mode, but it's a cool change to the usual Franchise setup.

Player's helmets don't fly off nearly as much and injuries happen at a more realistic pace.

John Hammond and Chris Colinsworth take over audio commentary.

Ratings are now spread out which was one of the big changes in the next gen version. For example in Madden 09 the WR SPD range was 85-100. This year the range is 70-100.

Much improved soundtrack.