The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Well, I’m still waiting on the 360 version but I can tell you this much.

The Xbox version isn’t too bad. I don’t think the XB Madden is as good as XB NCAA, but it’s not a bad game by any means. A little ’samey’, and I still think Superstar Mode is a gimmick, franchise mode is underdeveloped, the audio remains shockingly bad, the whole Tony Bruno thing should have been buried two years ago. The gameplay, however, has certainly been tweaked so that the game is no longer a bomb fest. QB Accuracy/Arm Strength is very different now. On default settings I am able to throw it about 50 yards with Charlie Frye (87 arm str) if I really wind up and heave it — which is about 10 to 15 yards under what it should be. However, I’ll take that if it means a tougher time completing that 35-40 yard fly pattern which has been the bane of this game for like…ever.

But, it’s ugly as sin. Even for Xbox standards Madden is starting to look like recycled ass.

So I get the PC version from GameSpy and install it and give it a go on my new monitor.

Whoa.

Pretty. Really pretty. Not quite NCAA 360 pretty but exceptionally crisp.

Most everything is the same as it is on the Xbox from what I can tell. But I have a player editor (wtf is up with the 360 version not having a player editor?), I have a nice little interface wherein I can use a mouse (yeah!) I have printer and HTML support, and I have my accelerated clock (wtf is up with the 360 version not having an accelrated clock?). How is it that the future of video gaming still lacks all these features? Anyway..

I played my season opener with the Browns against the Saints.

It may have been the most fun I have had with an NFL game (graphics based) in the past, hell I dunno…decade. Solo game, anyway. I had some NFL 2K5 battles online in our league that were epic. But for a game against the CPU…this was just great.

All you need to do is look at the stat line.

Browns 17 Saints 15

I won on a last second 43 yard FG. I scored *17* points in a game of Madden on 13 minute accelerated quarters. I thought it was going to be a shootout, actually. I scored on my first two possessions. Then Frye went cold and Droughns couldn’t find the same lanes. Then Frye got hurt late in the 2nd and was out for the game…which meant…Ken Dorsey. Good lord. Dorsey’s arm is noodle-fied. His passes in Madden are ssssssslloowww.

So it’s 15-14 with 3 mintues to play and Dorsey somehow completes two huge 15 yard passes..I run a few times and get into range and kick a game winner.

What made this so cool was the stat line. It looked like a real game with not one play that made me think “bullshit.” No leaping DBs (thank you sliders) and no triple coverage catches.

Bush 23 carries 121 yards (he’s kinda fast)
Brees 13/21 213 1 TD 1 INT

Droughns 21 carries 91 yards
Frye 7/11 89 yards then got hurt
Dorsey 5/13 45 yards 0/0

If all of the games play like this one, Madden PC will be the NFL game of choice for me this football season. Still don’t know if I’d say it’s better than NCAA XB, but there is probably some college football bias in me saying that. Hmm. No, NCAA XB is still the better game. Al Michaels being the deciding factor.

I just loaded up NCAA 2007 for a game and it downloaded an “update” from Xbox Live. I have no idea what this update does. How about you guys? There’s nothing on the usual sports forums I haunt (except for speculation at Op. Sports) and I can’t seem to log in to EA Sports’ official forums. Maybe it fixes the completely busted momentum system. And by fixed, I mean shutting the thing the hell off.

That said, while on EA’s site I didn’t notice this link for those with the PSP version of the game. It seems EA has patched the ballspotting issue on run plays and is willing to replace the UMD’s of those who have it, so that’s some good news for you PSP folks!

OK, good news. It’s not as wacky as I originally thought. Players are moving up and down the ratings scale, just not when you’d suspect them to. It seems to happen more during the Off-Season rather than after camp.

Vince Young went from an 86 OVR in 2007 to a 91 before camp started in 2008. Cutler stayed at a 78. Leinart went from an 82 to an 87. Now, I personally don’t think that the vast majority of players should keep the exact same ratings like they seem to do here (and everyone does seem to lose a bit of AWR…which is kinda odd) and I do think that more players should see sharper ratings drops based on age or “bustability”, but that’s just my take. The player progression is in fact technically working, which is good news.

I’ll confirm the progression stuff (either way) here in just a second. I was dead wrong about the draft stuff — there is a Draft Speed bar that I failed to notice that slows the draft down to a crawl, allowing you to wheel and or deal until your heart’s content. Sorry for the error on that.

Ok so I simmed the 2006 season (Xbox) just to see how things shake out in franchise mode. The Browns won 6 games…score one for the sim engine.

Anyway, I run through free agency which is just like years prior (T.O. to the Bears, hah) and get to the draft, which this year you need to run rookies through drills or use in an All Star game to scout ratings. Personally, I find this tedious — but that’s just me.

Draft Day rolls around and once again — no trading unless it’s YOUR pick. That’s just plain stupid. It totally kills the ebb and flow of the draft when after your pick it goes into sim mode while the CPU does its thing and you are literally sitting there helpless. So what if that CB you thought would be there was taken 3 picks earlier (not that you’d know it because the picks fly by so fast that you can’t tell who took whom until it’s your pick anyway.) I just don’t get that. Anyway, that’s just a pet peeve of mine because the Draft is supposed to be one of the coolest parts of any franchide mode and here it’s just a rush job to get it over. You spend more time running 8 rooks through cones to test them than you do actually drafting.

None of this is what I really wanted to talk about, though.

I get through all the off season stuff, sim training camp, and get to the start of the 2007 season. Time for a new Browns team to hit the field! Let’s see how Charlie Frye looks now…

Wow. He looks the same. Exactly the same.

So does Braylon, Winslow, Travis Wilson, Sean Jones, D’quell Jackson and Kamerion Wimbley. It’s the start of the pre-season…and nothing has changed except that Willie McGinest lost 2 points of AWR…hey wait a minute..EVERYONE lost AWR points. No one gained anything — at all. Acorss the entire NFL, not one player saw his OVR rating go up a single solitary point during traning camp. Zero. None. Zippo.

I was unable to finish this little test but I am very curious if anyone has noticed this (if you’ve played or simmed a season.) Maybe they get a ratings boost after preseason and not camp? Surely, surely, the player progression model isn’t this screwed up. If players are not progressing…well let’s just wait and see how it looks after a few more test runs.

I’m taking a break from Madden until I hear back from EA about the TOL issue and the accelerated plays but unaccelerated clock. Thankfully there’s Texas Hold’em to bide my time.

Offline it’s a lot of fun and the AI varies by player. Online it’s a lot of cheese. A 2,8 offsuit is not a hand to go all in on. At least on the first hand of the game, but I see a lot of that. It makes me want to report them as a bad player. I mean yeah, there’s some bluffing but there’s also being a moron, ya know?

Geez, remember two weeks ago when Dead Rising was all the rage? It must be fall when the AAA titles are released on a weekly basis and you never have time to keep up…ugh…well not really ugh, because it’s great review work. :).

Here’s the final bizarre stats line from that exhibition game (Lions/Broncos):

- 12 Drops (Denver 3, Detroit 9; That number would be much higher if itincluded DB drops)
- 7 Interceptions (Denver 5, Detroit 2; That number should be higher for both teams)
- 14 “defended” passes (7 Denver, 7 Detroit)

While, graphically, Madden is more polished than NCAA, I’m not sure the gameplay is. The animations, in particular, I could really get to like, but the deflection thing is, as Bill would say, batshit crazy. It seems much worse on that front than NCAA (360) - where it really only bugs me in isolated cases. This game was driving me crazy. I’m not sure a thrown ball ever hit turf without going off somebody’s hands. And the interception issue is a red flag as well. You do not often see a team throw five picks in a game. I mean it happens, but it’s rare.

Right now, my gut feeling is that it won’t be long before I go back to NCAA. NCAA has its issues, but I really find the gameplay in that one to be a lot of fun. I’m not sure I’m going to feel the same way about Madden after I’ve played it for a week or two. Hopefully it was just a wonky game. If not, then hopefully, sliders will deal with some of the drops/deflection/interception numbers, but it’ll probably hinge a lot on whether or not the QB Accuracy slider does anything. (Since every pass is more or less on target if you don’t throw on the run.)

Okay, I’m just going to post this and let the rest of you decide what it’s worth. But in a dynasty pre-season game, 6-minute quarters on All-Pro difficulty, in the first half of a Lions vs. Broncos matchup there have been eight drops. Eight. I have not touched a slider yet and it’s just one half, but damn. Eight drops? In a half?

The Fix list:

Be sure that you install this patch to the same location you installed the game originally. Here’s a list of the fixes

8/23/06 Version 1.1 Released
——————–
- fixed RTE 6 when looking at drive distance on stats page
- fixed RTE 13 deleting purse amount when editing schedule
- fixed RTE 28 out of stack space error when simming rounds
- disabled top options when playing a round
- prevents creating golfers with no ratings
- stops sims when courses are missing
- fixed bug trying to make purse greater than 999,999,999
- fixed bug with shrinking caddy list over time
- fixed bug not allowing you to play practice rounds later in the week
- fixed MCI error
- fixed bug that flip flops consistency and mental ratings when creating golfer
- defaulted almanac, schedule and stats pages to your current tour
- fixed bug showing wrong leaderboard for challenge events when clicking them from weekly schedule

Now, I know that you already know that *I* know that I am not in the “mainstream” when it comes to “video games.” I know we’re clear on that.

Here’s the thing. I know that you aren’t in it, either. (And chances are, you prolly know that, too.) The mainstream is neither good or bad; it is what it is.

I am reminded of this fact every year when EA Sports releases Madden. You can wax poetic about the good old days when we had alternatives for the heretics that preferred other football games to EA’s unstoppable force — but the fact is, this is a Madden World and we’re just living in it. I was reminded of this on several fronts.

• The local news last night mentioned that it was “Madden Day!”
• This morning I had some errands to run and went to get a newspaper (local) and grab some breakfast (at our small town diner that serves pancakes, three of ‘em, as big as your head…for $3!)
• On the drive into Columbus on sports radio. My CD player is broken so I was listening to “The Herd” on ESPN Radio (and yes, I feel a bit dirty now.)

The news last night mentioned the game, and that people were waiting at midnight to get it (Dan did this, because he’s an addict, and insane, and sooo mainstream…not that that’s a bad thing. We love Dan.)

The sports page of the Columbus Dispatch had the virtual Kellen Winslow Jr. staring at me — the article discussed how the Browns players love Madden so much that they implode from the excitement every year. Now, I guess if I had a game that I was the star …I’d be into that, too. Winslow said he edited his hands last year to a 99. (He’ll hate the 360 version then..) WR Frisman Jackson said he doesn’t use the Browns because he sucks in the game and wouldn’t want to see himself drop a lot of balls.

On The Herd this morning he had some ESPN Sports Financial guy on talking about the game and its financial impact (John Madden gets like 10 million a year from EA…whoa). He also said, “You have to start to wonder what else EA Sports can do to make this game better. It’s so amazingly realistic now, at some point they will run out of ways to improve it.”

Colin did the radio nod and said, “Uh huh..yeah. I agree.” (even though he said he never plays video games..)

It was at this point that it sorta hit me. Madden will never, ever, be the game that some of us want it to be. Ever. I don’t mean for that to sound like an indictment of Madden. I’ve barely touched this version and it seems pretty decent thus far. But it’s never going to take that bold step from mainstream icon to detailed, statiscally sound, football simulation. I think in the back of my addled mind I thought that one day…at least by 2004 or so, Madden would start to look more like FPS: Footbal lin terms of what it could do with league creation, stat tracking, etc.

It then dawned on me that Madden sorta buried FPS Football and that franchise died. I thought that by now the Mario Running would be gone and that suction blocking would be a thing of the past — something old gamers told younsters that they had to put up with back in the good old days. They’re still in Madden in 2006 and ya know…no one really cares. Some people care. We still play it and some of us like it, but the mass chunk of people that play Madden could not care less of the QB Accuracy slider works or if Superstar Mode is as silly as the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch. They just don’t. They’re not gamers. They have lives.

Madden is the game that non-gamers buy. There are people, even sports fans, that only buy Madden every year. Not NBA Live. Not NHL 2K-whatever–MADDEN. Not even NCAA and Madden. Just Madden. This game is so ingrained into our society that it makes local news shows, newspapers and national talk radio — and more. And in a way, I can’t blame EA for it. Yes, Superstar Mode is still ass backward silly. The presentation is hilariously poor. Al Michaels sounds like he’s literally on the last train to Hell. But it’s Madden. This game is a mainstream institution and an immeasurable financial success.

You know what I didn’t hear on these shows or read in print? The fact that NFL 2K is gone. Not a whisper. I doubt that the NFL2K series was a serious threat to EA’s juggarnaut, but regardless, it put a stake through that franchise and I don’t think anyone in the Madden Mainstream could care less about it.

At all.

Well, I’m back from sunny Panama City Beach, Florida. We took in the beaches and the restaurants and I took in a nasty, blistering sunburn on my right shoulder that turned into two days of fever, chills and a kind of fatigue I’ve never experienced in my life (and that’s coming from a narcoleptic). By dinnertime on Thursday (I got the burn on Tuesday) I literally just landed on the couch and hardly moved again the rest of the night. It actually felt like work just to breath. It was bizarre. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all. My daughter, in particular, loved the “big” waves in the ocean (they weren’t big, but she’s a model 2.8, so everything looks big to her). You don’t know the joy of parenting until your kid is looking at you, giggling with joy, shouting, “Save me, daddy! Save me!” every time a wave comes as she wraps her arms around your neck. That’s absolute, freaking daddy nirvana, right there.

Anyway, I picked up a rental copy of Madden last night. I don’t have much in the way of impressions yet. I’ve played an exhibition game (Lions vs. Packers) and went through a month of the Superstar mode. I had been reading good things about this mode from a couple sources, but I’m sorry to say, that I’m much more in tune with Bill Harris’s early impressions. It’s improved, but it’s still a complete joke in far too many areas. For example, if your superstar isn’t on the field the game runs at double speed. That’s fine. But from what I can tell, the game clock does not. That alone completely unhinges this mode and ensures that I’ll not be touching it again. I will say the workout and combine modes are better this year, but the draft happens completely behind the scenes, without expressly telling you the round/pick in which you were drafted. Nor does there appear to be any contract negotiation (at least not for your rookie contract) in the game. I mean really, why even bother having you hire an agent if you’re not going to get to haggle over a contract, threaten to hold out, etc?

The exhibition game I played was enjoyable, though. The tackling animations are really much better than I expected and, visually, it is a much more polished game than NCAA, so I do have my hopes up to an extent. However, I am worried that if the batted ball issue in NCAA bugs you then Madden will offer no respite. I must’ve seen a dozen or more batted balls in my game last night. I was something like 5 of 18 throwing the ball. Couldn’t find an open receiver to save my life… but then, that’s sort of how the Lions offense operates, right? (It certainly looked that way in Cleveland last Friday.)

I have a 7:30 meeting so I gotta make this quick. Texas Hold ‘Em is now on Xbox Live Arcade, and I just grabbed it. Don’t forget to pick it up now as it’s FREE until 1am Pacific (4am Eastern) time on Friday morning.

Nice to see Nick The Meat Markakis crush 3 HR’s for the Orioles. Yes, it’s too late for this year, but maybe there is hope.

Well, I’d post comments on Madden (Xbox) but I cannot get through a game without a disc error. Three tries, three failures. Back to the store tomorrow.

Ok, here’s the deal:

I was scheduled to review Madden 360 for GameShark, but EA is late in sending it, and since Dan already has it, he’ll be your guide on the journey that is Madden 360 for the time being. I suspect Todd will have it too.

I will be getting the Xbox version and will try to get some stuff posted today on how it looks. I played NCAA on the Xbox again last night after taking a week break and playing only the 360 and it just reaffirmed what I already thought: The Xbox version is, IMO by far, the superior game. We’ll see how Madden stacks up. All I know is that you can’t edit player ratings (on the 360 at least) which is just batshit crazy.

In addition, the folks atGameSpy are sending me the PC version today and I’ll get thoughts on that posted as well.

There’s also the Alpha build of NBA Live 07 which is en route as I type this from CGM.

Whew. Lotsa stuff.

All of this mega-popular big budget stuff is overshadowing a little game that is showing tons of promise and that’s Wolverine Studios’ Total Pro Golf. Thoughts on this one are also forthcoming but I can already tell that it’s something that will be sitting on my hard drive for quite some time.

Golf was my sport of choice in high school (we qualified for State back in ‘90..back when I had a game…) so I’m at heart a real golf geek. This is a very slick game. I still need to play more and check all of the nuts and bolts but seriously — it’s a lot of fun. You should check out the updated demo which has a few new features that were added after the initial demo release — it makes a big difference.

According to the IGN review, fatigue is in fact working, it’s just not reflected on the chart for the playcalling screen.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say to that. I can say I gave the ball to Dillion 7 times in a row and he didn’t fumble and it sure didn’t seem like he was showing signs of fatigue..however, I don’t have the luxury of calling an EA producer when I find an error.