The Stupid Gamer

Yeah, it happened again. Madden rolls around and I get excited because I’m going to play in online leagues with friends. Each year I approach the game with skepticism and usually Gamefly the title until our leagues play out. This year, however, good ol’ Bryan from 1up assured us that the game was stellar and a real improvement for the series. I should have known better, especially after getting burned on NCAA Football 08.

No matter how I adjust the sliders or how I adjust my play style, each and every game features no less than 8 or 9 turnovers. That’s not realistic, that’s stupid. The last game I played was a laugher. I picked the CPU off 9 times, but fumbled it away 5. This is typical in Madden 08, not exceptional. So why did this happen? Well, first of all EA is lazy. Instead of addressing the issue of players being able to easily complete sideline passes, they cranked up the awareness of defensive backs to a level that would make Miss Cleo jealous. As soon as you release the ball defensive backs react to the throw, even if they aren’t looking. Combine that with the fact that 90% of the time a DB touches the ball he picks it off and you get games where half of the throws result in turnovers.

So what do you do when you can’t pass? Well you try to run. It’s too bad that about 10% of running plays result in fumbles. This happens because EA buttered up the ball so that you mash the “protect” button when running into a tackle. They cheat the player into using the “feature” or they face big time punishment. There’s plenty more to whine about (special teams play is crap, same generic playbooks as always, crappy presentation), but I want to attack the real issue before this goes on much longer. Why can’t reviewers call EA out a bit more? Do they really have a noose around us all? Are we afraid of pissing of the casual gamer with a negative review of such a big game?

In my opinion, Madden won’t live up to its potential until EA does the following:

• Make proper use of the license. Give us good presentation for a change. Look what VC did back in 2004 with NFL 2k5 and learn something from it.
• Toss the generic crappy playbook system and give us something deeper along the lines of All-Pro Football (and other past VC football games).
• Stop covering deep cuts with band-aids and fix the problems. Instead of cranking DB awareness and ability up to superhuman levels, FIX IT. This year they took a lazy way out.
• Find a way to eliminate online lag. The kicking game is atrocious online even with a good connection.
• GIVE US LEAGUE SUPPORT. Again, NFL 2k5 did this years ago and All-Pro Football is doing it now.
• No more gimmicks. You know what I’m talking about here. Instead of working on the core of the game, EA loves to toss in some odd gimmick year to year; mostly to help in the promotion of the game.

Maybe it’s not fair to pin this all on Bryan Intihar. I guess I just needed a face to pin to my dartboard for a moment. Sure, he was the most vocal supporter in the media as he gushed about the game for the past month, but plenty of other reviewers are guilty of the same. For some reason they whine 80% of the time through their review only to say, “but the core is solid” before slapping a 9.0 score on the game. If you’re frustrated half the time, maybe the game doesn’t deserve that 9.0. Crazy thought, huh?

So I paid my $60 and I got suckered. At least it’s still pretty fun playing online, but the game is almost garbage offline. It’s probably my fault for getting my hopes up yet again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 1:19 am and is filed under Editorials and Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.