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MVP
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Madden vs. ESPN- a year later (well, make it six months)
Madden or 2K5- the lesser of two evils?
It seems appropriate to review sports games twice a year- once when they first come out and then again towards the end of their cycle when the styles of play have been firmly established and people have had a chance to learn how to use and abuse the game engine. At least in the case of these two games, the extra time has really impacted the way that I viewed them.
Full disclosure- I like both games. I play both games; I've been playing Madden since '93, and the 2K series since its inception (I also played Joe Montana Football, Gameday, Fever, and just about everything else; I'm not a one brand gamer and never have been). Last year I thought there was no comparison between the two games-- ESPN football was much better in just about every way. For the first time since I can remember, I traded in Madden after a month or two and stuck with just ESPN for the season, logging hundreds of hours on the game. Coming into this year I didn't see any reason to expect I'd feel otherwise, but then a funny thing happened. I found myself preferring Madden. I thought it was easily the most improved sports game of the year and I was playing 3-4 games of it for every one game of 2K5. There were things about 2K5 that bothered me; in some ways it seemed like it had taken a step back or two. It had some brilliant spots, but it also had some flaws that were hard not to notice. Madden just seemed smoother, more polished, a finished product that hadn't been rushed to market.
That was then. A lot has happened since then.
The thing about 2K5 is that it's major flaws were right out in the open and easy to spot. The quarterback spy feature was broken, literally, and defenders didn't react to a quarterback scramble until the quarterback was 8-10 yards past the line of scrimmage. As a result, dealing with scrambling quarterbacks was a big problem, requiring you to apply a combination of delayed and immediate pressure to one side and manually shadowing the quarterback to the other. Teams like Philly and Minnesota were incredibly hard to defend, as you had to devote equal attention to stopping Moss or Owens and keeping Culpepper or McNabb from taking off. That led into the other big problem, that the defensive back AI left something to be desired. It wasn't universally bad; in some ways it was great. You could shift your backs to overplay inside or outside and the corner would respond appropriately (and when they did so, they would do a beautiful job of jumping routes to that side by taking proper position, not by either acquiring miraculous closing speed or a 70" vertical), pass interference and defensive holding was called regularly in instances where it happened, thus preventing such gamey tactics as banging the receivers off their routes 10 yards downfield, a lot of the DB/WR interactions were just fantastic. But there were a disturbing number of instances where the DB would lose his mind and do something completely stupid. Sometimes the DB would suddenly stop running and allow the receiver to catch the ball and take off. Sometimes the DB would be in position and would then run a full circle around the receiver in an attempt to make a bad play on the ball, letting the receiver go right by him and catch the ball. Often a player would be in position to play the receiver and would instead make a terrible decision to suddenly try to pick off the pass, taking himself out of position in the process. As it turns out, this was all tied to awareness and aggression ratings, an attempt to model good versus poor secondary play- a successful attempt on some level, as you can really tell the difference between good and bad DBs. Still, it looked ridiculous, and it was disturbing. (You can fix this by editing the aforementioned awareness and aggression ratings, but I'm talking about out of the box play, as that's what you get online.)
Those were the problems. Those are still the problems. But it must be said, those are the only problems that I've come across. Kickoff coverage is a little overdone now, kind of an overboard response to the ease with which one could return a kick last year, but that's a minor thing and I'm probably overstating it. Basically, 2K5 plays a very sound game of football and, as far as I can tell, a tamper-proof game. There aren't very many ways to play in an unrealistic fashion and be rewarded. Quarter defenses will give up huge yards on the ground, no matter how many people you send on a blitz or how stacked the box is. The effectiveness of bump and run is based heavily on the matchups, and can and will result in defensive holding calls and pass interference if it takes place too far downfield. There is no suction blocking and you can generate quality blitzes, but nothing that resembles a nanoblitz. None of that stuff is an issue in 2K5.
Madden is a different story entirely. The game engine is good. Excellent, actually, and playing offline against the CPU continues to be a very satisfying experience. If you run up against someone who wants to play a simulation style game of Madden, you're in for a great game. But the problem is that there are just too many ways to abuse the engine through the use of questionable tactics. And I mean really questionable tactics. The emphasis on speed above all other attributes warps the game from the get-go, as players will routinely spend the entire game in nickel, dime, and quarters defenses. Going to a heavy set and running against those defenses will break a big run every once in a while, but will result in no gain or negative yards more than enough times to convince the other player to keep at it. This will of course be combined with the ubiquitous bump n' run coverage, which thanks to the complete lack of defensive holding or pass interference calls (not to mention the lack of fatigue) is overly effective. Nanoblitzing is easy to implement and, thanks to an inability of either the CPU to adjust or for you as a user to alter blocking assignments, more or less uncounterable. The 20 yard dropback is not only possible, it's arguably the most effective way of avoiding pressure, thus allowing users to have 7-8 seconds before they throw the ball. (And notice I've gone a full paragraph without even mentioning the stutter step running issue. Or the shotgun tight issues. Or the corner route. Or the punt block glitch. Or the field goal audible/quarterback draw.) The Madden tournaments don't lie- the most effective way to play the game at a high level is by discarding any pretense of modeling real football and by approaching things like you are playing a video game. Which would be fine, only the game purports to be a simulation of real football.
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05-04-2005, 11:23 PM
People take their 2K-Madden prejudices pretty seriously. I sure hope the STFU*ding-dongs don’t jump on you for giving an honest and what appears to be knowledgeable assessment 
