Reviewers not being honest....

[VenomEB]

I've played about 12 games and have yet to run into this "clipping" bug. What is it. Unless its that clipping never gets called because I've had no clipping penalties.

[coogrfan]

Dammit, guys, I like ESPN. I just don't like it quite as much as some of you do...

[wwharton]

I don't think I am. There is NO way a book reviewer would mention found grammatical or spelling errors unless there were enough of them to distract from the enjoyment of the book and therefore I'm assuming you're saying that's the case with ESPN. If so, I'd like to know what these things are. The game isn't perfect by any means but I can't think of these things you speak of that distract my enjoyment of the game. For example sake, I would consider last year's running issues as one. I could play the game as it was but that definitely was distracting and I had to adjust my style of play to make it realistic. From what I hear, a part of the franchise mode may be that way but no matter how many franchise fans we have, that does not make the game. But lets say franchise IS necessary for the masses that's still one. What are the others to make you say many?

If you're going to get into minor things then I can go tit for tat there. With this year's still being a mystery of course, Madden has PLENTY of minor issues that many choose to ignore and/or are used to adjusting to making the game realistic despite them. Ironically these are accepted even though most involve gameplay which is the most important and animations which is the visual of the gameplay.

BTW, the sheep theory does have weight no matter how much people hate to hear it. I talk to many die hard 10+ year madden fans and coach many kids who are as well. I've been told that madden 2004 was going to be the best game b/c EGM said so. I've heard (wow trying to move dlinemen over inches like you'd need to in madden and getting called for encroachment among other things) that ESPN sucks b/c "I'm too old to learn a new game." I've heard, "It's nice but there's no way I'm going to be able to get the other guys that pay money for our tourneys to switch to a new game." and many more. People shouldn't take it personally as there are MANY who aren't sheep and genuinely like the game. I'm just saying that number is probably closer to the number of people that like ESPN and the millions of others do indeed buy the game for reasons that have nothing to do with gameplay, graphics, franchise or anything at all but the name.

[Jon22]

The double works for me. But I do it manually during each play. HAHAHA AHAHA

[NaturalSelected]

Maybe its more of an issue of where people put their time. Example:

Reviewer A sits down with a pad and paper and 16 hours. He methodically breaks down every aspect of every mode, finds various glitches/bugs/problems, and records them. He sims 10 franchise seasons. He plays through three complete games to check for errors. He checks the stadium music feature, checks for changes in first person football, and finishes. Score: 7.9

Reviewer B sits down and sits through the opening video, enjoying it. He enters the game, starts a quick match, and has a good time during the game. After, he jumps into franchise and immediately gets in to the sportscenter presentation and replays, and plays through a whole season, winning the Super Bowl and watching that cool cut scene. He likes the draft screens, but fails to see the drafting issue, he even picks a DE! Before he knows it, he's waisted three days and is nearly out of a job, but hes had a great time. Score: 9.5

Who is right? Neither, in reality. The draft glitch can seriously hurt the fun of franchise mode once its evident, and Reviewer B missed it, but Reviewer A didn't even enjoy the mode for what its meant for. The job is always to balance the pad and paper with the fun, and the best reviewers can do it well, but no one is perfect. Thats why its a review, because its still an opinion. Why did ESPN get high reviews? Because people couldn't put it down. But it seems as if OS here is a haven for finding that problem, and once I read them, I find these problems hard to ignore. Too bad, ignorance really is bliss.

[SportsK1NG]

Quote:

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VenomEB said:
I've played about 12 games and have yet to run into this "clipping" bug. What is it. Unless its that clipping never gets called because I've had no clipping penalties.

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if you ever get called for clipping on a running play they will subtract -15 yards + -Yards from that carry into your stats. So say I run for 40 yards and get called for clipping.. they will subtract 55 yards from my yards

[coogrfan]

*sighs* All right. Here are a couple of examples:

Depth charts :VC's are written in stone. If they have a player lined up a cb, by God he's going to play cb or nothing. In real life it's not uncommon for players to move from cb to safety or vice-versa, Madden lets you do this, ESPN doesn't. Think this is a minor issue? Try playing as the Texans with the hopeless Marlon McCree at fs. The real world Texans are moving cb Marcus Coleman to fs because they realize that McCree is a career backup at best. It's a definite handicap for my virtual Texans that I can't do likewise.

Playbooks: ESPN forces you to pick a single teams playbook for both offense and defense, Madden lets you choose seperate playbooks for each side of the ball. If your playing with historic teams VC's method can make it almost impossible to find an appropriate playbook.

Uniform selection : my pet peeve. Madden lets the home team choose from all of their uniforms(light and dark) while limiting the road team to only those uni's that are the opposite of the home teams choice. VC gives the home team free reign, but generally limits road teams to light jerseys no matter what the home team picks. So if you're the Dolphins(or Panthers, Cards, Bucs or any of the many other teams that in real life choose to wear light jerseys when playing at home early in the season) you either deal with 22 guys all running around in virtually identical unis or you just don't use the light jerseys at all. Weak.


All of these are small things by themselves. I probably wouldn't even mention them except that the Madden developers have proven it's possible to handle each of these issues better than ESPN does. The real killer is that when someone who has played Madden for a long time encounters ESPN for the first time, these are precisely the sort of things they're going to notice first, and they can combine to create an overall negative impression of the product.

[nylawyer]

The draft issue is a huge issue to miss:
The "game" consists of
1. The actual game itself against the CPU and others
2. Online
3. Franchise mode

Franchise mode was hyped to no end. If the game had no franchise mode, like NBA Inside Drive did a few years ago, a lot of people may never have bought the game or picked it up. The problem is that the actual game itself is awesome, online has some issues but will probably be ironed out and franchise mode IMHO is busted due to the draft. So its more like a book with pages ripped out or pages that you can't read. The fact that the CPU only drafts T's, QB's, DE's and HB's in the first round to people that like franchise is equal to the CPU always running on 2nd down in the game for people that love the game itself. You have to come up with all kinds of workarounds to get around and its just plain sloppy work. I don't look at it at as complaining or whining at all, its just about different likes and dislikes. The draft bug was picked up the first time I ran a draft...it would be great if reviewers ran through a couple of seasons to check out stats, drafts, trades etc because it is a key part of the game that VC is selling. You really wonder what the beta testers were doing as well.....ESPN Baseball had a huge bug that pitchers missed 99% of their bunts...pitchers bunting is a critical part of the game at least in the NL....its stuff like this that is just inexcusable for "sports/sim" games....if its NFL Blitz, I understand....