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OS Red Zone
2014 Cleveland Browns 13-3
2015 Cleveland Browns 6-1
GT: MouthyRat
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Re: Madden NFL 25 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (360, PS3)
Played three games last night.
Player models still need a lot of work, but there are some small, but noticeable improvements. The bodies of the coaches are just horrendous. Shanahan looks like Beavis doing Cornholio.
Animations have improved from FUBAR to just a little strange. The rendering seems to have improved as well. The running animations look better when you are not using the speed burst. When you speed burst it looks more like the old running animation. Some of the foot plant animations look good, others, extremely bad. Transitions to different moves is better than in the past, but still sub par/ weird. Could be my imagination, but it seemed like the juke animated slightly better on the NCAA 14 demo. Overall animations have made an improvement, which, even though small, I will still give them, props, because I never thought they could even make minimal improvements on current gen in that department. Never saw any evidence that they were capable. Still, the animation tech used for these games is still substandard. To give an example, the game looks very strange on the default Normal speed and by strange I mean the animations and transitions look weirder. It looks better on Slow. Now, you might say, no problem, just play on Slow, which you can do, but two things. One, it seems to me that Slow should really be Normal, and that every year they seem to bungle which speed the default should be and what it should be called. Two, no matter what speed you played 2K games on, the animations looked the same, just faster. They didn't become weirder or more disjointed, they looked exactly the same and transitioned the same, regardless of speed, and the faster speeds on the 2K games are as fast, if not faster, than those on Madden. I sound like a broken record, I know, but I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Tiburon accounting dept to know what they spend on their animation tech R&D. No matter what it is, it's way too much considering the results.
Saw some things that I would consider a good start on the presentation front. There were some good, timely, and authentic celebrations after scores or big plays. Kudos for that. Unfortunately, they still come in the form of cutscenes. They just can't let them go I guess. What they don't realize is that although the cutscenes may frame what they want to be emphasized for added dramatic effect (I guess) makes more problems than solutions. Without that organic feeling of watching the play and its aftermath truly unfold, you rob the viewer (player) of its emotional impact. You can't just go from a big hit, to black, then quickly to some celebration that is from a totally weird angle, all in the blink, then to another, then back, and not have it disorient. That's the first issue. The second issue is that you set yourself up to defy the space time continuum. An example. Played with the Ravens. Scored on a long run with Rice. It cuts too a close up of Rice flexing his biceps. Ok, cool. Would be better if it were from a more traditional broadcast angle and it followed the play a little better in the transition to it, but no harm no foul. The problem comes when they start jumping from cutscene to cutscene. So there's Rice, flexing after the score. Now we jump to the sidelines and see the Ravens bench celebrating and... oh wait, there's Ray Diddle on the sidelines celebrating with his teammates...? Heh, heh... I'm sure there's an explanation, he probably just ran to the sideline really fast or the cutscenes allow some time lapse or som... dammit, it just jumped back to a shot of the endzone and there's Ray again celebrating with the linemen, man. I don't expect Tiburon to get the message ever, but I'll give them the holy grail anyway. Make the celebration be a continuous event that happens after a play, whether you keep the same camera angle or not. If you change the camera angle, make them broadcast ones and follow the events in real time from any camera change to the next. If you want to show the sideline, show them only because you followed the player celebrating from the score or big play, from the field, to the sideline.
Gameplay in general, feels much the same. The locomotion/ control of players does feel better. The statements that were made about zig zag running being dead are a little exaggerated though I'd say. I could go into more detail on gameplay, and maybe I will in another post, but this one is long enough already. In short, there are some noticeable, yet small, improvements all over this game, but not enough that I would buy the title or pat them on the back too hard.
Quickly on the AI. In the short time I had with the demo, some late game oddities reared their head. Went into OT one game and the AI got the ball first. They held the ball for almost all of the OT (kept converting 3rd and longs). Then they get deep in my territory under the 2min mark. They run a couple plays and again convert a 3rd down and have 1st and goal from inside the 5 with like a minute and a half or so left. Instead of going for the TD to end the game and not give me a possession. They kick a chip shot field goal on FIRST DOWN lol.
Overall, the demo was fine. It made some improvements, but it's still enough of the same that I will sit this one out. Made me a little more skeptical about Next gen, but I'm still going to pay attention to it and give it a fair shake.
If you still love Madden, then this game doesn't seem like it will disappoint. It seems like the best they've done on this gen, and possibly ever to be honest. If you're like me though, and you want more than just refinements to a system that you think is built on a flawed foundation, then I doubt you'd find this to be the iteration to change your mind. I didn't see any of the invisible players or broken skills training on my PS3 like others have said. At least not yet.
Bottom line, I enjoyed the demo, but not anywhere near enough to make me want to buy the game."You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."Comment
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Roadman....have you experienced excessive injuries in the demo like some others have reported?
Great impressions and slider posts btw.
Skipping demo this year but getting the retail game.GO 'HAWKS!
OS Dibs: Anna Kendrick
Elite Dangerous on One X has become my life.
Proud PS5 and Xbox Series X Owner
"Best of Both Worlds"Comment
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Re: Madden NFL 25 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (360, PS3)
Who has more time with the game to test it, Sony or Tiburon? People complain about the timeliness, or lack thereof, of the certification process as it is, especially when waiting on patches. Why should Sony beta test a product in 2wks more thoroughly than Tiburon does in 1yr?
Most importantly, Sony and Microsoft could give a rat's *** about whether the demo actually works. They test demos, games, and patches to make sure it doesn't break their OS. If it does no damage to their respective platforms, then it gets a thumbs up.
This is 100% Tiburon's issue and not Sony's."You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."Comment
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Re: Madden NFL 25 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (360, PS3)
Totally different architectures.
You can't make a program for Windows and then run it on a Mac and have it work. Not a desktop application anyway (unless some kind of virtualization is used like Java does with the JVM, but even then, it isn't that simple).
Most console games are coded on PCs that are spec-ed similarly to a 360 (most PC games too) and are made with the 360 in mind and then ported to PS3. It's in this porting stage where you get issues on one that aren't on the other. Cell architecture is a lot to grasp, especially if you don't work on it extensively, as there are sometimes segments of teams that handle the porting process as opposed to the whole team. Sometimes porting is handled by another studio entirely. There are also teams that take the time to develop 3rd party games for both systems and forgo porting (DICE with Battlefield 3 to name one of many), but unfortunately that isn't the norm.
That's the biggest obstacle. The two consoles have the same amount of total RAM, but they allocate it differently and the PS3 also uses a mix of SD and XDRAM, so that can also complicate things.
TLDR, the architectures being completely different makes developing for one and porting to the other problematic. The 360 came first and is closer to PC architecture than the PS3 (though not wholly PC like either) so it was easier for studios to just continue to make games for 360 and port them. The PS4 and X1 are both x86 architectures, so this shouldn't be an issue any further."You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."Comment
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Re: Madden NFL 25 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (360, PS3)
Lambeau looks ******* awesome!!!!!!!!! They absolutely nailed it!! New scoreboard looks bad *** in the game!Milwaukee Brewers | Green Bay Packers | North Carolina Tar Heels | Wisconsin BadgersComment
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