my respect for Madden's engine has increased

[Soprano00]

...after reading this funny article:

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/30/53...oncos-seahawks

The engine reacts very well and in a coherent way to an extraordinary limit situation. The only real disappointments are the synchro animations, the rest is exactly what you would expect from a game of giants vs dwarves.

[Dogslax41]

Was just about to post this as well. What this showed me is that it's heading in the right direction it just needs to be adjusted and balanced a lot better. I'm not sure it can be limited to a purely animation issue. For example, instead of the DBs shuffling off into no mans land and looking glitched due to their poor awareness they should have animations for turning the wrong direction or opening their hips the wrong way or picking up the wrong man or sitting in zone on a man read. Not just running off aimlessly to the sidelines. And in the end that's not just an animation issue but a matchup issue with how the processing is done for AI "thought."

Unfortunately I am not sure how long or if they will ever get to the point that it plays a realistic sim game. It seems like they have added so many levers that it would take them decades to know how to properly balance the game by adjusting so many layers. It seems like the ratings being dropped and the programmed into a non physics based game and then carried over while integrating physics is wreaking havoc on the balance.