Moostache Reviews Madden NFL 2008 (from MaddenWars) - LOOOOONG!

[Moostache]

Moostache review – Madden NFL 2008 (Initial Review Subject to Review…)


Since the theme of this year’s game is gameplay, I will be focusing mainly on that aspect here. If you are looking for more details on Franchise Mode, Owner Mode, C.A.P., specific ratings or anything else, stop reading now and look for another opinion piece on the game….also, the whole 60-fps vs 30-fps, XB360 vs. PS3 debate will be entirely absent here. I do not have a PS3 version, nor did I see one or play one at the Community Day on 8/9/2007, so until a later date, I will remain silent on the PS3.

So, in NFL 2008, I had a laundry list of things to inspect and to compare (against both Madden NFL 2007 and the recently released NCAA Football 2008) and contrast. How did EA do? What’s the initial verdict? Get a comfortable chair or print out a copy of this and read on to find out….

Let’s get some of the negatives out of the way right up front. For guys who think that the “presentation” aspects of the game – specific things like sidelines, referees, FG nets and chain gangs – are essential to their enjoyment of the title, prepare to be disappointed. In a lot of ways, NFL 2008 is essentially the same as NFL 2007 in these areas. The sidelines are still dull and lifeless, the referees are still MIA and the other small touches like the chain gang and the FG nets are still no where to be found. The kickers have power that was once reserved for the Sebastian Janikowskis of the game – I routinely saw kickoffs either sail through the endzone on end up 8-9 yards deep on kick-offs and 54-57 yard FGs are not only make-able, they feel pretty routine and easy. The playbooks are essentially unchanged in any meaningful way, aside from bringing over the same kind of auto-motion plays found earlier this year on NCAA. They feel kind of dated and overly familiar at this point. The god-awful radio announcer is still there (which has been common knowledge for weeks now) and the other small touch elements of presentation are still weak too (the Marshal Faulk thing is nothing more than a repetitive disembodied voice!) That’s the major bad news in what is an otherwise stunning improvement to the franchise in many other areas.

For me personally, it is always hard to write an initial “review” of Madden based only on a few hours with the game. This is because I know there will be certain things that come up over serious time with the game that will somewhat temper my initial enthusiasm and bring the overall score of a game down somewhat. For instance, when I first played NFL 2007 and compared it to NFL 2006 on the XB360, my impressions were that the game was a vast improvement. Well, after several months and 100’s of games, my initial “B+/A-“ rating would have fallen back to a “B-/C+” rating. In NFL 2007, the most damning thing about the game (to me anyway) was a lack of player control and a horrible problem with collision detection that led to many big plays being essentially unearned by the player with the sticks and governed more by locked in animations and player model clipping than actual strategy or skill. It became endlessly frustrating to have your defenders in position to make a play only to see them locked out of the action due to persistent animations. The sense of being in control of the action on the field was drastically reduced as a result and the game’s overall enjoyment suffered as a result. There were multiple other problems as well, but none as important to me as the shortcomings in gameplay and player control.

Starting back in April of this year, the mantra out of EA-Tiburon was two-fold: GAMEPLAY and TWITCH-CONTROL. I could not have been happier to read that; because as I have said, to me, that was the area of the game in most dire need of attention. The developers decided to focus almost all of their time, money and resources for this development cycle on these aspects of the game. The philosophy behind this decision is very sound – first make the game PLAY correctly or more like what players want, and THEN worry about the ancillary things like presentation and online options and other features. In talking with guys like Rod Moye, David Ortiz, Ian Cummings and Daniel Castorani (D-Cas) – apologies to these guys if I spelled their names wrong too -, we heard the same thing all day long (in fact we have been hearing this message in EVERY interview and preview since the teasers started in April) – gameplay and twitch, twitch and gameplay; and you could really tell that this was not just some kind of hollow marketing slogan for them.

These guys play the game as well as produce it (I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with David Ortiz and putting the wood to him in an epic 31-24 Rams over Jaguars beat down that only a cosmetic late score made respectable! LOL – I successfully ducked a rematch the rest of the community day, but I would gladly give David a rematch on XBL in the coming weeks! My GT is “Moostache” btw David…!). As a whole, they were not pleased with where the gameplay was at following its first 1½ development cycles on the 360 and its first development cycle on the PS3. The reason I say first 1½ cycles on the 360 is that NFL 2006 was a rushed product (faced with hardware changes to the final specs as late as 2 months prior to launch – which severely hampered the effort, caused massive coding re-writes at a time the game should have been in debugging - and led to a regrettable game in the end), and Madden NFL 2007 was not entirely different.

From Madden NFL 2006 to Madden NFL 2007, the developers had to start in December (following the November 2005 release of the XB360) and release the game again in August. For Madden NFL 2008, the work began in earnest on this version in late August and early September of 2006 and the completion was in July of 2007, in other words instead of the twin 9-month or less windows of the other releases, this one got to have that crucial extra couple months. It shows in the final product too. Madden NFL 2008 is in many ways exactly what I expected – a more well-rounded, more polished and slightly tighter playing version of NCAA 2008’s core engine. It is NFL and not NCAA, so there are also specific differences in gameplay (fewer crazy formations, less trick plays, no wishbone or flexbone or option playbooks, etc.); but by and large, Madden is in many ways a refined version of this year’s NCAA. Depending on your reaction and impressions of NCAA, that could either be a very good to great thing or the end of the Western world as we know it….you’ll have to use your personal experiences and preferences to determine which one…

In many respects, and something that I don’t think many of us - as fans (we truly do embody the definition of fanatics too) - tend to realize, the developers on the Madden series have only now completed what would be considered their first full development cycle on the current-generation hardware. Yes, they have worked on the core-engine and the basics and some improvements each time out prior to this, but they did not have the accustomed timeline to work with until now. Also important to note, is that “Madden” is not really a single game….it caters to many different styles of gaming and many different audiences as well. There are “sim” players, “tourney” players, “franchise” guys, online-only guys and offline-only guys, casual and hardcore players and on and on. Because of this wide base of fans and multitude of different priorities, it is inevitable that every year some groups will feel shortchanged or left at the altar.

Madden on the PS2 or XB1 was our collective frame of reference, and too often the reflex reaction is to castigate those who have tried to bring that game into a new-era without adequately acknowledging the difficulty of that task. Look no further than the much hyped 2K title – All-Pro Football 2K8. Here is a game that did not release on the existing hardware until nearly 3 years after its predecessor and still came up lacking in many people’s eyes – though not all, I do appreciate the fact that for some people’s tastes APF2K8 is the current pinnacle of football gaming even if it is not in my mind. (I also realize that 2K has not been in development on the game that entire time either; but it has always seemed patently unfair to me to write them a pass on a mediocre title and whitewash the development time and then to turn around a excoriate EA for essentially the same things.)

I realize that many people will read this and immediate start thinking this is some kind of EA-shill writing. It’s a fair opinion and the only thing I can tell you is that no one wants to see Madden improved more each year than I do; and no one has higher expectations for what the series SHOULD become on this current hardware either. I am merely pointing out something that I feel has been overlooked by many who immediately criticize the game or consider its shortcomings as the by-product of “lazy developers”. Many people want to act like the villagers in Frankenstein and grab the pitchforks and torches to storm the EA castle without ever considering this. I understand the arguments against exclusive rights - and I support that line of thinking as well; competition is always a good thing for consumers and expensive for manufacturers; however, in the world we live in, the reality is that Madden IS NFL video game football and bitching about the unfairness of that situation or casting dispersions on the motives of the developers is useless. No one is forcing a gun to someone’s head and saying “YOU MUST BUY THIS TITLE!” This is not to be construed as some kind of panacea or excuse for the quality of the previous titles or the current state of the franchise – it is only meant to put a little perspective on something that most of us really do not understand (building a game) but think that we are ‘experts’.

Gang Tackles, Branching Animations


So, after all of that background and unnecessary information, did the developers live up to their word and fulfill the mantra? Is “twitch” back in Madden? Is the gameplay truly improved this year? I believe that they have come very close to doing what they set out to do – whether or not what they set out to do will satisfy you as a gamer is a personal call, your priorities and the priorities of the developers may not dovetail very nicely. Madden NFL 2008 is unquestionably a better CONTROLLING game than anything else we have seen from EA on the XB360. The user-control of the players is very tight, highly responsive and the inclusion of the branching animations is fantastically realized when compared to a year ago. The end result is a game that allows the player to feel more than ever before that the outcome of a play could be in his hands. No more persistent animations is what opened the door for the EA version of gang tackling and I feel this works very well now.

When it was first introduced on the PS3 version of Madden NFL 2007, the gang tackles looked a little stiff and there were too many cases where two defenders and the ball carrier would meet and all three immediately fall to the ground in a weird looking animation. THAT animation is still in the game, but it is augmented in ways that surpass even the progress made on NCAA 2008. The best way to describe it is to say that gang tackling in Madden is finally truly in the game and working very well. One of my favorite ‘new’ moments in Madden is watching a ball carrier get hit in the hole and be stood up by two defenders, only to have a third come in and clean up the tackle. It does happen in Madden (in NCAA it seems that gang tackles are frequently limited to 2-defenders on 1-ball carrier). You can (and will) knock off your own defenders from a gang tackle as well. The outcome of the plays is sufficiently variable that you won’t notice instances like Madden NFL 2007 where a RB would get hit and then drag the defenders forward or automatically fall forward for free yardage occurring over and over again. The days of morphing through a defender because of a hit-stick animation are also long gone. A very active gang tackling system, one that feels and looks significantly better than its sibling version on NCAA 2008, has effectively replaced the “mighty morphing power players”. In one fell swoop, EA addressed two of my most bitter complaints about NFL 2007, and did so very effectively.>>

GAMEPLAY, GAMEPLAY, GAMEPLAY…..

Gameplay is NOT perfect here…I would have to agree that some areas have not received the needed upgrades yet. Things like the formation of a good passing pocket, the way play action passes too often result in a QB sack at the fake and the frequency of injuries and somewhat random nature of fumbles at times. These are obviously major areas of concern that will require more hands-on time to figure out if the newly implemented fatigue system is playing a key role – especially on injuries and fumbles – but they remain in the game and will remain a source of considerable frustration to many people. That said, it would be very remiss to not point out the many areas of gameplay that HAVE been significantly improved.

Let’s start with the weapons system and the player ratings and attributes. When Madden NFL 2007 introduced a whole bunch of new player rating categories, my hopes were very high that this would lead to a real difference in performance between various players – making stars play like stars and limiting the impact of speed as the only really crucial attribute. Sadly, the persistent animations and collision detection issues of 2007 severely limited the impact of these new ratings on player performance. Speed was still the single greatest attribute for a player to make big plays and that sucked. This year is an entirely different story. Some very specific examples? QB accuracy is a HUGE difference. Marc Bulger is highly rated for accuracy (I believe a 94 or 95) and Rex Grossman is NOT….the difference between the two is stark. After playing a few games with Bulger and getting very used to balls being thrown exactly where I wanted them and expected them, using Grossman and trying to make the same throws was a disaster. Not only were his throws frequently in bad places, they would also appear to be ratings influenced as well. Grossman’s lower QB THA rating definitely affects the type of offense you can run using the Bears versus the type of plays you can run using the Rams. THAT is HUGE for me. I am quite sure that as guys get more in tune with the new engine and the new gameplay that they will find ways to do things we can’t do initially upon release, but the fact that an attribute such as THA is actually very important in determining what kind of offense you can successfully run is a great improvement.

Other specific ratings-sensitive things were also seen many times over. The difference between a RB like Steven Jackson and Cedric Benson is also pretty pronounced. Jackson and Benson are both “power” runners to a degree, but Jackson is a more rounded back and has better pass catching ability, which really shone through in the game. Another specific instance, that I had Rod Moye walk through with me, was the way certain receivers would slip at times in and out of their breaks on a route. They would sometimes have to put a hand down to the ground to keep their balance and then continue their route – usually giving the defender a real chance to close on them. This is entirely ratings specific, so a FB with poor route running and lower catching ratings is far more likely to struggle than a FB with better ratings. The same was true at WR and at TE as well. I actually had a few INTs that I could see on replay being caused by receivers slipping on their break and having that throw off the timing of the throw. I also noticed that the CB’s on curl routes were MUCH better and more reactive to the ball based on their ratings – Chris McAllister was a freaking ball-hawking beast but Tye Hill was not, even though he would also play the ball better than the CBs did in 2007. It was a very, very cool addition. Still more in this area was seen on Punt Returns with Dante Hall. He is a crappy WR (69 overall) but is still a deadly return man (based on ratings, which some people may say are too high and based more on past performance than current real ability). Whatever people think Hall SHOULD be rated, he is still high-90’s in speed and elusiveness and it really comes through in gameplay in the return game. He can pull off moves and jukes that Travis Minor could only dream of and it really made returning a punt with him feel like it was a dangerous play for the defense.

Control of the RB in the running game was better than NCAA, which was already a monumental amount better than either NCAA 2007 or Madden 2007. The user control of the RB just felt right and the run blocking seemed to be pretty good too – I did not remember having as many frustrating “WHY-THE-HELL-DID-HE-NOT-BLOCK-THAT-GUY!!!” moments as in games past. The double team blocking and also the splitting a double team with the DL-man was nicely done also. There was a play in particular where I was able to use LaRoi Glover to fight through the double team and make a play on the RB in the backfield that did not feel like I was watching a canned animation do it for me. That was also a big time improvement.

Also affecting gameplay is a drastic yet positive manner was the gang-tackling. In Madden this year it is much better than ever before and is leaps and bounds better than what we saw on NCAA last month as well. There are a lot more gang tackles in Madden and they really stop the free yardage we used to get in last years game in its tracks. You can’t count on the FB to always fall forward on a dive play to pick up a 3^rd and 1 anymore – even though it does still work a lot of the time, it is NOT automatic like it was before. A big part of the gang-tackling and branching animation system is also the ability to try to finish off plays, and in the process get either a big hit or accidentally knock you own guys off the tackle and inadvertently free up the offensive player. This happened more than a few times – both by user controlled and CPU controlled defenders – but it never felt cheap. The Hit Stick 2.0 is also far more responsive than it is in NCAA 2008 and yields a lot more really big hit animations and tackles than previously. (NOTE – I have yet to play Madden online, so if the server lag is an issue I would expect one of the most affected areas is going to be in hit stick responsiveness…)

Also along these lines of improved collision detection is the complete absence of “Mario Running”. Finally a RB will not get stuck in place running behind the pile or behind an OL-man. It is not exactly like the old NFL2K5 – where the RB would have an animation that showed him putting a hand on the back of the blocker – but there are instances where the back will bounce back a step or two and look for another opening or will get skinny and try to slide by (again this is ratings induced behavior and context sensitive). It looks nice and really helps add to the feeling of staying in control of your manually controlled player through the play. In general, the player animations are improved overall and the pursuit animations also look better again. There are instances where a fast DB can actually close on a slower RB in space and it looks nice as well. The way speed is factored into the game is also significantly altered at a basic programming level. Again talking with lead developers Rod Moye (recently at the Madden Day) and Ian Cummings (previously at the first NCAA Day), the change involves some pretty complex stuff, but in essence it removes the linear curve to determine performance differences of the past and moves to a more parabolic curve. A runner with a 75 speed rating is going to be significantly different than a runner at 85 and the differences become more pronounced at the highest ratings – a guy at 95 or better is going to have that kind of closing speed that so often seemed to be missing in years past. This is a welcome change as well, and does illustrate that making these things look more realistic and still play familiarly is a much more complicated task than many would believe.

The return of individual defensive playmaker control is also one of the greatest ‘improvements’ to the game….and I put that in quotes only to emphasize that it is not so much as an ‘improvement’ as it is a rectifying of a bad decision to ever remove it at all. Whatever the cause of it being removed earlier, it is back now and I cannot stress how much better that alone makes it feel to play defense. Setting up manually created zone blitzes allowed me to generate several sacks and turnovers that were directly related to moving guys into a new assignment prior to the snap. I know some folks think this is straining realism, but in terms of making the player feel they have at least some control over the outcome of a play, I believe it is invaluable. If I must sacrifice some realism in order to have more feeling of control, then this is an area I am more comfortable with such a trade-off.

Player fatigue is also a lot different than ever before. It is readily apparent in both the animations of the players – guys bent over huffing for breath and running animations that show a player’s stride affected by a long run or multiple moves – and in the GUI between plays (showing the familiar green-yellow-red color for a player icon). The fatigue is progressive and shows up throughout the game; however, it appeared to me that calling a time out was too effective at restoring a player’s fatigue meter. A guy could and did go from red to green after a single time out and that did not seem terribly realistic to me. It is very nice to see that taking a QB like Vince Young and randomly running around CAN still work, but also comes at the price of exhausting the player in the process. He would take a hit to his THA and it showed on passes made while tired. This needs to be really investigated, but the early reports of too many fumbles may in fact also be partly attributable to the affects of fatigue. Using a RB who is too tired in real life can cause fumbles, so if the frequency of fumbles (or injuries for that matter) can be traced back to the fatigue engine then I would consider that a major feather in the game’s cap as well. If it is not, then it may be a regrettable annoyance to some and a game-killer bug to others.

Graphically the game is still a gorgeous title IMO. I feel that the added work that went into getting the player models right this year is really noticeable. This is especially the case on the O-line, where previous versions would have really fat guys (who haven’t been in the NFL since the 80’s anyway) instead of the mammoth athletic guys who play the line nowadays. At first glance, the players seem almost skinny compared to previous versions, but they never quite reach the emaciated appearance of the player models in the recent APF2K8 (they also look better than the recently released NCAA 2008 as well). There is a very pronounced difference between players of different sizes and builds and this carries over to the in-game play as well as the highlights (I was frequently bothered by past titles that would lose this subtle distinction during actual gameplay and could really only be seen in replays). The stadiums themselves look fantastic and the create-a-stadium feature is back (and WILL allow players to use these stadiums in online games between created Franchise Teams – including the option of using a Fantasy Draft with or without Hall of Fame players in it) and the grass fields look as good as last year, which is to say they look better than the fields on NCAA. On the flip side, the field degradation is still a bit overdone on sunny days – fields simply don’t tear up to that extent during a single game.

I felt that while I was playing it the difference between individual players really did a good job defining the strengths and weaknesses of the selected team. The Rams had a dynamic offense and I found the passing game (using the highly rated Bulger) actually easier than NCAA 2008. However, when I switched it up and went with the Bears and Grossman that changed significantly. The running game was nicely done all around in my view and the slightly slower pace of the game allowed patient players to see holes open and read blocks better than ever. The return game was sometimes hampered by the robo-kickers botting kick-offs through the endzone with alarming regularity, but when you did have a chance to run back a kick or a punt, it was very similar to NCAA 2008 – a lot of the same blocking and coverage animations – but also the attributes of the return man made it feel different. On NCAA, there doesn’t seem to be as much of a different ‘feel’ to returning kicks with an elite return man as there is in Madden. After busting off a couple of juke-crazy wild Punt Returns with Dante Hall, I had people intentionally start kicking away from him and sacrificing field position rather than booming a punt or kick directly to him.

What about the rest of the game??????

If those were the things done mostly right, how about some of the either near misses or disappointments? Here it will likely start with “presentation”. This is a subject that I think is usually overblown (at least to some serious FOOTBALL gamers). For a person who really gets off on seeing digital cheerleaders or wants to watch the sidelines instead of playing the game, or even for people who are upset that real life on-field obstacles or unintentional blocks in the form of referees are missing, then the presentation has not been worked on at all. However, there were some improvements in presentation as well that should not to totally overlooked. The Marshall Faulk thing is not really one of them, and coupled with the atrociously annoying radio guy, it is safe to say that EA is not really excelling in this aspect of the game. The improvements are somewhat tempered by the fact that they are outdone here by NCAA 2008’s fantastic video replay save and share system. In Madden, we have the beginnings of a half-time and post-game show – with the top 5 replays from the half or game viewable, BUT since NCAA debuted the snapshots in 2007 and the uploadable video clips in 2008, it is highly disappointing to see these things totally absent on the EA flagship game. There are NO VIDEO UPLOADS (confirmed). It is nice to be able to SEE the replays of plays from the game immediately after playing, but NCAA has it beat hands-down by allowing the other options after you have viewed the replays and in the fact that you can select the camera angle to view them from (oh, btw…there appeared to be only one playable camera angle again for those who get their panties in a bunch about such things). There are certainly a good number of replays during the games (and it can be adjusted by sliders) to lend the game some TV-style presentation points, but honestly? In my mind, those touches are usually forgotten in a week or less anyway. The majority of the game’s owners frequently skip replays, but it is still nice to have them there. These things do not make or break the game for me as much as they highlight areas that the game needs to improve to become the ultimate version of Madden on this generation of hardware.

Online options are a whole different issue. There will be no selectable jerseys again, and no selectable weather conditions and no selectable stadiums. There is also a very low likelihood of having e-mailed stats on unranked games (people did not even seem to realize that this bothered many people), nor will there be no ranked All-Madden games again this year. I voiced my displeasure over this situation many times to multiple producers and also provided EA with a summary of online wishes for the future. There was considerable discussion about wanting to have a full-blown and functional online franchise available in the future as well. As I stated in the very beginning of this review, the team’s resources and time went into gameplay options this year and the things like online and to a lesser degree presentation and atmosphere did not get nearly as much attention. There WILL be an option to use created teams online (I was told that several times), so one of the first things I am going to try when I get the game fired up this weekend is creating a team in the fantasy draft , creating a home stadium for them and taking them online. I will report more on this in MaddenWars at a later date.

There are also no online mini-games, although the changes to the DB/WR drills will really be a godsend to guys who want to practice their stick skills and improve their game. The DB drill in particular is tough at first but also very fun to play. The other mini-games remain largely unchanged but still provide an entertaining diversion. I did not so much as touch Franchise Mode, so unfortunately I will defer to the reviews of others to cover this part of the game… Lastly, I have a real concern about the “Spectacular Catch” WR rating and its corresponding (yet NON-USER INITIATIED animation). This seemed to be a really possible exploit in the game because the highly rated WRs seemed to be making too many of these catches on a somewhat routine basis. The trend was seen mostly in Practice Mode and not in gameplay or head-to-head play; but this is definitely something to keep an eye on as the game releases and more people take it online. I believe that the weapons system and playcalling should provide methods to counter this, but if not, we might have a “new” Jet-pack in town…

THE VERDICT???

I could go on for another 3 pages here, but its time to wrap this up and leave the rest for another time. Overall, I am grading this game with a cautious A- (9/10). The gameplay improvements absolutely addressed many of the issues that I felt ruined Madden NFL 2007 after a few weeks, and the graphics remain largely intact and stunning. The re-playability of the game will hinge largely on an individual’s tastes (I did not even touch on Franchise Mode or Owner Mode or Front Office Mode - GM mode I guess), but if the online aspect of the game is as bad as NCAA for many people, I think there will be some serious backlash. NCAA is in and of itself a fantastic football game and tons of fun; but when guys take it online and experience massive button lag, menu lag and generally poor performance of the servers with mysterious dropped games and fictitious losses on their fictitious online records, a lot of the re-playability of the title is lost. If I find that online play is really bad and compromised, I would have to say that would drop my evaluation of the game to a B-/C+ (7.5-8.0/10) again. On the other hand, if I find online play is smooth and lag-free and does not randomly drop a ton of games, then my rating might bump up to a solid “A” (9.5 / 10). It is fun to play, and that’s always the most important part of any game really. I believe that the game offers an awful lot of refinement to the hardcore players, several new ‘features’ for the newer people and enough value to easily make this a “BUY” recommendation as well.

(I am truly sorry to not be able to preview the PS3 version of Madden specifically. I know at MaddenWars this is a very important issue to many guys – which one is ‘better’? Which one should I get? All I can say is that in playing NCAA Football on both consoles, I preferred the 360 version - mainly because of its online capabilities via XBL. In sheer graphics terms, the games were nearly identical, with a slight edge to the 360 due to the fps issue. The controls also felt a little more choppy on the PS3, but not enough to make anyone want to throw away their PS3 in frustration. The PS3 online service also seemed a bit more likely to drop games, but it also happened on XBL, so it is not a total Sony problem. Bottom line, if you play on the PS3 only, then you will be getting a game that you should truly enjoy and don’t need to worry about feeling cheated because of the 60fps. If you play both systems, you will notice a difference (in some cases a pretty big difference), but you should be able to play on both systems without a ton of difficulty. If you have both systems and only want to play the best version possible – then stay with the 360 version in a closer than one might think but still pretty clear choice.)>>

[Walker8]

wow that's what i call a review. Sounds like he really gets into these games.

[nemesis04]

I feel like I just finished reading through the fine print off my mortgage, man is it tiny. A lot of info there, thanks for posting!

[eDotd]

MY EYES! Jesus that text is tiny..will still read though. Thanks for the write up

[ChicagoChris]

Thanks Moosetache. Exactly what i was looking for!!

[mike01]

interesting...

honestly, lose the whole thing about 2k8 vs Madden in terms of time of development. You sound biased. EA Sports has released Madden 06, NCAA 07, Madden 07, and NCAA 08 before this, and you say that they are just NOW getting a full development and getting used to the hardware?

[jfsolo]

Thanks for the write up. If there aren't any totally crushing bugs in franchise then it seems as if I may really enjoy Madden for the first time since Madden 2003.

A couple of questions, FF in the impressions thread briefly mentioned how much he loved playing defense, did you feel like you could control any player on defense and impact the game the way that player realistically would?

In that same vein in NCAA this year, with the right amount of minutes, you are finally able to have realistic tackle amounts for backers and dlinemen, based on the way the games you played flowed, do you think the same thing will be possible in Madden?

[cam780]

Good review. I actually think the APF vs Madden thing actually works for a review if the reviewers' unbiased. I made the point about APF having 3 years with the game in a previous post and got blasted for it so its reassuring that I'm not the only one although the item about cycle times was completely lost on me so its a bit of an eye opener. It doesn't excuse it but it sheds some light.