|
Quote: |
|
|
|
|
Originally Posted by spankdatazz22 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'll preface this by saying I think the NCAA demo is mostly enjoyable, but I think both Madden and NCAA are being looked at far too favorably because the games have been so bad.
I think what many people forget is last gen the NCAA had tuned the game to have a great system of momentum/acceleration/pursuit - it was just lacking in the player interaction dept. Because of those factors, it was possible to recreate a run where the runner cuts against the grain and uses a defender's momentum against them, for example. Locomotion imo is primarily to cover up for what Tiburon got away from next gen. It's easily the best system of movement Tiburon has delivered this gen, but it feels players aren't really running on the turf to me. There's still noticeable warping and sliding that occurs. I've gotten used to it, but I don't see Locomotion as being some "real deal". I think people have had bad so long that anything competent/good is elevated that much more.
Real Assignment AI is a nice/logical improvement. Where it doesn't quite live up to what it should be is w/the player interaction. Lacking a physics system the game doesn't convey what football is, a collision sport. For all the talk about responsiveness/movement, the second a tackle is occurring it's just a matter of what animation is going to play out. But again, it's much better than Tiburon has done previously next gen so it's going to be looked at in a more positive fashion than it should.
I'm most disappointed with Pro-Tak, it's a completely inadequate system of contact/tackling. And the only "improvements" seem to be making those weird rugby scrums occur with less frequency - when they shouldn't have been there to begin with. In NCAA you rarely see a player engaged in contact affected by another person - it's all 1-on-1 interaction. Which is exactly where we were in 2004 with Madden/NCAA. In APF/BB/2K5 for example, you'd see second players come in and finish off a tackle for example.
So this will be the year where NCAA and Madden garner high ratings simply for... getting the game's to near where they were 6 years ago.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hey Spank, I know you're one of the posters that does an excellent job of breaking down the little things in a football game, like the small custom animations and the incidental contact (if you remember, I used one of your posts to create an article on 2kfootballstrategy once about backbreaker/APF2K8 and whether real physics or canned animations is the future of the sport), so I not only appreciate but agree with your sentiments. Have you ever taken the time to diagnose the speed differences between the the two games? Speed is something I felt APF2K8 did well, though it is very slow and is not for all gamers. When I play NCAA it feels way to fast, and when I play Madden on the slower speed settings, the players seem to move fast even though the animations play out slower. It's a small thing, something that Rocky I believe pointed out months ago that got wrong (PM'd him about it, but never got a response back). Might be worth more analysis and a new thread on the subject. I really enjoyed APF2K's speed tradeoff, and M10's just feels all out of kilter to me.
With regards to the incidental contact, and contact in general, I have to admit that I was hoping that ProTak had evolved this year. I felt they created a good concept with ProTak 1.0, but that it didn't play out realistically. As you said, the 9 man scrums, and then an HB breaking out of it looked odd at best, and just plain wrong most of the time. I was hoping to see players fall off while trying to make a tackle, more tackle animations for multiple player engagements, and the engaged players movement impacted by a 2nd, 3rd, even 4th hit. That doesn't appear to be in NCAA and while Ian says they are tuning ProTak in one of his Tweets, I have low expectations of seeing anything new in Madden 11.