Madden last gen vs. next (current gen)

[Only1LT]

Quote: Originally Posted by MiNiDiTkA

I didn't say all last gen Maddens I said 03(05 as well) which I feel better represent players weight/momentum than the current gen except for maybe 10 which does a pretty good job.As you said we'll just have to agree to disagree

Yeah... not even those lol. Not even close, but to each his own.

[MiNiDiTkA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Only1LT

Yeah... not even those lol. Not even close, but to each his own.

And a lol right back at ya

[misterkrabz]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

Here's a vid that sum up what I liked better about ps2 madden gameplay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZglMY...1&feature=plcp To sum up: 1. The ball trajectory was better in ps2 even if it still wasn't the best on that system. 2. Defenders reaction time. Again, Madden has never been great but in the ps2 example I show, the defenders are at least not reacting the instant the ball leaves my qb's hand. 3. Blocking. Yep, I like ps2 blocking better, at least 1-1 blocks in the open field and special teams. In current madden, it's hard (if not impossible) to read the flow of a block and decide which way to go as the ball carrier. The blockers just seem to release the defender whenever you get too close. 4. Responsive controls. Ps3 Madden feels like the game is playing itself on defense. If you hit the swat button, the cpu still likes to go for a pick instead and vice versa. At least with ps2 I could trust the guy I was controlling to respond appropriately to the button I pressed. Besides that stuff I've always felt the game offered more. The franchise was deeper and also if I didn't feel like running a full game of Madden on ps2 I could always just jump into the mini game modes and work on db swat or chase/tackle. I also liked the ps2 madden challenges and collecting the madden cards. Current Madden the franchise just feels dry and lifeless, the mingames are worthless and MUT involves $ and usiing fantasty teams when I would just prefer to collect the cards without spending them. I've gotten about all the milage I can out of ps2 Madden, and pretty much go without a football game at all at the moment but when I really want to get in a game I'll still grab Madden 08 before I grab current Madden.

Great post...agree 100% with everything you just said. Until these things change I'm pretty much done with the franchise. I'll "red box" the new Madden when it comes out but I pretty much expect my interest in the game will run it's course in the 24 hour rental window. Becasue if the things listed above aren't fixed I'll just play the old version of Madden.

[misterkrabz]

Quote: Originally Posted by MiNiDiTkA

Madden 03 GC is still my favorite Madden because of how the players feel like they actually have weight/momentum to them.

Man that looks fantastic...imagine where the franchise would be had they kept the core code behind last gen's version...

[Briskin00]

The Madden franchise went down hill after 08 and the PS2 engine is still the best. I'm sure most of you can recall how discussing 09 was. 09 was so bad that all the madden releases after it seem good because they are simply better than 09.

[mrprice33]

The thing that's changed for sure is that before people could compare all of the games to each other. So game x did things better than game y and vice versa. In seeing what other devs did, you got a better understanding that the products as a whole each had strengths and weaknesses. Since madden is the only football game released now, we only compare it to real life, which it will never compare to.

Then, when other games come out, they're so focused on one key element of football gaming (tackling in backbreaker, for example) that they ignore everything else, like controls, franchise, player management. As a complete PRODUCT, Madden has pretty much always been king. Even when 2k was around, I felt that Madden's franchise mode outpaced 2ks by quite a large margin, and ancillary aspects like importing players from NCAA made the gulf off the field (in Madden's favor) much larger than the gulf on the field (in 2k's favor).

[Tyrant8RDFL]

Quote: Originally Posted by Broncos86

I think this is a large aspect to Madden today. It's the singular source for sim NFL football. During PS2, if Madden was bleh, you could play 2K and be happy. Or whatever else you wanted to do. Now that Madden is the single source, the bar is raised that much higher. You combine a major screw up on Madden early this gen with the fact that there are no other choices, and it creates a maelstrom. People are now more focused on what's wrong with Madden today than they were back in 2005 because of it.

BINGO!

This also made Madden when they added a feature keep it and then add another feature the following year. They had to keep up with the competition.

Now we get a feature then lose it to another new feature. They don't keep adding it on.

To me it's the limits of the engine, and if there was competition they would have dumped this engine years ago to keep up with the competition.

Then again it may be another reason, but my gut strongly says this engine is a huge problem.

Last gen they were able to pile the features on year to year, and this gen they don't. Why?

[mrprice33]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tyrant8RDFL

BINGO! This also made Madden when they added a feature keep it and then add another feature the following year. They had to keep up with the competition. Now we get a feature then lose it to another new feature. They don't keep adding it on. To me it's the limits of the engine, and if there was competition they would have dumped this engine years ago to keep up with the competition. Then again it may be another reason, but my gut strongly says this engine is a huge problem. Last gen they were able to pile the features on year to year, and this gen they don't. Why?

This has basically been the question of this entire generation. My belief is that there was such a jump in quality that each piece of a game takes much longer to create.

If you want evidence of this, take a look at Rockstar's last-gen catalog compared to it's current-gen catalog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rockstar_games

You can also point to the Gran Turismo games, Final Fantasy games, Metal Gear, and many others. Basically, every big franchise of last gen has seen either a precipitous drop-off in quality or quantity. To expect this to not extend to sports games is silly.

And before anybody says "well the show did it" or "nba 2k did it", I'd argue that A) The Show is basically a very-highly up-rezzed port of a PS2 game and B) That NBA 2K has gotten steadily worse every year since it released on the 360, with the exception of 2K11.

With how this relates to Madden specifically, the development cycle has been all over the place. They'd admit that. I think part of that comes from the fans, who want the game to look exactly how it does on TV. The Madden team seems to try to come as close as they can to that every year, but they have a boat with many holes that need plugging.