Which is harder to learn, Madden or FIFA?

[Shade8780]

Didn't know whether to post in the Madden forum or the FIFA forum so I just picked the more active one.

[UptheARSEnal]

Its is a tossup.

The way Madden plays is juvenile with highschool level playbooks and awful AI tendencies. FIFA just has the awful AI tendencies.

[guaps]

I believe Madden is the hardest to pick up, but it depends on whether you know the rules of the games beforehand.

FIFA is pretty easy to get into. My nephew has been playing FIFA since he was 6-7 years old, and it is much more forgiving in terms of user errors. Madden is much less forgiving and newcomers tend to give up much faster because of that.

[UptheARSEnal]

Quote: Originally Posted by guaps

I believe Madden is the hardest to pick up, but it depends on whether you know the rules of the games beforehand. FIFA is pretty easy to get into. My nephew has been playing FIFA since he was 6-7 years old, and it is much more forgiving in terms of user errors. Madden is much less forgiving and newcomers tend to give up much faster because of that.

Madden is like football for idiots. It is dumbed down beyond belief.

[CarryTheWeight]

I also think it depends on which sport/rules you're most familiar with in real life.

Madden's playcalling has gotten better for newcomers with Gameflow, but even that sometimes calls running plays when "pass" is selected and vice versa.

Newer FIFA games are actually a bit more challenging if you're not too familiar with proper buildups and strategies. Past FIFA titles were more forgiving of end-to-end sprints, "switch, sprint and tackle" techniques and bad passing. The last few games changed this, but the game is customizable enough that you can make it as easy or difficult to play as possible --- even more so than Madden.

Both have their fair share of quirks and frustrations. The AI is robotically unfair at times, way too brain-dead at others. FIFA has more polish, depth and personality, especially on next-gen. Both have the tendency to grow stale after long sessions. It's mostly up to what you want but I would give the edge to FIFA as it's been one of EA's better sports games. Nowhere near perfect, but nowhere near awful (IMO).

[IlluminatusUIUC]

TBH I found FIFA harder. It IMO has the same problem as the NHL series in that the individual player controls feel about as complicated as flying an F16. The ball-fakes specifically stump me horribly.

With madden, as long as you understand the basic rules of football you can be pretty decent without touching the precision stick once.

[N51_rob]

IMO FIFA is the harder of the two games to learn. When playing Madden you really don't have to know anything about actual football to be successful. While in FIFA (and NHL for that matter) not have knowledge of the schemes, attacking and defending responsibilities can really hurt you.

I look at it like this, in FIFA if you take one of your middle defenders and void that spot the CPU will always get the ball into that open area. In Madden if you always leave abandon a coverage responsibility to do something else, the CPU will rarely attack that area of the field. Madden does nothing to correct bad habits/gameplans, while FIFA will force you to compensate or learn from your weakness'

[boritter]

If you play Fifa on 100% manual settings it is significantly more challenging than Madden.