Who's going to give in first?

[ChampIsHere42]

I know there are some people like me on these forums who are going back and forth whether they should purchase this game or not. I've either purchased this game or received it as a gift since Madden 99. It just doesn't feel right not having it this year. I just don't want to purchase it and only play it for 2 weeks like I did last year. I'm a big franchise guy so my hopes were high for this year but I hear it isn't as good as they made it sound. Anyone else feel the same way I do?

[Earl1963]

I want a new football game really really bad, but like you I know I wouldn't play it long cause Madden stinks this gen, plain and simple. EA has lost its swag for real.

[NothingTrivial]

why not spring for a trial or even 1 month subscription to one of those rent by mail sites, or even rent it from a physical store and test it out. Thats what im doing, its a lot cheaper than spending $60 to test a game out.

[jdefreitas]

You have to play it. Rent first if you have doubts.

Negatives:

-Menu clunkiness and layouts (not as bad as people make it out to be)

-Believing that this is the year of "Sim Madden". ie: this type of person needs to have the game taylor to them exactly the way the games in real life pan out. Every bit of realism needs to be evident or the game is broken.

-Commentary is broken as of now. No flow between commentators and wrong team names and players announced, alot of players called by numbers.

-DB/WR Interaction and super linebackers still present... unfortunately. But this can be mostly alleviated if you find the right mix of sliders and speed threshold. Basically just a time commitment.

Positives:

-Suction is not gone completely. But it is almost non existent. Players still get sucked in very slightly if you follow every nuance of the play in instant replay, but blocking and CPU zone coverage AI is greatly improved (again... not perfect).

-DPP works and makes the game unpredictable for once. Between that and hot and cold streaks, the 49ers can down the Colts if they get off to the right start, etc . It's a really cool new element of gameplay never seen before in this series.

-Sliders are killer this year. This is the quickest I've ever been able to make sliders because of Celg35's base set he has here on OP Sports. They are a great base set for pro/all pro guys. If your all madden though, they can work. You just have to bump down human slider's considerably and then lower CPU to about 95 instead of 100 in most categories (so they don't play like supermen as you jack the human player down).

-Lots of new franchise elements (I'm a huge offline franchise guy and it's pretty much all I play).

Cut days are cool and fun, and you get really anxious as the last few come around because depending on the quality of your team, the choices could be really tough.

Traits are awesome and really reflect elite players. If you have a feature back like MJD, the O-line will block better for them (motivation?). If you have a mentor he will make younger guys play better, ie: Brian Dawkins is a mentor and is helping Rahim Moore play really well beside him in his first season of my franchise. I honestly feel like these traits really impact the game as Josh Looman told us they would.

Better scouting system if you can get past some of the cpu draft logic... it's hit or miss from what I gather around here. But it seems with NCAA imports its easily predictable. But, if your a generated class guy like me then it's by potential usually. Which is how it should be (barring they actually remove potential one of these years). I am having fun with scouting. If you like NFL Head Coach 09, it's very similar.


I'm sure others will chime in that I missed a lot of negatives or something but I found the slider set I like to make it realistic enough for me to enjoy it. This is coming from a guy that literally broke his madden disk the last two years a few months in because it pissed me off so much. Snapped it in half and lit it on fire with a lighter in my back yard lol.