I have played Madden in some form every year since the first Genesis version, had each of the previous 360 iterations but was disappointed and consequently spent little time with them. So in some ways, after a few years of little virtual-football PT, Madden 09 is a new challenge for me and I am experiencing this 'entry barrier' in some aspects while playing offline against the CPU, namely overall speed of the game and defensive adjustments.
The quick snaps from the CPU drive me crazy. It seems to me that the user needs to make pre-snap defensive adjustments to maximize their potential for success and it's very frustrating to me that I can rarely get more than a line shift or press coverage in. Individual assignments? Hot blitzes or zones? In a few seconds? While having time to read the offense in the first place?
Maybe the others can do this in a brief amount of time, but while I'd like to, I cannot at this point.
I'm by no means the most knowledgeable football guy out there, but I know enough to make some intelligent defensive adjustments ---
if I have some time to do so. The mechanics/controls are somewhat familiar from my brief time with previous 360 versions and I will surely improve this aspect with practice, but there simply isn't enough time. For me, I feel that I'm always facing a hurry-up offense. This would be a great, truly authentic NFL-like experience if it was confined to when you are, in fact, facing a hurry-up offense...
But what to do about it? I cannot take credit for this idea as I saw it in the impressions thread --- How about the
option to allow the user to hold a button that triggers a brief period (5-10 secs?) where the CPU will not snap the ball that would allow for pre-snap adjustments? Time would not elapse from the play or game clocks. I can easily see where realism nuts would cry foul, as it's essentially suspending time, but as a
user-option it would help to ease new gamers or those who have been away into this element of the strategic game.
This could tie into a bigger picture that I believe we can see forming in the Game Style options, although they appear to be primarily visually oriented (aside from Rewind). As the consumer who paid his money for the game, I would very much like to be able to pick & choose which options I can use in the game in order to maximize my enjoyment of the product. I don't want all the weapons icons on the screen, fine, I can turn them off. I don't need/want the in-game hints, turn 'em off. I don't have enough time to make pre-snap moves on D because the CPU doesn't spend more than a few seconds at the line after breaking the huddle... you get the idea.
A lot of this just echoes some of the same stuff that Ian saw all too much on the topics of CPU sliders and the like:
As the end-users of the product, we want as many options as possible to tailor the game to our liking. If it's just me and my 360, I should have as much power as feasibly possible to impact the gaming experience --- be it visual options, tweaking gameplay via sliders or more 'outside the box' (sorry I hate that term too) ideas like mentioned above.
Since I've gone on so long about the pre-snap stuff, I'll try to keep this brief (who am I kidding). For me there are two types of game speed that I have to delineate: that of the actual gameplay and something that I would call game-pacing & is more related to presentation (which I feel is already aimed at the 'entry' crowd so this isn't the place I guess). For the actual speed at which play happens "whistle to whistle", I agree with Medlinke that Madden 09 might be a good representation of the on-field speed of the NFL, but it is quite daunting for a new or otherwise less-familiar user. Being able to adjust the speed of play via a universal setting (which could then branch into sub-sliders that seperate it into areas like player speed, momentum/weight effect, ball physics related for the hardcore tweakers) would be golden for 'entry-level' users. Since I've been playing videogames for 20+ years, I'm sure that I will eventually adapt to some degree, but others may not be able to or necessarily want to and will be lost.
Anyways, thanks for listening (if anyone is) and I should probably do some work, since I am, in fact, at work...
