[ryan36]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

I don't understand the "same old Madden" criticism levied by many in the article when viewed in the light of "it's a sports video game". What other sports video games series are consistently knocked with this criticism? Was NBA2K12 knocked for being very similar to NBA2K11? Has THQ and Yukes ever been knocked for basically releasing the same gameplay every year with the WWE (formerly Smackdown vs RAW) series? Has The Show ever been knocked for being simply an evolutionary step of its previous iteration? Did anyone criticize Forza Motorsport 4 for being fundamentally the same driving simulator as its predecessor? My point is that it's a fair criticism to apply to all those games, but I don't hear it nearly as much for those as I do for EA football. Sports video games are by their nature evolutionary and not revolutionary; I don't understand why anyone would go into a sports game anymore expecting to have their socks knocked off by something that plays completely differently than the year before it. That's not how these games are built, and everyone who is discerning enough about sports games to join a sports video game message board - let alone be a credited producer of content for one - should know that. Heck, it goes beyond sports video games to video games in general. Was anyone knocking Modern Warfare 3 for having the exact same controls and exact same gameplay as Modern Warfare 2? Did anyone ever knock the Rock Band games for having the same rhythm-matching gameplay as each of their predecessors? In my opinion, the impressions offered in the article should have been much better phrased and much more detailed. We all know we are getting a Madden football game. There are certain implications that come with that that everyone knows. Tell us what the new issues are, tell us what legacy issues have and haven't been addressed, tell us what the game actually does well and doesn't do well. To stand behind the opinion of "it's Madden; you like it or you don't" - peppering that opinion with high-level statements such as "legacy issues" without offering any specifics as to what they are, what was attempted by the team to address them, how those changes have affected gameplay, etc. - isn't exactly being bold; that's not an interesting opinion in the context of a sports video game special interest web page, everyone who views this site already knows that much. The closest we got to that in this article were the opinions offered by Jayson Young and Kenny Glover, and I don't feel like they necessarily offered balanced opinions. To be specific, I find it disappointing that no one got into some of the specifics in the Madden demo that legitimately help the series - the new passing mechanics from NCAA (having been better tuned), the excellent crowd audio, how fluid the game is, the general responsiveness of the controls (particularly compared to NCAA Football 13 retail), any mention of the new Kinect preplay controls whatsoever, and so on. From a journalistic standpoint, I don't see how you can talk about the Madden NFL 13 demo without so much as mentioning any of these things. For a website "dedicated to sports gaming", this impressions article simply could and should have been much better.

Well, the reason you don't see that criticism is because those games you mention are generally regarded as "good"...

They don't NEED to reinvent themselves.