[jpdavis82]

Quote: Originally Posted by GiantBlue76

The very first thing that comes to mind for me is the player movement. It's so fast! Everything happens way to fast and twitchy. It's absolutely KILLING this game. The other issue I see that pops out is the lack of gang tackling. You will never see more than one defender "wrap up". Also, why are the players always hunched over? You see Zach Miller in the flat, the ball is thrown and when he catches it, he's hunched over and standing still like a zombie. Another problem I see is that I still don't see the pocket being pushed. None of the cpu players on the 49ers moved the pocket. This is why pocket passing in Madden still feels like a crap shoot. There is no sense of the pocket collapsing. It's still binary. Either you will have all day, or your lineman will get instantly beat and you get clobbered. This is a legacy issue for 10 years and despite the line play being rewritten with all of their fancy buzzwords, it's still a problem. Some of the solo tackles look a lot better, but I've seen every animation 100 times already. Some even repeat in the small amount of footage shown. It's still scripted, as you hit a guy and magically he spins and falls forwards for 4 yards even though it doesn't fit the context of the hit. Not having interaction between defenders and receivers is a killer. Everyone talks about WR/DB interaction, but it's more than that. Anyone in coverage should be interacting with anyone out on a route. When receivers run through zones, I want to see them being passed off or carried. Give a guy a shove, hand check, something. Make it look like they are alive. Penalties may end up resulting from these types of things. Positives: I liked the double team block on the Seahawks DT where he went down to one knee and got back up. Most of the time, the line play looks pretty good. Wrap up tackle was nice. Graphics are incredible. This game is a MASSIVE improvement over what we had on the 360. What we are seeing right now, sans graphics, is what we should have gotten in 2006. (Arguing that it should have been even earlier is a fair case as well). Basically, this all depends on how you are willing to look at things. From a gameplay only standpoint. If you are someone who is willing to basically say that the last 10 years were a complete waste and should be thrown in the trash, then the game will look better to you because you are viewing this as version 2 of Madden instead of version 26. If you are someone who is not willing to give them a mulligan for 10 years of disastrous football, then you probably think this is all very average. The issue I have is that if you take away the great graphics, nothing here works better, and in many cases, even as well as 10 year old games on far lesser hardware. There is more to a sports game than graphics. AI, interaction and movement and of course off the field all are big pieces. Overall, the potential for an excellent playing football game does exist here. There is still a large list of things to go before that happens, and it is not going to be done by the time 16 or even 17 comes out. Adding a small number of fundamentals to the game each year takes too long. We will be mid way through this gen before we have a game that at least contains the basic elements of gameplay that we once had. That being said, if they follow through on their word and fix their difficulties with implementation and programming, they could really have something to finally be proud of.

Great post and I agree completely, in many ways it does feel like what we should have gotten in 2006. My theory on the animations based on what Rex and Cam have said, and what Sim has said, is that they are currently building a new animation system and implementing the other things they can before they have it ready. It's hard to see much improvement if you focus on the old animations, outside of that, there's a lot of things that start to pop up that indicate a positive shift in direction. I do believe that 16 & 17 will bring it more than people are expecting, but it comes down to implementation and execution in the end.