bdoughty said:
Fixed...
It's funny how people always leave out the amount of effort put in both series this generation. If you look at the original NFL 2K and how it evolved each year there was a concerted effort to make a better football game (in all areas). Madden on the other hand simply built that engine for that PS2 version and has slightly tweaked it each year, throwing in a couple new features, which they conveniently remove for the first next gen effort.
I don't discount the effort that VC put in. Its a fact that they made massive improvements to their game year in and year out. The problem is that every year they seem lag behind madden in core gameplay mechanics. As far as Madden tweaking the engine, thats true. They had no real reason to rebuild their engine from scratch because it was fine. Go back and play Madden 2001, and then play 2005/6. They feel like entirely different games, and its still the same engine. The passing was terrific. The way the ball behaved based on how you pressed the button felt great. The on-field AI is light years ahead of 2k. In fact, 2K as a whole is just way too easy and artificial. I tried and tried to tweak 2k5 sliders and couldn't get it to play like a real football game. As far as I could tell raising the difficulty in 2K just altered the sliders, and even then it didn't take but a quarter or two to get accustomed to the difficulty and continue destroying the CPU. I even tried setting them all on max and was still able to abuse the defensive backs at will. On Madden, I can find slider settings on all-pro that give me trouble. I don't think anyone can make the claim that 2K games are a more realistic and accurate representation of NFL football. There's a reason why real football players all play Madden and pretty much ignore 2K.
As for the running game. My view on it is this. It looks prettier on 2K. This much is true. But the mario running that plagues madden, while annoying as fuck, doesn't really detract from the gameplay. I consider it more of a graphics engine issue than a gameplay issue. In real life NFL players get stuck at the line all the time, without going down right away. Now of course they dont "mario run" in real life, but they do other stuff like try to power behind a lineman try to shuffle their feet, and otherwise keep from just falling down. Madden's inferior graphics do not accurately represent this behavior, hence the mario running. The production (or lack thereof) however is real. I still get realistic running stats on madden. 2K fixed this by adding the behind the line animations, "getting skinny" and other little tweaks to their engine to more accurately represent the running game. Shame on EA for not implementing something like this. The mario running does hurt the running game in Madden, but even with that the running game still works. It still serves a purpose. I can't win games without pounding the ball up the middle. I honestly cant say the same thing with 2k. when I play 2k, I just fire it up and jump into my franchise and just start playing. Never really putting much thought into my play selection, and I still win. With madden I actually try to figure out how I'm gonna beat the team. I gameplan differently based on team strengths, and it really does makes a difference.
The way I see it, I wish EA would just implement the few things 2K does well into their own game. Namely graphics, animations, and that RPG-like franchise mode would be terrific in Madden.
While I hate Madden 360, I'm not too worried about the future. EA's first gen football games are always rough around the edges. They usually make massive improvements over the years so I'm confident that 2007 will be the game I was waiting for. Not that I like the exclusivity thing, having 2K around kept EA on their toes and kept them innovating, at least in terms of gameplay.
