Mario Running still lives (OS Impressions of Madden '06)

[GTHobbes]

Unbelievable. Also, I've seen the videos of Madden 06 and my only thought was that, whoever works on the tackling animations at Tiburon ought to be fired. Anyways, here's the OS impressions:

"OS @ E3 Madden 2006 Impressions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This really felt like the same old Madden to me, sure there were some changes and slight improvements but mostly felt like it’ll be a roster update with a couple gameplay improvements and an extra bell and whistle here and there. All the consoles were set to 1 minute quarters and to be played on either Rookie or Pro, not sure which it was, so it’s really hard to tell how the game would play under true game conditions since it’s like a completely different game on these low end difficulties.

They added “Superstar Mode”, at least I believe that’s the name. this allows you to create a player and try to have him make as much money as possible, and gain fame to hopefully become an All-Pro. This starts out pretty bizarre as you must pick two parents to use their DNA to create the player, this will effect his IQ, and best positions to be played , as well as how good looking you are, apparently that will matter because you gotta be pretty if you hope to land that big movie deal or made the cover of Madden 20--. So after you select your parents you’ll get to play some of (possibly just the last play) of the senior bowl to impress NFL scouts, I think after that you’ll probably have to do some drills before the draft, but not 100% sure since they went over that stuff kinda quick. At some point you get to watch the draft and see who is taken where, there is a somewhat poorly done pick of what looks to be Berman and the gang talking at the draft (I don’t recall any movement in that, so I think it was just a picture) while at the bottom there was a draft ticker showing players being taken. The cool thing about this is that they are the players in the actual 2005 draft. They said all the first round people go to their real teams, but it looked like the players in the later rounds went around the spot where they were drafted, but didn’t always end up in the same pick or with the same team. Personally I’d like to see something like that as an option to start your franchise, since sometimes your team does a bust job at the draft so it might be fun to try to do better for them. The rep at EA assured me, that wasn’t gonna be possible in the franchise mode. So with this mode you can play for the career life of your created player, you can also import a player from NCAA to be your “Superstar”. Your career could last 17 years, maybe even more if you’re a punter, or you might suffer a career ending injury and not even make it through your first season. So there’s that mode….

The new field vision or QB vision thing is ok, but all the disks there are set to only be played on Rookie or Pro, I’m not sure which level it’s on, but really because it’s such a low level you don’t get to see this feature made any impact on the game. Kerry Collins has a much smaller window than Brett Farve, and Tom Brady’s covers nearly ¾’s of the field. I was however given about 5 minutes to try the game out on All-Madden, and at that level this feature does make an impact on how your QB plays. On all Madden after a WR finishes their route you can no longer see the button to throw to that receiver unless they are in the QB’s field of vision. And if the WR is not in that field of vision the pass isn’t going to be too likely to be within the range of that players reach to make the catch. The one time I saw the developer try to throw to someone that was outside of the vision the ball didn’t make it to within 5 yards of the receiver. But my play time on anything but the lower levels of difficulty was very limited so I wasn’t able to get a real feel for how dramatically this new feature would effect the game. It is nice on defense that you can see the opponents field of vision as well as the AI’s cause this will allow you to better be able to cover the receivers your opponent is thinking of going to, and also make it now possible to fake out an opponent by looking one way, then switching at the last second to look the other way.

This year the gameplay is slowed down, it didn’t seem like it was necessarily a bad thing, but it just didn’t feel as fast as last years game. Which could prove to be a good thing since sometimes when facing a heavy blitz there was no time to do anything before, at least now you might have ½ a second to think to dump the ball off for a quick incompletion or something.

Run Blocking might have been improved slightly, but not as greatly as NCAA and there was still “Mario Running” although one developer I spoke to had very high hopes for this being eliminated for ’07. It did seem like you were able to run the ball a little better to the outside as defenders didn’t have super speed moving latterly to shutdown any attempt at running the ball outside of the tackles. Also the defenders didn’t seem to have the blind super jump that they had to bat balls down in 2005, however I didn’t really get a chance to look for this on the higher difficulties, and on the lower ones I was able to chuck a 50 yard bomb to Moss off Kerry Collins back foot, I doubt this kinda thing will happen on All-Pro or All-Madden, but again, didn’t really test it out.

At the end of a drive now, before the extra point or a field goal attempt there is now a screen that shows the drive summary. Well not so much a screen as a black box that blocks your view of the field while your FG unit sets up. Personally I didn’t like that very much, since you couldn’t exit out of it, plus I’m not sure how that would work for fakes or going for 2 since it would be tough to see how players are lined up since it takes up most of the screen. They’re not done with the game though, so they might be able to make that go away when you hit a button. For the most part that seemed to be their idea of improved presentation though, since I didn’t see anything else that seemed that significantly different in the presentation area. Although I also didn’t see the annoying split screen replays they had last year, so I guess if they got rid of those that would be a plus, so maybe this year it’s addition through subtraction.

They also said they thought there will be custom rosters available online but aren’t sure. Another new thing for online is you can now play your franchise online, if you want to play a week of your franchise against another opponent online then you can do that, or play one week, pass your file to a friend, have him play a game that week and keep sending it back and forth. That’s the way their description sounded anyway, not 100% sure on the details of how this works. We’ll find out more when we get our actual interview later in the week.

One thing I just remembered that I wanted to comment on was that they've now changed the buttons slightly. Now the black and white buttons throw to the HB and FB instead of the triggers, as well as I think black and white are the command buttons to shift your DL and LB's, I was use to things the other way and think it's kinda hard to get to the black and white buttons, especially on the S controllers they have at the show, so I wish they didn't make the change but I'll get use to it I'm sure. Another controller change is appernetly if you push up on the right thumbstick while running the ball you'll drop your shoulder to try to plow over a defender. I didn't see this actually knock anyone on their *** yet, but I'll have to try using it with the Bus and see how it fairs there."

[dougb]

"Run Blocking might have been improved slightly, but not as greatly as NCAA and there was still “Mario Running” although one developer I spoke to had very high hopes for this being eliminated for ’07."

High hopes of getting rid of "Mario Running" by 07?

Absof*ckinglutely pitiful. Looks like the predictions of the EA team sitting on their asses, now that the competition has been eliminated, are spot on. Is it possible that in the future we may see a better FIFA, spurred on by Winning Eleven, than Madden (or whatever they end up calling it)?

Best wishes,

Doug

[Danimal]

It's going to be a long year isn't it...

[Inuyasha]

OS @ E3 Madden 2006 Impressions
Another new thing for online is you can now play your franchise online, if you want to play a week of your franchise against another opponent online then you can do that,

I'll bet you'll have to sign up with their premium service to do this. Don't they start charging premium members this year?

[cdastros]

Mabye the reason they didn't fix madden's problems are because they are working on the xbox 360 version more. They are probably making a new engine for the next gen consoles.

[dougb]

Mabye the reason they didn't fix madden's problems are because they are working on the xbox 360 version more. They are probably making a new engine for the next gen consoles.

a new engine WITH Mario running? How about eliminate the Mario running while they're building the new engine.

Just a thought.

Best wishes,

Doug

[Danimal]

Mabye the reason they didn't fix madden's problems are because they are working on the xbox 360 version more. They are probably making a new engine for the next gen consoles.

The problem is EA can't win. If they fixed the running (and it is a stretch to say fix because it is not broken, just not what some people want) and added no features. People would b*tch that it should have been fixed long ago and EA just charged me for a patch. If they add new features, people b*tch about things they don't like and aren't fixed.

Should they do both, bet your ass they should. Can they do it in the ridiculous 12 month developement cycle that sports games are in, not IMO. So I agree we should see major improvements in the next gen games. If we do not, then I am giving up gaming because the forum backlash is going to bring down the net.

This year it is going to be really bad on many forums. The anti EA people do not have a game to fall back on, so they are going to pick and b*tch even louder then ever.

I'm not talking about the Sega fans, who will probably try Madden, not like it and be bummed, I really feel for those guys as I'll be in the same boat next baseball season. But the anit EA guys, the ones who won't even try the game, who will scour forums for posts that are negative and repost them everywhere. Those people are going to be out of control, I am not looking forward to August.

[dougb]

Danimal, I agree with you that in some respects EA can't win. OTH, by elbowing everyone else out of the NFL game market they've made their own bed.

Best wishes,

Doug

[bdoughty]

Danimal, I agree with you that in some respects EA can't win. OTH, by elbowing everyone else out of the NFL game market they've made their own bed.

Best wishes,

Doug

Exactly!

[Danimal]

Danimal, I agree with you that in some respects EA can't win. OTH, by elbowing everyone else out of the NFL game market they've made their own bed.

Best wishes,

Doug

I totally agree with you. I did not want to see Sega's game go away, while it is no secret I prefered Madden last year by a wide margin. Sega's games always made much wider changes on a yearly basis then Madden.

I think EA will squander the ESPN license and instead of using it fully right away like TT, they will dribble out pieces of it on a yearly basis to use it as new features.

I'm just not looking forward to August, there are a whole bunch of people on various forums who still have a burr in their saddle about the whole football thing. This year is not going to be pretty.

[wco81]

Mario running is the least of Madden's running game problems.

How about dumb run-blocking AI?

[TRI]

Unbelievable. Also, I've seen the videos of Madden 06 and my only thought was that, whoever works on the tackling animations at Tiburon ought to be fired. Anyways, here's the OS impressions:

"OS @ E3 Madden 2006 Impressions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This really felt like the same old Madden to me, sure there were some changes and slight improvements but mostly felt like it’ll be a roster update with a couple gameplay improvements and an extra bell and whistle here and there. All the consoles were set to 1 minute quarters and to be played on either Rookie or Pro, not sure which it was, so it’s really hard to tell how the game would play under true game conditions since it’s like a completely different game on these low end difficulties.

They added “Superstar Mode”, at least I believe that’s the name. this allows you to create a player and try to have him make as much money as possible, and gain fame to hopefully become an All-Pro. This starts out pretty bizarre as you must pick two parents to use their DNA to create the player, this will effect his IQ, and best positions to be played , as well as how good looking you are, apparently that will matter because you gotta be pretty if you hope to land that big movie deal or made the cover of Madden 20--. So after you select your parents you’ll get to play some of (possibly just the last play) of the senior bowl to impress NFL scouts, I think after that you’ll probably have to do some drills before the draft, but not 100% sure since they went over that stuff kinda quick. At some point you get to watch the draft and see who is taken where, there is a somewhat poorly done pick of what looks to be Berman and the gang talking at the draft (I don’t recall any movement in that, so I think it was just a picture) while at the bottom there was a draft ticker showing players being taken. The cool thing about this is that they are the players in the actual 2005 draft. They said all the first round people go to their real teams, but it looked like the players in the later rounds went around the spot where they were drafted, but didn’t always end up in the same pick or with the same team. Personally I’d like to see something like that as an option to start your franchise, since sometimes your team does a bust job at the draft so it might be fun to try to do better for them. The rep at EA assured me, that wasn’t gonna be possible in the franchise mode. So with this mode you can play for the career life of your created player, you can also import a player from NCAA to be your “Superstar”. Your career could last 17 years, maybe even more if you’re a punter, or you might suffer a career ending injury and not even make it through your first season. So there’s that mode….

The new field vision or QB vision thing is ok, but all the disks there are set to only be played on Rookie or Pro, I’m not sure which level it’s on, but really because it’s such a low level you don’t get to see this feature made any impact on the game. Kerry Collins has a much smaller window than Brett Farve, and Tom Brady’s covers nearly ¾’s of the field. I was however given about 5 minutes to try the game out on All-Madden, and at that level this feature does make an impact on how your QB plays. On all Madden after a WR finishes their route you can no longer see the button to throw to that receiver unless they are in the QB’s field of vision. And if the WR is not in that field of vision the pass isn’t going to be too likely to be within the range of that players reach to make the catch. The one time I saw the developer try to throw to someone that was outside of the vision the ball didn’t make it to within 5 yards of the receiver. But my play time on anything but the lower levels of difficulty was very limited so I wasn’t able to get a real feel for how dramatically this new feature would effect the game. It is nice on defense that you can see the opponents field of vision as well as the AI’s cause this will allow you to better be able to cover the receivers your opponent is thinking of going to, and also make it now possible to fake out an opponent by looking one way, then switching at the last second to look the other way.

This year the gameplay is slowed down, it didn’t seem like it was necessarily a bad thing, but it just didn’t feel as fast as last years game. Which could prove to be a good thing since sometimes when facing a heavy blitz there was no time to do anything before, at least now you might have ½ a second to think to dump the ball off for a quick incompletion or something.

Run Blocking might have been improved slightly, but not as greatly as NCAA and there was still “Mario Running” although one developer I spoke to had very high hopes for this being eliminated for ’07. It did seem like you were able to run the ball a little better to the outside as defenders didn’t have super speed moving latterly to shutdown any attempt at running the ball outside of the tackles. Also the defenders didn’t seem to have the blind super jump that they had to bat balls down in 2005, however I didn’t really get a chance to look for this on the higher difficulties, and on the lower ones I was able to chuck a 50 yard bomb to Moss off Kerry Collins back foot, I doubt this kinda thing will happen on All-Pro or All-Madden, but again, didn’t really test it out.

At the end of a drive now, before the extra point or a field goal attempt there is now a screen that shows the drive summary. Well not so much a screen as a black box that blocks your view of the field while your FG unit sets up. Personally I didn’t like that very much, since you couldn’t exit out of it, plus I’m not sure how that would work for fakes or going for 2 since it would be tough to see how players are lined up since it takes up most of the screen. They’re not done with the game though, so they might be able to make that go away when you hit a button. For the most part that seemed to be their idea of improved presentation though, since I didn’t see anything else that seemed that significantly different in the presentation area. Although I also didn’t see the annoying split screen replays they had last year, so I guess if they got rid of those that would be a plus, so maybe this year it’s addition through subtraction.

They also said they thought there will be custom rosters available online but aren’t sure. Another new thing for online is you can now play your franchise online, if you want to play a week of your franchise against another opponent online then you can do that, or play one week, pass your file to a friend, have him play a game that week and keep sending it back and forth. That’s the way their description sounded anyway, not 100% sure on the details of how this works. We’ll find out more when we get our actual interview later in the week.

One thing I just remembered that I wanted to comment on was that they've now changed the buttons slightly. Now the black and white buttons throw to the HB and FB instead of the triggers, as well as I think black and white are the command buttons to shift your DL and LB's, I was use to things the other way and think it's kinda hard to get to the black and white buttons, especially on the S controllers they have at the show, so I wish they didn't make the change but I'll get use to it I'm sure. Another controller change is appernetly if you push up on the right thumbstick while running the ball you'll drop your shoulder to try to plow over a defender. I didn't see this actually knock anyone on their *** yet, but I'll have to try using it with the Bus and see how it fairs there."

I am not surprised at all. How many years have people been asking EA to fix the mario running? VC fixed this problem in NFL 2K years ago. This is going to give the anti EA people who predicted EA would slack off a lot of credibility.


EA has been following the competition for a long time like a blind man follows his dog and now that they have eliminated competition in video football gaming and have no one to follow they are probably going to fall into the ditch.

[EDiddy]

Could this be a case of more of a port for the new madden? I think someone on another thread threw that out their. Maybe they did not get there hands on the new hardware calls or toolkits till to late in the game to really go after it full bore. It takes a while to learn a new framework.

[Boom]

Yeah, but in all honesty VC had their one glaring issue that they refused to fix too. DB AI and the inability to control them. I can't even count how many times throughout the past few years that some animation would take me out of the play when all i was trying to do was KNOW IT DOWN!!![/tom jackson][

Both games had issues, but at the same time I think I'm one of the few who truly enjoyed playing both. For NFL games, 2005 was is good as it got. I hated both NFL 2K4 and Madden 2004... then for 2005, I got two games that I thoroughly enjoyed.. .even with their problems.

Like somebody said above... they did make their bed. I just don' think they made it alone..... The NFL was right there fluffing pillows and tucking sheets

[thejake]

Some of these problems (mario running in madden, bad db ai in 2k) are probably a lot harder to fix than we realize. I just think that if it was easy, they would do it. It would probably take a new engine which hopefully we see with the new consoles.

[bkrich83]

The problem is EA can't win. If they fixed the running (and it is a stretch to say fix because it is not broken, just not what some people want) and added no features. People would b*tch that it should have been fixed long ago and EA just charged me for a patch. If they add new features, people b*tch about things they don't like and aren't fixed.

I am gonna have to disagree with you, the run game is certainly broken. The offensive line doesn't execute their assignments most of the time. How many times have you run a trap, only to not have the playside lineman block down, and the trapping lineman not trap? How many counters or counter trey type plays have you run where the offside linemen didn't pull. There are no stretch or zone blocking plays. Basically in Madden every running play is exactly the same blocking wise. Straight man blocking and you either try to run inside our outside.

Mario Running has been in this game since it's inception, been complained about for as long as I can remember, and I find it very disheartening that it's still there.

As someone who prefers to play a ball control style of offense, not having the run game in Madden is very worrisome.

[Inuyasha]

I thought the DB AI in 2k4 wasn't broken like it was in 2k5. But at least VC showed that they would fix problems in the next year's version.

As for EA, I think someone said it right that they probably took all their resources to work on the next gen version and we'll just get a roster update for the current console versions.

[kevinpars]

I know some developers feel like the current one-year cycle for sports game development is not enough time and that they are being pinched, but that is something that game companies could fix by pouring more of their profits back into development. Madden makes a ton of money every year.

I don't know if EA is just maximizing profits or if Madden profits are what allows EA to make other less popular games. I wonder how much profit a game like March Madness, for example, brings in every year?

A bigger complaint might be that the hardware development cycles are becoming too short. Let's be honest, EA still hasn't learned how to utilize the power of the Xbox and now they are developing for the 360. Does this mean that they won't utilize the power of the 360 or that they will port over to the PS3 and not use its power?

Like a lot of people, I wish that there was an alternative to Madden, but Take2 fans should keep it down to a low roar after seeing what 2K did with their baseball game. And as much as I wanted to love ESPN 2K5 last year, I actually enjoyed the gameplay in Madden more. And maybe with less games in development, Take2 will actually finish the ones that they are developing and can avoid the inexcusable bugs that have popped up in the 2K games over the past few years.

[bkrich83]

Both games had issues, but at the same time I think I'm one of the few who truly enjoyed playing both. For NFL games, 2005 was is good as it got.

I was one of the others. Despite their issues, I truly enjoyed both games last year.