Madden 11
I went from playing NCAA to playing Madden and in that sense it felt like a letdown. The presentation has some similar elements in regards to the replays, though I wasn’t as impressed with the actual replays or their frequency. Lacking the ESPN integrated presentation the whole thing falls a little flat.
Gus Johnson sounds great on big plays, that was about all I could hear of the commentary though given the state of the show floor. When I was able to get a little more I noticed some dead periods, but again I can’t properly evaluate the audio.
The gameplay feels similar to NCAA, except like last year Madden plays slower. Last year I was a proponent of the slower game speed, and maybe it is because I played one after the other, but it almost seemed a little too slow. I’m not sure I should be saying that though given Jerkfacefave returned two kicks on me with Percy Harvin. Once he was in the open field I was toast. So it isn’t necessarily the balance in ratings but maybe an overall sense that the game moves a tad slow.
Maybe it can be attributed to the game speed but the gameplay feels somewhat deliberate, it doesn’t have quite the same element of “anything can happen” that NCAA does.
GameFlow definitely improves the pacing of games, so I can see many using and enjoying the feature especially when tied in with GamePlan. In my first drive though it called two straight WR reverses for Housh so I had to audible out. I’m told that GamePlan would solve something like that, but I don’t see why it would happen regardless. I do like the new audible setup, which makes it much nicer to use along with GameFlow as it presents different types of plays to move into.
The new kicking meter seems really easy but I did notice some people missing field goals. We didn’t have any trouble nailing near full power and near perfect accuracy on most kicks though.
It is just too early for me to make any determinations on how Madden will be received. To me, after the short time with it, I just didn’t find anything terribly compelling about it. This seemed especially to be the case when put right up against NCAA. All things equal I tend to enjoy Madden more because I heavily lean towards the NFL over college football. My gut feeling though after having played both is that I’m going to get more value out of NCAA.
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