In high school I was just Tecmo Bowl for football (mainly played baseball)....got my PS1 my freshman year in 1998, was a Madden guy until 2002 because I just liked the NFL better in real life....then basically was ONLY playing NCAA until 09 when I started getting both.Originally Posted by Solidice
For the first time, leaning more towards NCAA for quite a while....it's kinda cool to see that they have somewhat of a leg up in terms of improvements and etc. this year.
Agreed in many respects on the improvements end. I definitely see NCAA taking a bigger step than Madden this year giving it the slight edge.
I'm definitely more excited to play NCAA than Madden, but one thing does worry me... One of the major things that keeps a game (particularly sports) from being believed to be "great" is poor audio. This has persisted throughout both franchises, but with EA's recent announcement that it will have GUS JOHNSON in Madden, I'm led to believe that NCAA still may be "left out of the party" this year in the talk of best sports game of the year.
Does it affect the "fun factor"? Not necessarily. But it definitely affects the overall quality of the game. I'd be curious as to what the CD guys think about this point of contention?
I'm no CD guy, but I would agree that ncaa needs an audio upgrade. That being said I think ESPN integration will provide something in this area, and possibly something we haven't heard about yet, but maybe only music sound bytes, which will add an authentic style we haven't had yet. That coupled with the fact that Lee Corso is now gone will make my games 1000 times more enjoyable. His voice and unrelenting analysis just got to me.
I think the offensive styles of this year in ncaa will spur madden to do something with coordinators in 12. They'll have to do at least that to keep up with whatever ncaa puts into coaches next year. Madden offenses have received new plays, but the styles are just so straight forward, which is why they tried presenting a better cpu playcalling logic in madden 10. I think it was nice, but not pronounced enough to really see a difference.
Another more fun thing would be to directly lock madden draft picks from the ncaa series. Particularly in ratings. You don't get the direct ratings tied in from ncaa, so the football connection is lost between switching games. If I could go into a season and finish it on both games, and then go into my draft board, and based on the ncaa players' performances and ratings in the ncaa game, pick a player that I know about and had heard about or actually played during the ncaa season, I would get all warm and fuzzy inside. The way I think it works now is that the top players are tagged as such from ncaa to madden, but the ratings are random, based on the madden ratings system, so a guy that ran a 95 college speed of 4.3 could now be a 4.5, 85 speed rated player in madden. Even if the rating is lower in madden (4.4 = 92 in ncaa and 4.4 = 89 in madden), I want to see the relative same speed from that player going into madden. A pro day to at least tie the 2 together would be nice as well.
In this way I think both games can seriously improve. I mean look at what madden did with WR's this year, with the logic there, and qbs with playcalling last year. RB's and linemen AI in ncaa this year. There's all sorts of position by position upgrades that can be made on either game. Football has not tapped it's potential from a game standpoint, even in madden. And especially from a defensive standpoint we are nowhere near done on improving. And tying the 2 games together by players is something that I really would hope could happen. There's just a lot to be done, both individually and together through the core engine.
All that to say, I am going to LOVE this iteration of ncaa with all the upgrades and additions. Madden I would normally pick up soon after it comes out, but it's not going to happen this year. I will wait for a sale price on it. I will like the 'coaching' aspect of madden enough to play it some, but ncaa is blowing my socks off.
Last edited by Jayrah; 05-22-2010 at 02:34 AM.
I've always liked the commentary in the NCAA game. I think there are some lines that get repetitive but I still like it. Nessler is great and I don't think Gus will be better than him. Quite frankly, Nessler is still considered one of the top play by play guys in all of football. What's Gus Johnson? He's usually the #4 guy on a network. Both Herbie and Collinsworth are good but it's still up to the EA team's to use them right. It does seem like NCAA is dropping Lee Corso from the play by play booth. Maybe they have upgraded the commentary a bit.
I agree that the sound and audio aspect is very underrated in sports games and maybe moreso in collegiate sports as you have team specific chants, situational chants, fight songs, in addition to the normal ebb and flow of a crowd during a game to worry about.
I should clarify that while we did meet with the NCAA FB sound guy at the Community Event, that was of our own volition. We had met someone in almost every area of the game except audio, so we made the push to meet with him. At the event, the audio was not in a final mix, so even we don't know what to expect in the final version. However, we were able to relay some feedback and thoughts the community has expressed over the years in regards to the audio and he loved hearing all of it. Dale (the sound guru) told us some ideas he has short-term and long-term for the franchise and if he can get them in as planned, it will be very impressive. IIRC, Dale is more of the sound & music levels guy while I think OMT (Adam) works on the commentary.
Maybe. Maybe. But he's also become known for the more interesting / intense commentary calls in the last few years in the NCAA tournament. And he's getting more popular every year.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
Starting at 2:00, Madden Creative Director Ian Cummings talks about enhancements to the audio in Madden. Hopefully we see something similar in NCAA: http://www.operationsports.com/newspost.php?id=415715
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
Last year was the first time I played Madden more than NCAA. Based on what I have seen thus far I will be playing NCAA non stop and frankly see little reason to purchase Madden. I am really impressed on how it seems as though EA/Tiburon has stepped up big-time.
I agree with that. However I think the coaching aspect of madden will eventually get me to buy it. I have wanted madden to have an aspect of HC lately. I really liked HC from everything but a gameplay standpoint, cause you couldn't play obviously. Really excited to try out true gameplanning eventually. But my love is college football, so I'm still convinced it will be a while before madden hits my shelf.
Like I said before too, if they ever get the physical attributes and skills to match up from ncaa to madden through the draft, I would really enjoy playing a truly side by side dynasty with both games. Would simulate years in a fun way with recruiting and the draft.
Yeah when the move was made for Josh from NFL Head Coach to Madden, I figured something would be implemented within a year or two...maybe it's three.
The game planning feature sounds neat but am I the only one that thinks that aspect will end up being more of a dud than a hit? It sounds like it's just a better version of Ask Madden that allows the user some input. I'm not sure that a month in to the gaming season people will still care that much about this feature.
Last year Madden had pro-tak and game speed sliders that people loved and really wished NCAA had. I don't think anyone is going to play Madden more because of the game flow feature.
Agreed, it seems like a better version of Ask Madden. When I was down at EA for the NFL Draft, I got to briefly play Madden 11, and I turned that option off. The game planning would be more of a play now mess around type of thing for me. I would stlil rather have the control. But EA was definitely on to something with this....they realized that if you spend say 45-50 minutes in a game, you're spending HALF that in the playbook. There will be a ton of casual people that will absolutely love this feature because it kinda adds a real factor into the game with having the OC or DC in your ear, and your games are going to be that much shorter.
I'd love a version of Ask Madden that actually took into account the game plan that I want to implement, rather than seemingly random choices from my playbook. I'd love to see both Game Flow and Game Plan as options in NCAA 12.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
Madden just looks flat thus far... no major announcements, no interesting highlights, no exciting news that makes me want to buy the game. NCAA is hitting it out of the park and I am salivating for another scrap they will throw out to us.
I think Madden's holding back something big. I have no idea what that could be, but it just feels like something big is coming. Otherwise, the lack of concrete announcements thus far really makes no sense.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
You may well be right... let's hope so anyways.
Well, that's not necessarily true about the no big announcements thing from Madden. They've announced some pretty major improvements as well this year, but the problem for them is that ncaa got to announce them first. Locomotion, Dual stick, blocking AI, WR awareness, and Game Flow are some pretty big announcements. Could be something bigger coming, in fact I expect that, and it seems like they've been reserved so far, but they still have that extra month too. Also they usually reserve most of their features for after E3.
Game Flow is a better version of Ask Madden, if you want it to be, or if you want to run the default offense. But if you take the time, it can be 100% your gameplan. You get to choose set up plays for all specific situations. So actually you are still calling the play, but you just get to set it up pre game instead of in game. It's not ask madden at that point, you just already selected what plays YOU would call in that situation, so it takes away having to scroll through the playbook, when you know what you want to do. And if you have something else in mind you can always pull up the full playbook. It actually sounds like a PERFECT feature for the no huddle offense of ncaa.
I don't know all of what Madden has in store, but it's going to be tough for them to have more buzz and hype heading into launch than NCAA. NCAA has announced some cool stuff and there's still a couple big items left. I think one is in both FB titles, but not the other - and Madden fans will be jealous. On the first item, I haven't seen anyone, anywhere guess anything close to it. On the second, I've seen a few posts around the web in the ballpark, but no one has nailed the specifics and that's where the impressive part is.
Such a tease CDJ! Do you think we will have to wait until E3 to hear about these last two big announcements???
No clue when they will announce. My guess is that they won't let there be a month or two with no new info like we had last year. When is E3 compared to the release date?
Didn't mean to tease....just letting people know that guessing will only get them set up for failure. People will really love and enjoy what they added, but people may not fully understand or appreciate them until they see it in action.
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