Madden 12 - First Impressions

Hi all. What is your first impressions about Madden 12 the GAME rather than the technical side?

I have found the game to be very engrossing in terms of roster management - the pre-season Cut Days makes pre-season totally relevant now, and I have found this side of the game to be rewarding in discovering what Giants rookies such as Da'rel Scott, Marvin Austin and especially Jerrel Jernigan can bring to the table. Jernigan I have found to be a very nice surprise, a go-to speedster with safe hands who has already brought many 3rd down conversions and a couple of returns for TDs. Nice!

The Rookie Scouting adds more to off-line Franchise, but I've already found a number of glaring holes in this feature. One of which (and I think is unforgivable) is the fact you can go to the combine, but can only find out a limited numbers of players statistics. In reality, every team knows every players's combine numbers. In this game you can only focus on very low amount of rookies from the various stages of scouting. Once you have whittled your way down to what you believe you may want in terms of potential draft picks, invariably you are still left going into the draft blind for a number of selections. I believe the game should have been a hell of a lot more liberal with the scouting, especially during the off-season. While I understand it shouldn't be easy to uncover that draft gem, I think they have made it a lot more harder than it should have been.

Free Agent bidding is just chaos IMO. They need to slow it down. The interface for this bidding doesnt give itself well to juggling between bids. It feels like you're spinning plates.

In-play, I have seen a few issues. Just the other day Scott, TJ and I competed online and in team play using the Communities feature. We went up against a couple of guys who were just hauling deep passes and completing them. They were also going for the same two point conversion play. It was a proper joke. Highlights the fact that 1) there are issues with actual gameplay tuning - thank god for tuner sets, if they work and 2) Communities doesn't necessarily mean you get rid of idiot-play.

Also, I have seen issues with the Wind meter. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at kicks against wind (plenty of Tiger Woods over the years has helped) but in one instance, the gui showed the Wind coming in from the right (east) and I adjusted a little to project the kick just inside the upright and hit both power and accuracy markers spot on, however the ball sailed right. That kick made me lose a crucial game against the Pats (losing to a Boston team doesnt a happy Vitale make).

And lastly, two observations about Franchise. 1) there seems to be an incredible amount of injuries after simming a couple of games. I went into the post-season in my first year facing the Falcons in the Wildcard round, and then looked at my lineup on field. Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot. It was a second string side. Looked into my Injury Report and it looked like a casualty list from D-Day. I kid you not there were 14 players on there, with only a couple not out for the rest of the playoffs. 2) to a lesser extent, a lot of my Franchise games were in the torrential rain. Almost all of them were wet, and it was bad enough with the Inconsistant Eli as QB, but when your receivers were slipping over when trying to make cuts and breaks it led to a lot of three and outs.

But - I do believe myself to be a glass-half-full guy - and I believe that the game will be great once League Manager starts.. however a half-baked game like this shouldnt need a fan-driven online community site to be great. Next year needs to be a hell of a lot better - but when I think of 2012, and the likelyhood of new console hardware being unveiled next year, I am reminded that the last great Madden was 2005.. the last year of the Xbox 1 version. I fear that next year's will be great, but we may have to go through this whole cycle of underachievement with Madden when the next generation of consoles are released..

How do you feel about the game now you have it in your hands?

Dan



ps - The commentary is just embarrassing. Forget PS2 era, this sounds like it was done in the PS1 era. Shocking.

The broken "scouting" if anyone is interested..

danvitale wrote:

The broken "scouting" if anyone is interested..

And if you're not, FUCK YOU!

What bugs me the most is as bad as commentary always is, the audio quality is inconsistent. One second its decent studio recorded, the next it sounds like they recorded over AM radio. Way to motivated me to move that commentary volume slider faster to 0 EA.

Yeah that bit is ultra BS. That whole part of the game is sloppy. It is PS1 era commentary. They might as well not bothered adding to it this year, it would have made things mildly acceptable..

That speech string about large gains -> safetys being left out on an island etc after a TD is even more infuriating.

Another tiny gripe (but it's these tiny complaints that build up to something bigger) is that the Giants LB Mark Herzlich's name id is obviously tagged wrong, as all of a sudden he's mentioned as Mark Ingram. Tiny things that build up. Ugh.