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By Mark D, September 9, 2012 7:34 am

The latest incarnation of Madden saw the absolute gutting of one of the most popular features, franchise mode. That EA would destroy something considered one of the core aspects of the Madden game, shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following the series. The reality is that Madden doesn’t like giving you the ability to edit rosters, or play multiple seasons on the same copy. They want you to sim and re-sim the one season they give you, and that’s it.  Otherwise you might not have a reason to pick up the next years roster update version of the game.

Madden had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add a franchise mode to the game. Since at the time they were actually trying to get PC sales of the game too, they had to respond to the success/critical acclaim of Dynamix’s Front Page Sports Football.  The game had not just a franchise mode, but allowed you to edit just about everything you could think of. It would allow you to setup anything from a 4 to 32 team league.  That there are still people playing FPS Football online today should tell you of the high esteem it’s held in.

But that’s part of the problem for EA. If people like a version of a game and can edit stuff, why are they going to buy the next edition? It doesn’t matter that for some reason people are sheep and buy Madden year after year. Seemingly with the game making hardly any year to year changes. You would think that Madden losing a monopoly lawsuit would turn them off to some people, but the Madden series is able to just keep trucking.

The sad thing is that as long as EA controls the rights to the NFL, there’s not much anyone can do about it. Most people agree that NFL 2K5 (Sega’s last release) was better then Madden at a cheaper launch price. The last 3-4 years though it seems there is something that upsets fans of the Madden series. Big changes that are relatively hidden under good PR from EA. Stuff that will be forgotten next year when the “latest and greatest” from the Madden series comes out. All the reviewers will give it huge ratings and promise you that THIS is the Madden that will solve all the previous problems.

Just talking about it makes me want to download Front Page Sports and give it another run through. It’s been years, but I remember how much fun I had printing out all the player ratings (and this was before the Overall Stat) and debating what was better to add to my roster. I would sim games instead of coaching them, so I had to draft well. It’s probably sad on some level that some of my favorite childhood memories are from the video games I played.

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By Mark D, April 10, 2012 12:52 pm

Just a tad bit of background here, Andre The Giant was one of my favorite wrestlers when I was little. So this was something that interested me back in the day. I remember a friend telling me to watch WCW for “The Giant” because at the time WCW was promoting him as being Andre’s son without saying as much. But I was able to check online and find out in a few seconds that he wasn’t really related to Andre at all. Other then being a freakishly sized human being.

So in the late 90s WCW Vs The World came out, and me and my buddies grabbed it like all Wrestling games and played the hell out of it. I ended up playing it enough to unlock all the secret wrestlers, including one who was named “The Giant”. Of course he didn’t look anything like WCW’s The Giant unless he had grown a magical Afro at some point. Originally the game was released in Japan (without WCW wrestlers) and the wrestler was Andre The Giant. When it was imported they just called him The Giant and renamed a bunch of other Japaneses wrestlers due to copyright.

Now WCW made a mistake and switched game developers, getting picked up by EA. So the people who made WCW Vs The World were picked up by the WWF to start working on their video games. Which was pretty much a god send for the WWF games, considering Acclaim who were doing the WWF games continued to release the same game with minimal changes for the next 5 or 6 games. Have fun trying to pull off a Stone Cold Stunner when it requires you to hit 7 different buttons in a precise order. Mortal Kombat styled wrestling games were a brilliant idea.

So 2 or 3 games in, and they are working on the great No Mercy for the N64. Probably one of my all time favorite N64 games.  Well just about when the game was done with development, word came from the WWF that Big Show (aka The Giant in WCW) was demoted to the OVW roster. So they had to remove him from the game. Since it was so late in development, they just decided to turn Big Show into Andre The Giant. Thus the Andre/Big Show replacement came full circle. I don’t know why this amuses me, but it does.

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By Mark D, September 13, 2011 12:08 am

You might wonder why I’m talking about a game that’s over 3 years old and that I paid all of 6 bucks for. Well it still annoys me when sports games get stuff wrong. This game just hits a lot of points that will eventually push anyone playing it over the edge. I’ve found I can only play 2-3 games in a sitting due to the frustration. But I must finish things so that Dipietro can win a half dozen awards along with the Stanley Cup, and that Mike Comrie can be in the race for the Hart Trophy.

So what to start with? Expect to almost never score unless there is an awful goalie in net, and most starting goalies are rated too highly. This is another game that almost totally relies on your ability to convert one timers to actually score. The dings of hitting posts in 30+ shot games will start to haunt your dreams. To make matters even worse, when you get higher up on the difficulty, the computer becomes an expert at breaking up any passes in their defensive zone. Oh and it also gets really good at clearing the crease with some questionable interference level hits. So the few times the puck does reach where you are aiming, expect the puck to go through the space that used to contain the player.

To top it off, on higher levels the AI has quite the amazing ability to use three players to pin you in the zone, while your players have an amazing inability to get open. It gets even more fun when the AI breaks out, as the AI will eternally skate right up the middle, outskating your defensemen who are skating backwards. So your defense will proceed to turn around, but have no momentum, giving the AI a breakaway on nearly every turnover. You know how I mentioned that on the higher difficulty the AI is good at intercepting passes and clearing the crease? Expect the opposite from your AI defensemen.

You can also just about throw the ratings out the window. 2K seems to have decided that difficulty should mean a change of speed. As an example, on the Islanders my two fastest players are Milan Hejduk and Miroslav Satan. Yet as soon as I upped the difficulty, it’s impossible for those two to out skate ANYONE. I can pound on the speedburst button and maybe, maybe I’ll beat someone for long enough that they won’t stickpoke the puck away at maximum reach when I run out of steam. Also on offense, to get anything going you have to screw with the AI by stopping, doing a circle and then looking for someone open. Stopping causes the AI’s momentum to carry them forward for another step or two, and since your players are going to be slow, they’ll be open for a split second.

The hitting system is another joke. I can play as Bruno Gervais and destroy people, as long as I’ve got a head of steam going. Sure I’ve seen smaller guys bounce off bigger guys, but usually only when they don’t have a head of steam. There’s almost no reason to stick poke when its far easier to knock someone off the puck. What not to expect is some actual forechecking from your teammates. The second the puck is on the stick of an opposing player, your players will give up the zone without a fight. So if you amazingly manage to intercept the puck or take it back, expect to get beat down in a 4 on 1 situation as your players slowly make their way back to the zone.

I shouldn’t have the game on the second highest difficulty, have injuries to 4 of my top 6 forwards and still be winning 90% of the time. At one point my top line was Hejduk-Park-Hunter. Just to give you an idea of how many injuries that is, Richard Park is my 4th line center, and Petteri Nokelainen (who had 16 points in 60 AHL games in 07 which the ratings are based on) was my 2nd line center and 2nd PP Center with the callup from Bridgeport. If you remember Nokelainen at all, you know he should be nowhere near the NHL. Although he didn’t do it well, he still was good enough to be able to cover Crosby.

I am so sick and tired of sports games cheating in order to increase the difficulty. That’s one of the main reasons I am ranting about a near 3 year old game. I remember playing games of Madden in which I ground and pounded it for 3 quarters, had complete control of the game and a 14-0 lead. Suddenly everything would start going wrong and no matter how many people I threw into coverage, the AI would complete every pass. No matter how many blitzes I threw at the AI it always got the ball away just in time. It’s the same complaint here, difficulty shouldn’t mean having to cheat the system and that’s the biggest sin NHL 2K8 commits.

Also I should mention this is from me playing the PS2 version of the game.

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By Mark D, July 6, 2011 12:27 am

I hate EA, I really do. For any sports game in which they have to face real competition, they do try. But for the NHL and NFL, they seem to be sitting on their laurels. The Madden series is just getting around to adding some of the better features of NFL2K, a game series that has been mothballing since 05. In the NHL series they made the decision years to stop producing a computer version because of the ability to mod the game and allow you to keep playing the old game with new rosters. I remember how early NHL and NFL games from EA wouldn’t let you even trade players.

So here’s the EA NHL 12 Producer Video, and it’s time to nitpick a bit:

First off on the “ALL NEW FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER” Goalie Fights, this is Footage from NHL 04. That’s right, 7 years ago:

Hey though, how about Glass Shattering Hits? Which existed in NHL 09 but were so poorly implemented that the wrong glass would shatter:

or

Quality work there EA, wonder how that slipped by?

Another point they make is players losing their helmets from big hits. You know it was a feature from another series, NHL Hitz (goals could reflect in off of loose helmets on the ice) which has been mothballed since 2003.

At the end of the day, EA seems to care more about updating graphics then putting out a competent NHL game. Since the move away from 2D players, games have struggled to replicate hockey play. Too often a game seems to put an over emphasis on one facet of the game or another, making it easy to beat up on the AI. For example NHL 99 seemed to love the stick poke, which would strip any player of the puck regardless of who it was. I used this to my advantage as Team Italy (with Jason Muzzati in net) in the World Tourney the game had, winning gold by defeating Team Canada. I did this multiple times, as the Italian players were commonly too slow to break out of the zone, but the stick poke kept Canada from getting deep enough to get off good scoring chances.

If you have ever seen the game live, you’d understand that even watching it from TV does not compare. While you can get the feel for most sports by watching from Home, hockey transcends that. Playing the NHL games, while they look nice, have the same problem. The incredible speed, the positioning of players, the way goalies can bend and twist to make desperation saves, just can’t be captured yet. In the end I’d expect more of what we’ve seen, occasional Oh Wow moments to go along with a lot of head scratching moments.

I’ve said it for Madden, and will say it about most sports games. They need to stop making yearly releases. Make them bi-annual and give people more upgrades for their buck. For the in-between years release a 20-30 dollar expansion pack which is all the updated rosters, head coaching changes and what not. EA needs to stop gouging the fans, they are going to revolt at some point. Oh and stop lying to us when you remove a feature and put it back in.

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By Mark D, April 13, 2011 8:00 pm

EA’s NHL 99, back when I used to buy the yearly release of the NHL series, suckered me in pretty well with this promise:

In NHL 99, Marc Crawford sat down with the development team and helped divide expansive checking ratings. Using this system, certain players will have an easier time moving the opposition to a certain side, while offensive forwards will be better neutral-ice checkers. Also, Marc Crawford guest stars in a brand new feature: Marc Crawford Coaching Drills. Here, you will be able to practice checking, passing, odd-man rushes, and other hockey fundamentals.

That’s right, the one, the only Marc Crawford sat down with the game developers for NHL 99 and made sure they got things right. At the time Crawford was the brightest star in the coaching galaxy. He had taken over the Nordiques in the strike shortened season and proceeded to lead them to not just a Stanley Cup, but being one of the elite teams of the era in the West. Although in retrospect some might point out that the team was absolutely stacked beyond belief and in Crawford’s 12 seasons since leading the Avs to back to back 100 point seasons he has only gotten beyond the first round once.

So it kinda sucked after a handful of games I had figured out the system. Which unsurprisingly has been the system in almost every NHL related game. First off, shooting is almost always useless. You will almost never score a goal with a slap shot unless the goalie is awful. Or if the CPU was desperately trying to make the game close. The other big thing is that it was never worth it to throw a check, the AI always dodged checks and took advantage. But every stick poke would knock pucks loose.

The AI was so bad that 3 days after I bought it I was able to defeat Team Canada with Team Italy on the hardest mode 5-2. That also included me out shooting Team canada 62-11 in a game that had 5 minute periods. The game was so awful that the only thing which was fun was playing the Olympics as Team Italy and winning them the gold. Otherwise since the NHL teams are so close (having almost all ratings between 70-90) that stickpoking, never checking and one timers was always the key to victory. I remember being disgusted just a week or two after buying it. The AI sucked and apparently having Marc Crawford (who wasn’t coaching at the time) didn’t help.

Thankfully it seems like places are less and less likely to bring in a big name to “help” develop a game. Madden hasn’t had anything to do with the Madden series in about 20 years now. Even his big addition was kind of idiotic. He complained that it wasn’t football without 11 players. Apparently he couldn’t wrap his big fat head around the idea that processors at the time couldn’t handle creating that many sprites. Personally I think some of the best football games are the ones that cut down the number of players on the field. I used to love the NFL Blitz games.

I always remember though reading through the manual and cursing at every image of Marc Crawford in it for fooling me into buying a crappy game. I was already uneasy about NHL 99, but I figured the brilliant Marc Crawford had to have helped fix some of the problems. In the end he probably just got a check, hung out and got treated like a superstar by the NHL 99 team and added almost nothing to the actual game.