Madden 2005

[Ripper 0]

I'm glad they are working on the insane broken tackles from last year.

 

Any of the top RBs (Edge, Portis, Alexander or anyone with good ability to break a tackle) would get at LEAST 5 yards if not break it for 20+ due to at least 1-2 missed tackles.

wow...so basically you are saying you suck.

 

I gave up a TOTAL of 200 yards in a season using the falcons on all-madden mode. Broken tackles wasn't that big of a deal. I hope it doesn't return to the old days of "the guy kinda bumped you and you just collapse 3-4 yards of the field" crap that used to piss me off.

[converge241 0]

Ray Lewis, linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, will be featured on the cover to Madden NFL 2005

 

-MADDEN PLANET

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

So it will be a killer game then...

[Guest OctoberBlood]

Have you guys read about ESPN Football 2005 Xbox Live features?

 

"So now, not only will you be able to play in leagues and tournaments with friends, but you will also be able to make trades, track injuries, and even check out all of your stats and schedules on the Web. In fact, everything you can track in season mode you will also be able to track online. But it's the living rosters addition that will make hardcore fans smile. Trading players with friends is one thing, but then to actually see it incorporated into your league, that's the kind of online functionality gamers have been dreaming about."

 

It looks like I'll have to get both games this year. Arrgh. That is just sounds so amazingly cool, it's hard to resist.

[Guest GreatMuta]

Madden Franchise Update

 

They're basically making it like MVP Baseball with the players getting upset feature.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I can't sell out Madden...I can't. We don't even know what Madden will be doing this year.

EA "answers" back

 

Hmm.. nothing about the series fixing the gameplay aspect of the game. I like to have my Madden WITHOUT MVP-elements. Okay. EA you're making me buy ESPN this year.

Again... what is it about ESPN's gameplay that makes it so incredibly much better than Madden?

 

Oh, and the whole weekly soap opera thing looks more like a pain in the ass than a great new feature. Although I'm happy that they're going to replace the retarded news with a nice looking newspaper interface, with columns and actual audio interviews and stories that can happen in your franchise. Should make the game interesting. But if a player's conduct off the field starts affecting them on the field, I'm going to be pissed.

 

I remember I turned Ryan Leaf into an MVP, then turned Cade McNown into a great successor right after him.

[LaParkaMarka 0]

I can't sell out Madden...I can't. We don't even know what Madden will be doing this year.

EA "answers" back

 

Hmm.. nothing about the series fixing the gameplay aspect of the game. I like to have my Madden WITHOUT MVP-elements. Okay. EA you're making me buy ESPN this year.

Again... what is it about ESPN's gameplay that makes it so incredibly much better than Madden?

 

Oh, and the whole weekly soap opera thing looks more like a pain in the ass than a great new feature. Although I'm happy that they're going to replace the retarded news with a nice looking newspaper interface, with columns and actual audio interviews and stories that can happen in your franchise. Should make the game interesting. But if a player's conduct off the field starts affecting them on the field, I'm going to be pissed.

 

I remember I turned Ryan Leaf into an MVP, then turned Cade McNown into a great successor right after him.

I think that's actually a really neat feature. I was thinking ESPN was going to do something similar, since they had Playmakers and all. I think it will add a really interesting dynamic to the game, give you a reason to not want to sign TO or Keyshawn. Good for Madden.

 

Vitamin - Compare the running game between Madden and ESPN, maybe?

[Guest Vitamin X]

I guess I'm going to try out both games this year, I haven't played the ESPN Football 2k4, but I think I tried a demo and it sucked. It doesn't have the same speed of Madden. Though the thing that upsets me about Madden is sometimes it feels like playing the same fucking thing over and over again, it loses its fun after a bit.

 

I'm a big fan of ESPN NBA Basketball over NBA Live though, so if ESPN's football game is any better, I'd like to see it. But I'm a devoted Madden maniac since the infamous Philadelphia QB #7 days.

 

Even then I played with the Packers and the mighty Don Majkowski.

[MrRant 0]

I'm glad they are working on the insane broken tackles from last year.

 

Any of the top RBs (Edge, Portis, Alexander or anyone with good ability to break a tackle) would get at LEAST 5 yards if not break it for 20+ due to at least 1-2 missed tackles.

wow...so basically you are saying you suck.

 

I gave up a TOTAL of 200 yards in a season using the falcons on all-madden mode. Broken tackles wasn't that big of a deal. I hope it doesn't return to the old days of "the guy kinda bumped you and you just collapse 3-4 yards of the field" crap that used to piss me off.

No. I'm saying it's too damn easy for me. Morons the both of you.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

Ray Lewis, linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, will be featured on the cover to Madden NFL 2005

 

-MADDEN PLANET

Hmm. I think they picked the wrong Lewis.

 

Jamal's the one with legal troubles now so it would be easy to say the CURSE struck him if he gets suspended or something.

 

Ray Lewis is going to break the curse streak.

[Guest Flyboy]

Again... what is it about ESPN's gameplay that makes it so incredibly much better than Madden?

 

It's not arcadey football where as ESPN is actually real simulation.

 

Reports from E3 say that ESPN stole the show this year and bitchslapped Madden. Although, the sells might never show it, the tide is slowly beginning to turn.

 

Madden E3 Impressions from OperationSports.com's Fetter:

Gameplay is really hard to judge off of this built. Since clearly in what we got to play and see at E3 there was a major problem with the deep ball. We tried doing everything we could to see the QB just toss up a poor pass and they were still throwing accurate and fast. We were told by someone that spoke with the lead developer that this problem will only be in the lower difficulty levels, and if you're playing on All-Pro you'll not get away with anything like this, as well as the D will play a much smarter zone than what we got to see at E3 on the harder difficulty levels.

 

Franchise mode is somewhat adding a story mode this year. If players are unhappy about playing time they'll complain to your position coach, and you'll receive and E-mail from him. At that point you don't have to do anything about it, but if you don't the player's rating might drop. If the player keeps feeling like there is a problem he'll go contact the press and you could see this story popping up in the local or the national press. And eventually if things don't get better his rating will drop as well as he could demand a trade. All indications pointed to this being a lot of fun and a good addition to add some story to the franchise mode. You'll also get a Tony Bruno show each week where he'll talk about your previous game and take callers, so fans might call in talking about how amazing the team played, or just bashing you cause you couldn't get anything right in your big loss. There are suppose to be about 20,000 different stories that can come up, and it could also include your ticket sales dropping or fans being unhappy with you as an owner. One cool thing they added is that you can finally practice with your franchise team, so you'll have a practice mode with them, but I do not believe that practicing with them will increase their ratings in anyway, it should just allow you to get more comfortable with your team and try out plays you might other wise not wanna try in a game.

 

There will be online play, and tournaments. As far as leagues go, they're not talking about that right now. We asked every single EA guy we talked to hoping that someone might let something slip, but they were all tight lipped. From the sounds of things,I'm assuming they're gonna have online leagues, and that they haven't gotten all of that quite figured out yet and it's better to say we don't know, than say yes they'll be there, even if there's a 5% chance they won't. Again, that's just what I interpreted out of asking all of them over and over. "They're looking into the possibility of online leagues." At this point they don't seem to know or be willing to say much more about online play, but that announcement should come in June. Shawn did play a developer and I got nearly the whole thing on film, so that will be the Broncos vs. Chargers game I believe, where you can see what that'll look like, really it looks the same as multiplayer, but it says online in the bottom right corner and it has the replay or a shot of your guys in the huddle instead of the other persons playbook at the top (from what I can recall, but again you guys can see the videos soon hopefully). Not being able to notice much of a difference between online and multiplayer is a great thing since there didn't seem to be lag or slow down when I was watching the game.

 

Eddie noticed a slowdown on the PS2 version that would happen right after the snap, Shawn and other people always saw it, but people seemed to get in my way or I'd have my head turned every time that happened so I personally haven't seen it. Since it's only in the PS2 version I'd assume they'd have that fixed for release.

 

-The run blocking is still disappointing, and doesn't seem to have much change in this year’s build than in the past.

 

-Even on All-Pro QBs still should be able to rocket the ball as fast as ever if they're standing in the pocket, but on the run they said they'd changed that so it won't be nearly as effective.

 

-A very noticeable change to this years game is that now on Kickoffs the camera spins around when the kicker kicks off, instead of it happening when your reciever catches the ball. Shouldn't effect gameplay, but it'll be something everyone will see since it'll happen at least twice a game.

 

-I really didn't do much with the hit stick, so I can't answer questions on that part of the game.

 

ESPN E3 Impressions from OperationSports.com's Fetter:

 

Just as in the previous seasons ESPN NFL has taken it upon themselves to make more changes to their game than any other football game.

 

As far as graphics go, it's for the most part the same as last year. This years player models just have more detail, such as the mesh jerseys, the numbers and patches on the jersey were clearly thicker and have a different texture than the jerseys themselves. Grass still doesn't look very detailed it's just a greener turf. Fans look the same, although there are more cutscreens of them.

 

There are a few new replay camera's they've got the sky cam in the game, which really makes the replays look nice. Then also they will now cut to widescreen to show replays that gives them a more dramatic feel, pretty cool, I liked that. Another replay I saw was on a long TD run the camera was just sliding down the sideline with him while he was running which also looked very good. So again Sega is really trying to do all they can to push the limits with their presentation. In one game at Mile High Stadium they were showing the horse statue right before they came into the 3rd quarter. Virtual Berman's voice doesn't always match his lips moving, it's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I like it since it's too hard to make this look as realistic as everyone will want it to. There was no sideline Suzy that you could see, you could here her voice before the game or coming out of the half as she'd give a little bit of her thoughts or what she'd heard from the coaches.

 

The sound at this point was terrible, hopefully this is something that will be fixed, or maybe it was just because the sound effects were turned up and the commentary was turned down, but when the line hit each other it sounded like metal hitting metal. Sure this doesn't effect the gameplay, but it will distract from the overall experience until everyone just gets use to it and gets over it. Again, I'm hoping that's gonna be fixed.

 

In Gameplay the tackle problems seemed to be gone, you'd see a big run happen every few games, but I can't recall playing a single game, or even watching a game where there were two big runs broken by HB's in a game. Now when you get wrapped up there are times that the player indicator under you will highlight red and you can tap A to break out of it. Usually you ended up going down, or pushing for a few yards, but there were a couple of times that I was able to break out of the tackle, again it didn't seem like it was unrealistic, although it was weird to have to all of a sudden have to start tapping A. Because of this improved defense there were games I was watching being won 6-3, or even in once case 7-0 on a INT on the last play of the game ran back to win it at the end of regulation. Even though we were only playing 2 minute quarters you were seeing a lot less scoring going on making it more realistic, although there were a couple of times that I was able to put up around 30 points in that short time, but when that happened turnovers were generally a major cause the high score.

 

Catching seems to be much smoother, last year a lot of the time players would just get hit in the hands with the ball, or in some cases in the head with the ball. This year it looks like if you drop a ball you'll understand why, instead of being left with no controller because you just through yours through the wall out of frustration. Shawn felt that TE's can still catch the ball too well, I wasn't aware that was a problem in last years game, but playing this year I'm not sure I did see a TE drop many balls.

 

Running on the move seems to be much more difficult, I was playing someone who was the Falcons and he insisted on running all over with Vick and throwing deep and he threw at least 5 INTs. I saw him a lot at the booth and he kept doing the same thing, and most of the time he'd get the same result. So it looks like people will be rewarded for smart play.

 

Screen passes have been tuned down, now if you wanna complete a screen pass you’re gonna have to lob it up a bit, cause your HBs aren’t gonna catch too many of the harder passes while they’re running screen pass routes. This should again help to improve the D’s chance of keeping the offense out of the endzone.

 

There are some BIG HITS in the game, one play where Chambers went over the middle John Lynch put a hit on him that forced both Shawn and I to pick our jaws up off the floor. That was also one of the few times that the sound in the game was good. Next thing you see is Chambers dead on the field and the trainer on the field checking on him, sure enough he was injured.

 

Player fatigue has been dramatically changed, now if you run with Rich Gannon he's gonna be tired for the rest of the series even if he doesn't get hit. McNabb and Vick won't get quite as tired, but they'll be in the red for a couple of plays, this should do even more to get rid of people abusing running with the QB, but it has to be tuned down a little.

 

VIP seems pretty weak at least as far as playing celebrities, especially since the guys they got aren't A or even B list Celebs anyway but what you can do with the profile is cool. Now if you've played your friend it'll save his stats on your hard drive (if you have a PS2 for this to work you must have the hard drive) it'll take down how many times he puts people in motion, runs left, runs right, passes deep right, short left, and goes into incredible detail. So that you can now have the AI play with your friends profile so that it'll be like you're playing against your friend. This should help for people that really wanna beat Tcrouch, they can make that goal their life and practice until they can finally get within at least 3 TDs of him. We were not sure if it got as specific to actually often call plays they frequently called, but Eddie thinks that he did mention that will be in there, having the AI call plays out of his favorites section.

 

This years play calling menu is only slightly different, but one thing that is beautiful is that in single player (as well as online I imagine) you'll be able to see the replay or cut screens above your play calling box where an opponents playcalling menu would normally be. You'll also get a little box on the left that has a player picture and describes what just happened on the last play. It's a little thing, but it's very impressive looking.

 

The Crib is about 3 times the size, and you’ll be able to put your Lambardi Trophy in there, the trophy room is now upstairs. In the Crib you’ve got a red phone that’ll ring at times this is where you’ll get challenged by the Celebs. Apparently you’ll earn money or points to buy stuff for your crib, but they didn’t seem like they’ve decided on all the stuff you’ll be able to do in there just yet.

 

Online there will be custom playbooks, and each person will have their own camera view if that’s what they want, at least those are both true according to who we talked to. Also in your profile when you personalize endzone dances they said those will be online as you personalized as well.

 

Franchise mode is an area that they greatly beefed up. When I asked them what they’ve done to try to catch up to Madden in that area I felt they gave a great answer, which is along the lines of: Madden has a great franchise mode and there’s no way to get around that, but we’re not trying to do our franchise mode like Madden. So out of the idea of being original in their franchise mode 2k will now allow your coaches to allocate time during the week for training in order to improve, or possibly hurt your players rating if you over work them. You can choose your attitude for the week’s press conference and depending on the type of game, and your attitude it will actually effect your team. Some weeks it might be better to be confident, others upset, but this as well as practice allocated hours, and your attitude in the team meeting to grade how your team did in their previous game will all change your players attributes for their upcoming game. Also your players overall attributes will be able to get worse or improve depending on how you play.

 

The game has been greatly improved, and the good out weighs the bad by far, after that's said I'm this game could still ship with a few bugs still in the game. Most disappointing is that the audible before the snap bug, where you bring up the audible screen before the snap and press forward, that is still in the game. I believe Shawn is gonna try to contact them this week to make sure they're fully aware of this problem and see if they can get it out.

 

Other problems I saw was a OL running down a CB that picked off a pass in the endzone and took it back for a TD. He only caught me going into the endzone cause I was dancing, but still he shouldn’t have even been at the 30 by the time I made it to the endzone, at the time there was a Sega guy next to me and when I was complaining about that particular problem he told me to not worry and that the problem would definitely be gone by release. There was also a play that after David Boston caught a ball on a fly route the DB was still backpedaling, and then eventually just went into a stance to block. Hopefully they’ll get all of these out of the game since they still have time. But I’d be much more optimistic if they would have gotten that audible bug out of the game already.

 

I'm sure I can come up with more to talk about for this game, but at this point it's probably just better I throw this novel up here and try to answer some questions.

 

 

---Added---

One other small but awesome thing, is we saw a bobbled snap on a FG. The holder bobbled the snap, and the kick came out wobbling. If it has been a longer field goal it might have gone wide cause it was fading left.

 

I'll let you be the judge.

[MrRant 0]

You know I'm down with ESPN n*gga.

[Guest Flyboy]

You know I'm down with ESPN nigger.

With this VIP feature, I'm tempted to hook up my Xbox Live -- but, nah. Not yet anyway.

[MrRant 0]

You should man. It would be fun.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Is Madden going to be Live yet? If it is... Damn I think this year I'm going to try both of them out, maybe give ESPN an actual shot at becoming the first game since NFL QB Club way way back in the day to be the game to play on my `box.

[Red Baron 0]

Many 2005 EA Games will be going on to live (including Madden). I don't know what the specifics of Madden will be online, but so far it will have to be pretty good to compete with ESPN version.

 

I expect many people will buy it and play it online, but I do think that if EA doesn't make the online user friendly, and make it un-interesting, it could hurt the series even more.

[Red Baron 0]

With Gameplay,I really don't like Madden reffing. It seems like every running play I do, I get nailed for holding, unless its a 3 or less yard carry.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I have gotten FUCKED on some ref calls and I challenge them and the play STANDS on top of it all. This happens especially with fumbles and catches for touchdowns. Oh and real bad with ball-spotting but it took me a little bit to figure out from 2001 on forward that the spot the animation originally takes place at is where the ball is placed. I've had plenty an animation go and stop the guy RIGHT at the first down line, only to push him back knock him behind the line, yet have it be called a first down anyway.

 

If ESPN doesn't pull that animation bullshit and can pull together the franchise mode enough to make me happy (Owner mode isn't that great, I just have fun enough drafting new players and making new stars.. I especially love moving the Cards to LA and making them winners.)

[LaParkaMarka 0]

If ESPN doesn't pull that animation bullshit and can pull together the franchise mode enough to make me happy (Owner mode isn't that great, I just have fun enough drafting new players and making new stars.. I especially love moving the Cards to LA and making them winners.)

Sometimes the ESPN animations can be really annoyng, like making a rolling catch inbounds yet the refs call it out, or the "wrap and roll" tackle that gives the runner an extra 3-4 yards. Hopefully that will get fixed for this year.

 

Other than those two though, the animations are excellent...if your player busts through a tackle or two and gets dragged down just past the marker, you'll get the first down. It's a fun system, outside of the two flawed animations.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Do they have something where you can rebuild a franchise and give them a new image like Madden? Because that's part of the whole appeal for me is making chumps into champs. Not taking over Green Bay and dominating every single year, because that's what used to happen with me in the Madden games before the Franchise/Create-A-Team came along.

[Agent_Bond34 0]

It's a fun system, outside of the two flawed animations.

There is another flaw, that you may not know about.

 

Look closer on some passing plays via instant replay, and you'll notice the ball being thrown rather awkwardly.

 

Doesn't affect the game for me at all, it's just a flaw that looks funny.

[Guest Flyboy]

Do they have something where you can rebuild a franchise and give them a new image like Madden?

No, thankfully. Owner Mode is so overrated I won't even start on it.

[Guest The Winter Of My Discontent]

Do they have something where you can rebuild a franchise and give them a new image like Madden?

No, thankfully. Owner Mode is so overrated I won't even start on it.

Don't be a bitch.

 

Ha

 

But seriously, owner mode was fairly boss but it ultimately is useless. One doesn't need to do anything except win to have a good franchise. There should be other important variables one should be forced to adjust to make their franchise better than another.

[LaParkaMarka 0]

Do they have something where you can rebuild a franchise and give them a new image like Madden?

No, thankfully. Owner Mode is so overrated I won't even start on it.

You can replace any franchise with a created one in franchise mode. I'd usually kill a team like the Texans and replace them with a Vancouver team, then fantasy draft. Another problem with ESPN was that some teams drafted atrociously. I remember Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Trent Green all drafted to the same team which left massive holes in every other key position. It was a bit easy to get a very good team by taking excellent third stringers from teams that overdrafted a position. It was a bit more fun taking over a team like San Diego and try to go undefeated.

[Guest Flyboy]

I'll guess I'll be nice and post new Madden features:

 

Link

 

Have a ball.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

One thing I don't currently like about owner mode is that, being the Steelers, I'm being told that my attendance is only 80 percent -- despite getting to the AFC Championship game in Year 1...

[Guest Vitamin X]

Do they have something where you can rebuild a franchise and give them a new image like Madden?

No, thankfully. Owner Mode is so overrated I won't even start on it.

You can replace any franchise with a created one in franchise mode. I'd usually kill a team like the Texans and replace them with a Vancouver team, then fantasy draft. Another problem with ESPN was that some teams drafted atrociously. I remember Brett Favre, Tom Brady, and Trent Green all drafted to the same team which left massive holes in every other key position. It was a bit easy to get a very good team by taking excellent third stringers from teams that overdrafted a position. It was a bit more fun taking over a team like San Diego and try to go undefeated.

This is actually more like what I was talking about. I too think Owner mode is overrated, all the micromanagement has me fucking nuts. I do love designing my own stadium though, and moving teams around and whatnot, I just don't like setting prices and worrying about my team's income for the year or whatever.

 

I really love the fact they are going to put faces on the rookies now using blends from the current players in ESPN, but I have to see if the story mode is more fun with Madden. I really hate the whole "Crib" feature, like what the fuck? Who cares about that shit? I'd rather have things that would actually affect the game and the way my season and team is run, which is in part why Owner mode was kind of cool.

 

One more thing about ESPN's gameplay... It doesn't have that annoying "stick to the blocker" sort-of-bug Madden has does it? Defensive minds know what I'm talking about when you're trying to rush the passer andyou're getting blocked, suddenly the guy you're trying to tackle has moved to the left, right, or behind you and you can't disengage the block (I'd call it holding but whatever) at ALL?

 

This year is going to be tough to decide, that seems like a lot of new features especially on the defensive side on the ball for Madden and in the presentation aspect for ESPN...

[Guest Flyboy]

You should man. It would be fun.

We'll see. If I can get at least an average job this summer I'll see about saving up for a router and some payments on Xbox Live. It's not a top priority, but merely an idea.

[iggymcfly 0]

I only played ESPN once and I didn't like it, but the one thing that I'd really like to see fixed for Madden is every other damn interception getting run back for a touchdown. It kind of takes away from building drives when half the points are scored on interception returns.

[Perfxion 0]

Last game in Madden I played I scored 48 alone in INTs and Punt Returns. it is too easy, to make any stats build on offense, you have to run into a defender and force a tackle.

 

Madden is just too easy to go long for a touch down. Play with either a Vick like player or a Moss like player, no team can stop you.