Madden NFL 10

Review from Starks, Starks, Starks, Starks and Starks - Tuesday, 13 October 2009 @ 4:20pm

When reflecting on Madden 08, I walked away with a fairly happy gaming experience. I enjoyed my first foray into NFL, and so when Yug called me up the other week I was only too happy to take Madden 2010 off his hands. The conversation went something like this:

Yug: Starks, baby! Rewmmph meh of.

I kid you not, Yug calls people ‘baby’ these days. I tend to think he’s been hanging around Gay Tony too much. Or Austin Powers. Actually, I do see a likeness between him and the famous Mike Myers character.

Yug Powers!

Me: Err, what?

Yug: Mrmhph er beh trubble.

Me: Yug, are you trying to drink and talk again?

*slurping sound*

*choking sound*

Yug: Ahhhhhh. Man, hit the spot.

Me: Coca-cola?

Yug: With a splash of bourbon.

Me: Mate, it’s not even 10am here.

Yug: It’s 12pm somewhere in the world baby! So look, do you want to review Madden 10 for me?

Me: Matt sent me that last week.

Yug: Oh good! See Matt sent it to you because he knew you’d do it. Not because I forgot to check.

Me: Sure thing. It’ll be done soon.

Yug: Great thanks. Hey, you think you could give me a lift home? I’m not really sure where I am right now. I think I’m in Brisbane, but if you could come find me that’d be great. Cheers.

Me: I’m in Sydney right now, it’s a bit of a trek to Brisbane.

Yug: Oh, I’m in Sydney? Well if you could give me a lift to the airport that’s fine. Now, where’s that bourbon bottle?

* May or may not have been a fictional conversation.

Anyways, Yug being the awesome dude that he is asked me to do it, and I very happily obliged.

So popping in the game, I was greeted with the menu screen. Differing quite a lot from the Madden 08, it seemed… more streamlined? It was about this point I pulled out my Madden 08 copy and stuck it into my friends 360 and played side by side. There were a number of initial improvements that appear to be made. The Online Franchise is probably the first that I saw. Allowing a more ‘real-life, real-game’ feel by giving you real NFL scheduling updates, message boards etc, I thought this was a relatively good option. It gives the player more access to live, up to date information that mimics the real NFL season. Tick!

After starting up one of the games, and picking my trusty Miami Dolphins, set into the season. The ability to pick a team that hasn’t won an NFL Superbowl since 1973 is, in my humble opinion, akin to supporting the St George Dragons – Entirely frustrating and yet you just can’t stop waving the banner with pride. It’s the sort of insanity that you can embrace; the consistent belief that you will get a different result despite the football team performing the same year in, year out.

I thought we were playing frisbee, not NFL!

In my first game, I must admit that I noticed quite a few of the new features. The Pro-Tak springs immediately to mind. This feature is basically the ‘gang-bangtackle’ you often see in a game of American Football. In essence, it’s a gigantic ‘stacks on’ as the opposition team seeks to damage the tackled player by piling as many people on to him as possible.

The second thing I noticed immediately as well was the speed of the game. Slowing down the game speed seems to give the game a more ‘slo-mo’ approach. I’m not so sure if this is a good or a bad thing. One of Madden 08’s attractions, for me anyway, was the pace. Madden 10 seems slow by comparison. I’m not so sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

A new feature I discovered after a few games, and had me baffled until I read the manual (Yes, guys do sometimes read manuals when they have NFI why things keep going wrong) is what EA calls ‘Fight for the Fumble’. In essence, when the ball hits the ground it is called a fumble in American Football. And of course, like that Mexican sport gAyFL, the natural reaction for men is to jump on the fumble. The best manner to represent that, of course, is to have a button bash for the ball. Makes sense, right?

Generally speaking, the game seemed to play more… realistically. After playing several 08 vs 10 games, I came to the conclusion that the players in Madden 10 did seem to act more human, Quarterbacks seem to throw and move more naturally. Momentum for players seems to be more accurate, and all the supporting dudes running around on the field seem to run angles and paths that mimic those in the NFL.

Stacks on!!

The one exception to all this is break away plays. And this is where I just shook my head. A breakaway is a play where the guy with the ball runs most of the way through the field. Generally speaking, there’s a safety, or fullback, who sits in anticipation of this play. On a few occasions I made a breakaway, and had a player running blocker for me, I would think to myself ‘Sweet, touchdown in the making.’ At this point, my player running blocker would then do a 180 and block some guy chasing behind me who was never going to catch me, leaving me unprotected and easy pickings for the safety. This happened a few times, actually. I wasn’t impressed.

One thing that began to bug me the most were the in-game cut scenes. Quite often the game would cut to a referee who was picking his nose, some other trainer giving a rub down to an injured player or the referee’s who’d often convene to chat about last night’s Desperate Housewife’s episode. Frankly, the game reminded more and more how painful it was watching an NFL game on TV. If EA were looking to try and make it more realistic in that manner, they definitely succeeded, but at the detriment to the flow of the game.

An additional feature added for the season mode was what is called ‘The Extra Point’, which is an in-game TV show based on the highlights of the games that round. I actually found this both cool and not so cool. The first few times I saw it, I thought ‘Hey, this is cool. Makes it seem like you’re watching the TV highlights’. After the 4th or 5th viewing, I was wanting to skip it each go and get on with the game as, frankly, the commentators just didn’t offer enough variety to make it worth watching.

After playing through most of a season, I started to notice a few detracting points from the game. Namely, how easily injured your players get. Now, whilst I am aware that stuff like this goes on in a game of American Football:

But honestly, if you went by the injury rate in the game, you’d think the padding and helmet they were wearing was made of paper.

The biggest issue I had was how po0or the camera angles in the game are. They’re horrible. Absolutely shocking. They’re worst than Channel 9’s coverage of any sport on TV bar the cricket (And they sometimes screw that up too!) It’s not often that I get camera sick, but this game made me feel ill with the camera angles just due to how close to the action it was.

All in all, Madden 10 is an enjoyable game. Owners of other Maddens encounter the same problem they do every year; Are the new features enough of an improvement to trade up or do I spend the $100 on another title? This isn’t a question I can really answer for you. A piece of advice I can give you, though, is never, ever pat the customs dog at New Zealand Airport. It simply isn’t worth the additional half hour of questioning the New Zealand Fed Police will give you.

STATUE OF LIBERTY!

Pros

Accurate and entertaining electronic version of NFL; great new online features; very realistic to player movements.

Cons

Crappy cut scenes detract from the game; AI can be too stupid or too smart, which is just plain confusing; camera angles induce nausea.