As I had foretold, I was able to get my hands on a copy of Madden (PS3) after work. I didn't get to play a whole lot, but I did try my hand at a few of the modes, the Madden Moments in particular.
One of the big changes to this year's edition is the Madden IQ. It is the way Madden will now track your skill level in the game. By default, it starts at 500. You can adjust it immediately by undergoing the Madden IQ Test. It will also automatically adjust through playing the game. I skipped the test for the moment so I started out with the base score.
I went straight into a game with the still-Pennington led Jets against the Dolphins. There's something new here - the fins were labeled as rivals. I don't know quite what this means yet but the loading screens leading to the game pointed out highlets from Jets-Dolphins games from the past. Pretty cool, I thought.
It's hard to judge exactly how much has changed in the actual gameplay when I haven't touched last year's Madden for at least four or five months. The new animation system is apparent and it looks good. I need to look in the manual to really see if any of the underlying commands and options have changed. I was able to play it just fine (well, I won at any rate) just off my memory of the standard control set.
When I say I won, I mean that barely. After holding the Dolphins scoreless in the first half (10-0 Jets at home), I threw a bad interception and then couldn't convert a long drive and then let the Dolphins score a late touchdown so that they had the lead, 14-10, with less than a minute remaining. However, I refused to lose this game. I drove down and scored the winning touchdown on a four yard pass to Chris Baker with literally zero time on the clock. J - E - T - S! Savouring my victory, I watched my Madden IQ actually drop a few points. Great, Madden thinks I'm an idiot. I could see this feature being rage inducing- no one likes being told their dumb, even if it's only Madden dumb.
After that embarrassment, I went in to play some Moments.
This is not so much a new feature as a rebranding of an older feature (I forget the name) that's been in past games. Basically, you are given a situation from a real game and are tasked with either repeating (or bettering) the real outcome or avoiding it. Most of them re-enact a last drive in either the fourth quarter or overtime. All of the moments I played so far were offense only except one in which you played both sides of the ball. They're quick, fun, and addictive.
In addition to the mini-games of the last couple of years, there's a virtual training option that is the practice version of the Madden IQ tests. I played around with that a bit. I haven't touched the other modes yet.
All this told, I only played a bit of the game. My intitial thought is that it's Madden. Since I like Madden, this is fine by me. Maybe I haven't played enough yet but I haven't seen anything beyond incremental changes. There is nothing revolutionary about this year's version (that I've seen so far). I'm not sure this is the year Madden finally shuts up the 2k-fans.
One last note on the presentation: it's still not as good as the 2k games. Still. New commentary by Chris Collinsworth and some other guy are wooden. Madden's halftime intros are weak. I had hoped much better from the changes in this arena but it didn't happen. Maybe next year.
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