Walking into a franchise many years after it has already been established is, I find, like walking into a cinema once the film has started. For all you know you could have literally just missed the opening credits and therefore missed nothing or the first important plot point could have come and gone and you’d be none the wiser. Either way, you sit there wondering how on earth they got to the point you see before you and what have you missed?
That is exactly how I currently feel with Madden 10, my first foray into the world of virtual American Football. The series started way back in the mid-nineties and as it has evolved from the SNES through to the current highly powered generation I’ve sat on the sidelines and never quite had the courage to tackle it head on. Despite knowing a reasonable amount on the American’s interpretation on “football”, the thought of heading up a team always intimidated me. I could tell you exactly what a “tight end” was and inform you that you’d lose five yards for being caught offside but to me the intricacies of formations, hot routes and audibles are all merely words commentators say to fill air time.
Unfortunately my worst fears were realised extremely early on. Rudimentary tutorials are found in the depths of this year’s Madden and start you on the road to stardom, teaching passing, running and tackling. However, they are extremely basic and each skill is sadly kept in isolation. Once those three core skills are mastered the only progression is to an actual game, and from running against a single defensive tackler in a virtual reality situation to a full-on game situation is a marked leap. On top of your trio of newly found skills you must quick adapt to calling plays, watching the clock and discerning useful information from a screen that suddenly contains 22 angry men in a hive of activity.
The learning curve I experienced in my first hour of play was brutal. There are practise grounds where the more tactically minded can retreat to run plays but the help offered to new players is veneer deep. The tutorials on offer are almost on par with sending my wife out to play in the Premiership once I’ve taught her how to pass with the side of her foot and shoot with the top of it; there is no intermediate level that explains all the small details that go together to make the whole package, such as just what all the coloured lines on the play diagrams mean.
Having experienced EA sports games before, however, I knew that there may be hope in the lashing of options that come with each one of their highly polished titles. Sure enough, nestled in amongst camera and injury, there sat a customisable series of difficulty settings. Praise must be given where it’s deserved and the customisable nature of Madden’s difficulty is above and beyond what I have seen in FIFA. In addition to the standard easy/medium/hard, masquerading under suitably sporty related synonyms,
there is the ability to scale each aspect of the game. Should you be amazing of offence but lacking in defensive nouse, each can be set separately to give you an appropriate challenge.
Having also been given 64 separate passing plays to choose from on my previous drive I leapt on the option that reduced my tactical options. Those au fait with shotgun formations can continue to choose their favourite flavour but an intermediate coaching role allowed me to reduce things down to a more simple level; passing was cut back to merely short, medium or long, whilst running was concentrated into left, middle or right. Given that a team has but 30 seconds to get the ball in motion at the end of each play, the fact that I no longer had to flick through page after page of baffling play diagrams reduced my delay of game penalties dramatically.
With both of those scaled back, I headed back out onto the field and, thankfully, into a much changed experience. Facing a weakened defence, I was now finding that ever other pass was no longer being intercepted and I had time and space to experiment. With the pressure reduced I began to learn the timing needed to connect with my receivers and just how my running backs should run their routes. The greatly reduced play options helped considerably, too, especially when defending as there is definitely a thing as too many options.
Moving forward down the field is where most of the enjoyment comes from. Picking your plays as you try and steal another 10 yards, whether it be from running through your opponents or hurling the ball over them. As in the real game, your selections need to be sensible; it’s not good attempting to throw a 60 yard touchdown pass each play as before long you’ll either fail to make your downs or be intercepted. I found great success slowly picking up the yardage by varying plays and trying to keep the defence on its toes.
There are times, however, where you feel that the computer is cheating, especially when it comes to running plays. I’ve had runners tackled from out of no where, the tackler literally warping to where the machine obviously thinks he should be and I’m brought down before any evasive action can be taken. Passing is not quite as controversial as generally you know when you’ve either thrown badly or simply made the wrong choice of receiver.
Actually playing the defensive side is a somewhat mixed bag. For the most of it you play one eleventh of the defensive effort and so your part is minor, but should you pick to play as one of the corner backs tracking a wide receiver then there is the chance to do great things. The greatest exhilarations I have received from Madden to date have been all from interceptions where I have followed the receiver foot by foot and then out jumped him to bring down the ball.
If that sounds a little too much responsibility, for if you miss then they’re dancing through into your end zone, the defence can be left to its own devices. Not moving your highlighted player will allow the AI to take him over, too, letting you blame someone else should things go awry.
Since relieving myself of the default options, which obviously exist for those who have bought each and every iteration, the game has switched from being a series of disappointing grinds to a much more rewarding experience. The tailored difficulty has allowed my to slowly creep myself forward, ensuring that as I progress I can edge the AI forward too to push me further.
Even in defeat there are still drives and plays that have me reliving the game in my head long after it’s over. Playing a hurry up offense that’s 7 points down with only a minute to go whilst constantly trying to hit the sidelines to stop the clock, or that interception that I ran back half the length of the pitch breaking a trio of tackles in the process.
Whilst I may have given up on previous games–Alone in the Dark being the most recent and notable–for horrendous controls or just unapproachable mechanics, I have been very happy that I stuck with Madden to break past that initial hump. It may not be as flowing as FIFA but it definitely has a quality that makes me want to hone my skills to throw a perfect game and lead my 49ers to the Super Bowl. Of course that could be the source of my trouble; I’ve chosen a period of time where my chosen team are one of the lowest rated in the league.
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, drumming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife fits in.
Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer. "
2 Comments
The problem with Madden in the UK is probably analagous to what would happen if you put a rugby game into the US. I played American Football for a few years, and the amount of improvement that it brings to Madden is quite surprising.
Madden is still obviously a game version of a sport, but just knowing when to move from a Dime to Nickel formation is quite handy. Football is basically Angry Chess and tactics like throwing to the sideline aren’t always obvious.
The amount of implied knowledge in any Madden title is staggering at this point. True enough, most of it is the complexity of the game itself, but EA could seriously do with some extra mode for us Europeans to fill that gap after the basics.
Even something outside of the game would be good, an acompanying website or booklet to ease players in. After all, the more people playing it, the more chance they have of hooking friends in–and you’d think with Peter Moore in charge he’d be accutely aware of the need.