Tag: NFL Gaming

Madden – Preparing For The Super Bowl Hype Machine

The majority of traffic to NoobTubeTV over the past year has been for information on all things ‘Madden’.  This year will be interesting if you consider the release of the XBox 720 (or whatever they will call it) to be on the top of your anticipation list.  Regardless of what you are looking forward to in football gaming this year, Madden is most likely on the top of your list.

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Madden 13 is a game that came out of the gates strong with some new direction to Franchise Mode with the new Connected Careers Mode.  Some gamers hated this move and the direction of earning XP for players through on field production.  Other gamers enjoyed this new move for realism in player growth during CCM.  Either way you fall on this argument you will notice that it was always part of the hype machine after the Madden 12 cycle finished with the Super Bowl.

With the Super Bowl (and the new Madden Release Date announcement) only a few weeks away you should be fully prepared for the onslaught of Madden hype from EA Sports.

Some of the hopes for improvement in Madden 14 are –

  1. More customization of playbooks and depth charts/players – CCM cut off a lot of user creativity as it all but removed player editing and roster editing from the mode.
  2. Better OLine and DLine Interaction – This is something that is called for and demanded by the Madden community every year.  EA supposedly made this better by using the strength ratings in Madden 13, but given the constant issues with defensive linemen not getting proper sack numbers and the strange ‘Pancake Block’ stat for OLinemen, it is questionable as to whether or not EA knows anything about linemen at all.
  3. Smarter AI Decisions and Gameplanning – Why do CPU QBs get away with clear intentional grounding?  Why does the CPU call a HB Draw while down 5 points and 55 yards from the endzone with 17 seconds left?  Why does the CPU call a Timeout with 1:01 left in the 4th quarter?
  4. More Realistic Injuries – We have been calling for this for years.  The bottom line is that real time physics means nothing if injuries are random.