Madden 10 Preview: Top Ten Changes to the Franchise
by Jonathan Zungre on May 2, 2009 at 10:37 am
We just previewed Madden 10 and it seems like the team has been hard at work scrapping elements that haven’t worked for the series and creating new features in order to produce the most realistic feeling hard-nosed Sunday football game to date. Let’s blitz through the top ten changes Madden 10 makes to famed Madden formula.
1. Madden 10 lets players “Feel The Pressure” in the pocket and avoid It. Since the beginning of time, Madden players have played passing offense the same way: Running 20 yards or more into the backfield, away from the pocket, and firing a huge bomb to a downfield receiver. They either complete that miracle pass or they’re sacked for an absurd loss. Real NFL quarterbacks don’t do this, by the way, they stay protected in the pocket created by the offensive line. The developers of Madden 10 found that when players were looking downfield for a receiver, the pocket didn’t feel safe because they couldn’t sense when the defense was rushing them, hence the running into the backfield.
One of Madden 10’s goals is to make the pocket feel safe again. When looking downfield for a receiver to pass to, the controller will rumble when the quarterback is under pressure. A quick flick of the right stick lets the quarterback execute an avoidance move to shrug away a potential sack and give the player an extra moment to complete a pass. The avoidance moves will work better with elusive quaterbacks, like Big Ben, but even then they won’t work all the time.
Ben Roethlisberger, one of the larger quarterbacks, eluding a defender with an avoidance move.
2. Quarterbacks have more guts. Ok, that’s not a direct quote from Madden 10, but it’s the best way to describe the quarterback’s new ability to complete passes while being sacked. Last year, Madden 09’s sack animation would overide the quarterback’s passing animation, causing him to tuck the ball instead of releasing it, resulting in some unfair feeling sacks. “I pressed the throw button!” Now the top part of a quarterbacks body can still make a pass even though he’s being sacked, which may result in a much needed completion, or a floating pass that could be easily intercepted. Either way, if you want to make that risky play, now you can.
3. Nine man gang tackles. Madden 10’s mantra is “Fight For Every Yard.” With Madden 10’s new Pro Tak feature you can bring the four on one ownage to some poor running back like the picture below. The gang tackles generated by Pro Tak can also be used offensively. If your running back gets some help from some big guys behind him, they may just push him right into the endzone, or help him break out of the tackle animation altogether. Hopefully Pro Tak’s gang tackles can bring the more organic raw feeling of live football to the game.
3. Fight for the ball at the bottom of the pile. Players will now experience the lawlessness of the game’s most gritty battle, the wrestling match at the bottom of the pile for the ball after a fumble. Who knows what happens at the bottom of the pile? Scratching, finger bending, biting?
Madden 10 handles this tooth and nail battle with an intense quicktime button pressing minigame. Hit the right button as it flashes on the screen and you’ll tip the possession scale in your favor and probably end up with the ball once the ref’s pulls all the bodies off of the pile.
4. Holding the A button moves your defensive back into position for you to make big plays: I’ve always had trouble playing defense in Madden, especially in the secondary. Thankfully, the Madden 10 team found that many players also had the same trouble, and they’ve created Defensive Assist. Holding down the A button will cause your defender to move into position and play defense, but it will not, however, make big plays like swats and interceptions for you. It only gets you into position so you can make these big game changing plays yourself.
5. Many of last year’s Iterations have been scrapped, tweaked or downplayed. The not so successful Madden IQ feature that was so prevalent last year is returning and you’ll still take the test at the beginning of the game, but the Madden 10 team asserts that the feature is going to be changed and be much more in the background. Weapons, the new feature from a couple Madden’s ago have been completely scrapped and Rewind, Madden’s version of a “do over” is turned off at default. Chris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond return, but between you and me and what the developers implied, Tom Hammond is going to be more interesting this time around.
7. Photorealistic Depth of Field. The reason why the screen shot above looks like it was pulled from the real Superbowl last February is that the Madden 10 engine accurately displays depth of field, blurring that which you’re not focused on. Look at how the referee in the foreground and the sideline in the background are accurately out of focus. One of Madden 10’s goals is to make games feel more like a televised broadcast and establishing depth of field is a great step into building that realistic look and feel from a real NFL game.
8. Passes to the flat are no longer broken. After catching a pass out to the flat, no longer will receivers fail to slow down and negotiate where the out of bounds line is. No longer will they sprint towards the sideline like Forrest Gump running home to Jenny. This was a game breaker for many gamers who played Madden 09, so it’s exciting to see that the Madden 10 team is fixing this important play.
This ref should really have a “hit me” sign on his back, because that’s what we all want to do…
9. You can knock over refs and run into the chain gang. Yep, you can knock those pin striped losers onto the ground during a play and doing so will never impede you or slow down your movement in any way. That means a ref will never get in the way of pass or trip you up so you don’t make it into the end zone. Also, Madden 10 wants to replicate the suspense of watching live football by having the chain gang run out and measure for the first down. This may also increase the number of controller throwing moments.
10. Some players stats have been dropped as much as 20 points! The Madden 10 team saw that the stats have been slowly creeping upwards over the years and that average players were only a few points different from the NFL’s future Hall of Famers. This would effect teams as well. Playing the Lions didn’t feel like playing the Lions, it felt like playing the Cowboys or any other good team. In order to distinguish the average players from the superstars, many player’s ratings had to be lowered. If you rate everybody as great, then no one is. Maybe some game websites should adopt this mindset in for review scores. You didn’t hear it here!
Madden looks like its ready for another monster year of sales and hopefully ready to deliver the most true to life football experience thus far. Even more Madden 10 features are going to to be revealed at E3 so get your Troy Polumalu jersey ready and check back later!
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- EA Confirms Madden 09 Cover Athlete
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7 Comments » |
on May 2, 2009 8:08 pm
Nice!
on May 2, 2009 9:40 pm
Hells yea! Looks like our source from last year wasn't fibbing.
http://www.ripten.com/2008/07/19/madden-nfl-2010-...
on May 4, 2009 3:53 am
I'm glad they're working on the animations and all but.. seriously.. EA.. just use Euphoria already and stop fucking around.
on May 8, 2009 10:10 pm
Does anyone know if these improvements will make it into the Wii version of the game?
http://maddennfl.easports.com/wii.action
on August 5, 2009 7:21 pm
What happened to number 6?
on October 22, 2009 6:51 am
Yes sir, you read me right. ,
on October 23, 2009 5:08 am
The particular characteristics of this ideal observer can vary from an omniscient observer, who would grasp all the consequences of any action, to an ideally informed observer, who knows as much as could reasonably be expected, but not necessarily all the circumstances or all the possible consequences. ,