Madden 10 Demo Impressions
After playing the Madden 10 exclusive demo for a couple hours I have to say I’m more impressed by the game at this time than I was last year. Gang tackling seems a little better than last year, I still don’t see a huge difference. Half the time when a player is already getting tackled and I send another guy into the fray the animations don’t click and my player kind of just falls over. Once in a while you’ll see a guy taken down by more than two guys and thats the only difference I see this year. There are some new animations which is nice but its not so profound that you have to title it Pro-Tak or whatever.
The lack of commentators made that game feel a little stale. Of course this is just for the demo but for a 1gb demo I’m surprised they couldn’t fit it in there. The user interface for choosing plays was revamped and so far I think it works better. I did notice some special formations in the playbook like Pahokee and Wildcat which I got to play around with. On one drive I broke a 25 yard run with Boldin from the Pahokee formation. I also got stuffed in the backfield a couple times so it seems the formations are really high risk, high reward. Unfortunately I still think online players are going to go nuts with these.
As for graphics the Depth of Field camera work is the most noticeable. Other than that I don’t see a huge difference. The game tends to look smoother but this might only be because the game has been slowed down. They also show more scenes of the fans but I don’t see the point because all the 3D models used for the fans are low quality. Just show more players if you’re going to skimp out on the quality of the fans.
Other things I noticed is that it’s a littler easier to play defense because like I mentioned before the game speed has been taken down a couple notches. This is nice because last year when playing against advanced opponents and maxed out AI the offense always seemed to have an edge. This year the game speed allows more time to diagnose a play and react. It’s also a little easier to throw over the top which seemed impossible sometimes last year. The quarterback ball control seems more sensitive than last year. When I’d pull down to throw a lower ball it would throw the ball into the dirt sometimes. This may also be because of the way the pressure seems to affect the quarterbacks throw more this year.
Overall a pretty nice demo. The 5min quarters almost seem like a full game even with the accelerated clock. I’m still wondering about the feature updates on the Franchise mode since I play that the most. If they ignore it for another year I’ll be a little dissappointed.
