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A rant against the sports division of Electronic Arts


Dan

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While playing NCAA 08 this evening, about three things happened in roughly 3 minutes football time that really ****** me off.

First was the commentary. Why, EA, can't you get stadium- and player-specific commentary like every other damn sports game I've played? It took me a good two weeks to finally hear just about everything in MLB 07 from Sony. When playing in Boston they talked about the green monster and the short dimensions in right and Pesky's Pole in left. Yankee Stadium had plenty of references to Monument Park. But in every single EA game I've played, all the commentary is very general and hardly changes from year to year.

These two are smaller, but they still made me throw my controller down in disgust. This one happens in Madden, too - I'm in the backfield, out of the pocket with my QB with two defenders in front of me. One guy comes at me. One guy. But my linebackers are so slow and lazy and get there in time but make no effort to block the guy, and i end up with a 15 yard sack.

The next time I'm on defense, their RB breaks a run and takes off downfield. I have one safety that apparently fell down and is getting up. Well he takes his good ol' time while RB #28 flies past him. Hell, he's a good 10-15 yards away when my guy finally gets to his feet. That's when I pressed the reset button on my PS2 and walked away in silence.

Thank you.

-dan

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Nice commentary Dan. I guess the only explanation for this is that EA is lazy. Really, that's about it. EA knows the title of the game sells it and not what's in it. They can release the same old crap for Madden but as long at it says Madden on the box, they'll know it will sell. Plain and simple, laziness.

Oh, by the way, the Pesky pole is in right field, but I know what you meant.

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Oh. Right field. I think I got that confused with the white boundary line in center that says home run or bankshot. How I did that, I have no clue. Thanks :D

You're righ, Y4L - I gave up on Madden because it never changed.

-dan

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Oh. Right field. I think I got that confused with the white boundary line in center that says home run or bankshot. How I did that, I have no clue. Thanks :D

You're righ, Y4L - I gave up on Madden because it never changed.

-dan

The white line in center your referring to is actually yellow. Haha sorry, I couldn't resist :-P

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NHL Games get better as the years go backwards, if that throws any fuel on the fire.

Not really NHL 08 for 360 is actually one of the best hockey games i've ever played the AI is though and adapts to your strategies the goalies are flawless, they have shown some serious improvement in the NHL series, at least in the next-gen side of things. However most of the other EA Sports titles are jokes Madden and NCAA Football are ridiculous these games have not evolved gameplay wise since 2004 or 2005, the games features are ok, but the commentary and the small stuff that should really enhance the game experience is all missing like Dan said the commentary is redundant and very much non responsive to what is going on in the field, the AI at times is completely ridiculously retarded, at least it boasts some really nice graphics in the 360.

Moments like this one here make me wonder what would have the MVP series become if they were still able to put out the game, aside from the crappy NCAA version. MVP along with FIFA, and NHL were the only games that EA Sports made that were actually good and are (In MVP's case was) showing improvement.

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So I take it you won't be playing as the Steelers this year? No Championships eh?

Madden 08 and NHL 08 were extremely disappointing for PC. Neither added anything new except for new score overlays and new rosters. Madden 08 for PC seems like an exact clone of Madden 07 except for a few very minor changes , in fact , they didn't even add anything new for Owner mode and replaced all the newspapers (in the past they would actually have newspapers people heard of) with EA Sports Weekly or something generic like that. But despite nothing new I still play because Jared Zambransky is in the game and I can start him at QB ;)

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the Nba Live series has been in shambles for a couple of years now and the Fifa series is still far behind the PES games. Luckily for us MVP baseball was a great game, but other than that EA sports is very lazy.

Pc gamers in particular get the shaft.

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anyone played madden on the wii? i bet that is different, not sure though, i haven't played it myself. too bad they won't release nhl for the wii.

nhl for the wii would be pretty interesting. i would love to see how they would do fights!

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I'm in the backfield, out of the pocket with my QB with two defenders in front of me. One guy comes at me. One guy. But my linebackers are so slow and lazy and get there in time but make no effort to block the guy, and i end up with a 15 yard sack.

-dan

I think you mean linemen.

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Four gameplay features that could be added to Madden and NCAA that would be a hit with me:

Challenge Review: it isn't fair that you can't review the play before you challenge. I think that you shouldn't be able to take all the time in the world, but i think that in single-player games, the other portion of the playcalling screen should be showing slow-mo replays. This way, you can't take your good ol' time and consult the NFL rulebook before you challenge, but at least you get to review the play.

While on the subject of challenges, there needs to be a way to choose what you're challenging. I've had plays where three things that I could have challenged occured, and the one I can challenge would let the opposing team keep the ball or something like that.

Also, why in the world can't I call audibles while lining up for a hurry-up offense? I'm tired of waiting until every guy on my team is in position before I call an audible.

And while on the subject of audibles, there needs to be an easier way to change the audibles you have. The same five or six plays won't do it for me every time, and I'm not going three levels deep in menus to change them.

-dan

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Also, why in the world can't I call audibles while lining up for a hurry-up offense? I'm tired of waiting until every guy on my team is in position before I call an audible.

-dan

I hate that too. I think they took that feature out in Madden 06 cause I remember doing it a few years back.

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I think EA make good games in general, like generally EA games are good

but sometimes the specifics just pisses me off, like u said, the commentary are always the same

Good in general because that's the only thing we PC people have available!
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