Madden NFL - title

Before I begin this essay, I would like to invite my readers to become supporters through Patreon and be able to vote in a poll to decide the next topic in this series. I have several broad outlines for topics, but no actual draft yet. So I'm asking my Patrons to decide which of those topics I should cover. The poll closes at the end of October, at which time, I expect to start work on the draft for the next topic.

I'd like to take this moment real quick to sincerely thank my current Patrons. Your support really helps, to by offsetting the maintenance of this site, and the cost of software licensing that I use to create content for this site and my YouTube channel.

I also want to provide a short disclaimer that the original video was posted before I had a chance to play any of Madden 23. I have since played several matches in Madden 23, and can confirm that none of the problems discussed in this video have been fixed or addressed. In fact, issues with fumbled footballs teleporting into the hands of the recovering player seem to have gotten worse in the newer game. In just a handful of matches, I've already seen multiple examples of the football teleporting through the bodies of prone players and into the hand of a recovering player who is a full yard or two away from the football. It's bad.

Anyway, onto the actual topic!

This essay is also available in video format on YouTube.

The previous topic was about Longsnapping, and included proposals for adding both ratings-based and skill-based botched snaps into the game. Botching a snap might lead to a bad kick, or a kick being blocked, or the snap sailing over the head of the holder or punter for a fumble. But even though I want botched snaps to be represented in the game, there is one caveat. One of the biggest and most long-standing A.I. and animation problems with Madden is its lose-ball scenarios, and putting bad snaps into the game might not be a good idea unless Tiburon and EA also address this long-standing problem.

But hey, Madden already has muffed punt returns, onside kicks, strip sacks, and just regular old fumbles in the game already, so once again I ask: why are all these other things in the game, but botched snaps are a bridge too far?

Anyway, some of the issues with the pass rush that I mentioned in the Pass Rush essay would also be alleviated by better loose-ball logic. The excessive strip sacks of Madden 17 and Madden 21 might not have been such a big problem if the players were smarter about recovering their own fumbles, and if scooping and scoring weren't so easy for defenders. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's now look at how Madden fails to model fumbles, fumble recoveries, onside kicks, and other loose-ball situations.

NFL botched snap Photo credit: Sports Illustraded
Adding botched snaps to the game would exacerbate existing issues with fumbles and fumble recoveries.
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Whether you agree with my assertion in the previous essay that NCAA 13's recruiting was better than NCAA 14's, I hope I've at least made a compelling case that NCAA 14's recruiting system left a lot of room for Tiburon to improve in its upcoming EA Sports College Football game in 2023. Now I want to provide some constructive feedback and pitch some ideas I have for how Tiburon could improve the recruiting mechanic going forward, by hopefully taking the best of what both NCAA 13 and 14 had to offer.

This essay is also available in video format on YouTube.

Lessons from NCAA 14

The previous essay included a lot of criticism of NCAA 14, so I want to start off this second part by acknowledging a feature in NCAA 14 that I feel is a strict upgrade over 13, and which I would like to see preserved in EA's future college football games.

I think my single favorite upgrade in NCAA 14 is the idea of having "complimentary" and "competitive campus visits". If you schedule players from complimentary positions to visit campus on the same week, you'll get bonus points. For example, bringing in a running back along with the linemen who will be blocking for him will provide bonus points.

But you also have to be wary of scheduling multiple players of the same position. If you schedule 2 or 3 running backs on the same week, they'll see each other as competition, and will lose interest out of fear that your backfield will be crowded, and they'll loose out on playing time to another back in the same class. This is one of the few elements of 14's recruiting design which I feel retains the more humanistic, character-driven ethos from 13, and I like it a lot.

Users should avoid scheduling multiple recruits at the same position to visit in the same week.

14 also makes it much more clear how your performance on the field will impact the interest level of the visiting prospects. In NCAA 13, I was never clear about whether scheduling a visit during a bye week would make a difference, or if it mattered whether or not I won the game (if I played one that week). I always assumed that the prospect was there to watch the football game, so scheduling the visit during a bye week would impose a penalty, and I also always assumed that winning the game improved the prospect's interest, and I assumed that the prospect would also get more interest if the players at his position performed well during the game. But the U.I. for NCAA 13 was never clear about whether any of that was actually the way the game worked, or if the prospect only cared about the 3 recruiting pitches that I try to sell him on during the visit. NCAA 14 makes all this blatantly clear when you schedule the visit by showing exactly how many points the prospect will get if certain criteria are met.

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If you're a fan of college football video games, then I'm sure you're excited by the news from early 2021 that EA will be reviving its college football series. They will be doing so without the NCAA license, and under the new title, EA Sports College Football. I guess Bill Walsh wasn't available for licensing either? Expectations are that the first in this new line of college football games won't release until at least July of 2023, so we still have a a year or more before we'll be playing a new college football game on our home consoles. Sadly might not even have Maximum Football to fill that niche void anymore, since it's unclear of its new developer, Modus Games, will retain the college Dynasty Mode, or if it will be as good. Hopefully they do, and hopefully it's better.

With EA Sports' return to college football now imminent, I feel it's important to take a look at one of the most beloved features in EA's old NCAA Football games, and examine why that feature worked so well, why it absolutely must return, where it may have faltered, and how EA could potentially even improve it.

This essay is also available in video format on YouTube.

It's kind of funny seeing how EA's NCAA Football series has been elevated onto a pedestal since its cancellation in 2013. Contemporary reviews and user scores were often mixed or negative, and aligned very closely with Madden's reception at the time. Yet now, NCAA Football 14 is often held up as one of the best sports games ever, and definitely one of the best football games ever. Are we looking back with rose-tinted glasses? Or was NCAA Football always an under-appreciated gem? I think the true answer is a little bit of both, and we'll explore why in the coming discussion. In any case, the NCAA Football games seemed to enjoy a more cult-like status compared to Madden, with its loyal fanbase often insisting that the college game was better than its more mainstream big brother.

Being the smaller cousin of Madden, I think the developers of NCAA Football had a little bit of a longer leash. Lower sales expectations might have lead to less overhead from both the NCAA and from EA itself, which gave the studio a bit more leeway to experiment with new and novel ideas (some of which worked, and some of it didn't). The studio also benefitted from technological hand-me-downs from big brother Madden's development process, which may have freed up more resources for building supporting features, rather than having to spend as much time on the underlying game engine. By the time of the game's cancelation, it had been receiving yearly engine, A.I., and graphics upgrades that had been developed by the Madden team. Robust customization features such as TeamBuilder and Stadium Sounds allowed for a great deal of personalization that helped to connect the user more to their game. Trophies from rivalry games, bowls, and conference championships provided challenges and collectibles that encouraged users to play the game with other teams in both Play Now and Dynasty modes. The college atmosphere and more diverse playbooks provided pageantry and energy on the field that Madden largely lacked. And the list goes on...

Hand-me-down gameplay from Madden, and lower expectations from EA
may have allowed the NCAA Football team more freedom to experiment with fun new features.

In fact, things have kind of come full circle, with Madden 22 now stealing features from NCAA 14!

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Gran Turismo 7 - title

I recently published a video to YouTube explaining how playing Gran Turismo 7's weird campaign reminded me of why I stopped playing Gran Turismo games to begin with. This video is not a full review of Gran Turismo 7, since I don't do video reviews. It's more a retrospective of my history with the franchise, why I chose to buy GT7, and my reaction to the game's campaign and reward structure. Not to mention some obligatory jabs at the game's awful, scammy, and borderline fraudulent bait-and-switch monetization scheme. Even though this isn't a proper review, it does echo much of the content of my original blog review, so I invite you to check that out. And since the review already contains most of the points made in the video, I'm not going to transcribe the entire video in text.

Gran Turismo 7 reminded me why I stopped playing Gran Turismo.

In summary, I have felt that since around Gran Turismo 4, the games have shifted to being more about collecting cars than about actually driving or racing them. Reward cars are given out like candy, leading to a garage full of cars that I never drive and which I don't feel I really earned. There's no attachment or sense of ownership over the cars, and they just don't feel like my cars in the way they did in the first Gran Turismo. That first game required greater investment to win prize cars, making them feel more earned, and it put a greater emphasis on tuning the cars in the garage to get the best performance out of them. Buying my own cars and meticulously tuning them really created that sense of ownership that is just lacking in GT7.

I also want to emphasize that I do not hate Gran Turismo 7. Even though I dislike the campaign and its reward structure, and even though the monetization model is despicable, the actual driving is absolutely fantastic! Especially with the Dual Sense controller on the PS5. I am particularly impressed with how well the Dual Sense's motion controls work for steering the car. There's some nifty haptic feedback features as well, but steering the car with the motion sensor is an absolute game-changer. So the campaign may suck, but I'm still playing GT7 on a regular basis because of how much I enjoy the driving. I've been alternating between GT7 and Elden Ring.

Patreon

So anyway, I hope you enjoy the linked video. Feel free to share your own experiences with the game in the comments, either here on the blog, or on the YouTube video. And remember, all my content is funded by the support of readers and viewers like you through Patreon. So if you enjoy this content, I hope you'll consider contributing to help support the creation of further content. And if you do decide to join as a Patron, then, first of all: thank you! And secondly, don't forget to fill out the Patreon Entry Survey and tell me what content you enjoy the most.

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Legend Bowl - title

I already made one video praising Legend Bowl's innovative, player-driven passing mechanics: the passing charge meter, and the QB Vision. Within hours of me posting that video, Sports Gamer's Online broke the news that leaked information on Madden 23 shows that Tiburon will be copying this idea from Legend Bowl and implementing its own pass charge meter. If you can't beat 'em, copy 'em, right? Well it wouldn't be fair to Madden or to >Maximum Football or to Axis Football if I just gave Legend Bowl a free pass for not being a 3-d, physics-based football sim, and if I didn't also give a critical eye to Legend Bowl as well. So now I want to turn my attention towards perhaps my single biggest pet peeve with Legend Bowl.

The full commentary video is available on YouTube.

You might be thinking, "if this quy who made hours of video content tearing apart Madden, Maximum and Axis Football can't find anything wrong with Legend Bowl other than to nitpick about the huddle, then Legend Bowl must be pretty darn near perfect!" But, mmmm ... no. Legend Bowl is far from perfect, and there are plenty of other things that I can find to complain about, especially if its developer wants it to be taken seriously as "simulation" football. I have issues with how the game handles its difficulty levels, and the inability to more finely tune difficulty to my skill level or play style. Defenses have horrible containment logic and let too many plays break to the outside. Pulling linemen are often too slow about getting out to their blocks. Every team uses the same playbook, with the same formations and plays, so none of them have any distinct play style or personality. The QB Vision mechanic could use some more granularity. Special teams feels wildly under-developed. And ever since the Franchise patch, the button on the PS4 gamepad that used to assign a kickoff returner now moves a player to the top of the depth chart, meaning I can't set my kickoff returner for Franchise -- let alone field goal holder, longsnapper, or coverage gunners. Maybe I'll talk more in detail about any or all of those issues as well, but perhaps the one issue that sticks out to me the most with Legend Bowl is its weird game clock.

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Grid Clock Widget
12      60
11      55
10      50
09      45
08      40
07      35
06      30
05      25
04      20
03      15
02      10
01      05
Grid Clock provided by trowaSoft.

A gamer's thoughts

Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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