Madden NFL 12 box art

Once again, this review is exceptionally late. The football season is almost over, and Madden has already sold its bazillion copies for this year. So anything I say here is kind of moot when it comes to helping people decide whether or not to buy this year’s game. But maybe – just maybe – my critiques will help the developers provide us with a better game in the 7 or so months that they have left to make Madden 13.

After being thoroughly disappointed with last year’s Madden game, and not being won over by either the new demo or the gameplay in NCAA 12, I didn’t rush out to buy Madden 12 on day one. I waited till September and bought the game used. This also contributed significantly to the tardiness of this review.

Overall, Madden still just seems uninspired, even when compared to EA’s NCAA Football game. All the same gameplay enhancements go into both games each year now, but NCAA has at least taken some efforts to better represent its sport. Setting up “linked” plays is simplistic but was a start towards a better representation of football strategy. Integration of the No-Huddle offense into the game is a bit clumsy, but is a major component of modern college football, and is thusly represented in that game. Requiring the QB to “read” the defense on option plays doesn’t work as well as last year, but it’s actually an important part of the option strategy. The collegiate look and atmosphere really looks and sounds like Saturday afternoons, and the ESPN integration is actually pretty slick at times.

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NCAA Football 12 box art

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Chicago Bears alt logo

I've been trying my best to keep up with the movement going on in the NFL since the lockout ended in the end of July. It's been a hectic week so far. The reduction in team salary caps and the addition of a salary floor have caused a lot of teams to have to clean house.

Considering how awesome the Julius Peppers acquisition was last year and how much extra cap room the Bears have in their coffers, I've been waiting to hear some awesome news about trades or free agent pickups by the Bears. But so far the news has been all disappointments.

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The NFL may be in lockout still, but the NCAA is definitely going to be playing football this fall. Now that it's July, we're almost at the point where EA is ready to start releasing it's annual football titles. But first come the playable demos. I finally got some time to mess around with the NCAA Football 12 demo that was released earlier this week.

A few notes that I want to start with:

  1. I was not able to record or take screenshots of my actual gameplay. So sadly, you'll have to take my word for it when I say something about how the game looks or plays, since I can't provide photographic or video proof.
  2. The demo does not allow the user to access the instant replays. So I can't go into real detail examining any individual plays. I can only see what I see in real-time while playing the game. So I could be missing a lot of positive and/or negative aspects of the game that I'm just not noticing.
  3. I played all my demo games on the All-American difficulty. I did not have access to sliders or any other control configurations, so everything is set to default.
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Last Friday night, the Colbert Report aired the following Threat Down segment:

The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
ThreatDown - Superman, Madden NFL 12 & Glee
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

It's definitely not the first time that Colbert has has let out his inner geek. He's been known to talk about The Lord of the Rings, make Star Wars references, and show clips from video games. But this segment was probably his geekiest yet!

Comic books, video games, and Glee all in one Threat Down? He might as well have made "geekiness" be the one and only Threat in this particular ... um ... Down.

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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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