Earlier today, football gaming fans got some bad (but not un-expected) news. Take Two has apparently canceled its proposed new NFL 2k video game. There wasn't any kind of press release or public announcement (that I saw). Instead, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick broke the news in an interview with Game File. The full interview is behind a pay-wall, so I wasn't able to read the entire thing. So I was reliant on other media outlets, such as Insider Gaming, to summarize the interview.

Take Two had obtained the rights to make an NFL game back in 2020. The kicker was that EA still held an NFL-mandated exclusivity on "simulation" NFL games, which meant that anything 2k would develop or publish would have to be some kind of "non-simulation" (i.e. "arcade") game.

However, the little shreds of news that we got about this game over the years indicated that it was in development hell, and may have been completely restarted multiple times. Now, Zelnick has confirmed that the designs that Take Two was experimenting with simply "weren't working out creatively". Take Two couldn't simply make an NFL 2k game like they used to back in the early 2000's, since that would qualify as a "simulation" game. This apparently left them struggling to try to find an alternative identity for their game. Would it be something like NFL Street? NFL Blitz? Legend Bowl? Or maybe ... ugh ... their own variation of Ultimate Team, but without a Franchise Mode to go along with it in order to appeal to sim gamers like me? Well, apparently, none of those ideas really panned out, and the designers were unable to come up with any ideas or prototypes that the executives felt would appeal to a wide enough market to justify the costs of the NFL license and development.

The only product that came out of the deal was a mobile card-collecting game called NFL 2k Playmakers, which went out-of-support after only a year on the market.

NFL 2k Playmakers was a mobile card-collecting game that was shut down after only a year.

If you play simulation Madden Franchises, and you take the preseason even remotely seriously, then you've probably noticed that EA hasn't changed preseason substitutions logic since the NFL shortened the preseason to 3 games instead of 4. This means that the third preseason game is still treated as the old "dress rehearsal", with the starters playing through the 3rd quarter. This is not how NFL teams play the 3rd game anymore. Now, the starters maybe play through the first quarter -- if at all. Instead, coaches now use the 3rd (and final) preseason game to field test their rookies and deep reserves before the final cut days.

But in every Madden since, the CPU leaves its starters in through the 3rd quarter. If you want to sub in your backups, you put yourself at a huge disadvantage, and their relative poor play can even result in loss of morale that can hurt their overall ratings.

Because I do take the preseason seriously as a team-development tool, the 3rd preseason game might very well be the single most infuriating thing about Madden for me. I hate it. Not only is it horribly unfair due to the talent level imbalance, if I try to sub deep reserves in early, but I swear the CPU also goes into robo / turbo mode and throws downfield every play.

Worse yet, being that I play Da Bears, I keep getting my 3rd preseason game scheduled against the Bills. Even though the Bills actually have one of the highest run percentages in the NFL, the Bills in Madden are allergic to running the ball. Now, granted, quite a few of those real-life runs are probably un-scripted scrambles by Josh Allen, but still... In any case, in my Madden preseason games, Josh Allen puts up 400 yards passing and 5 TDs in 3 quarters, and its so fucking annoying, and it makes me want to stop playing Madden altogether.

EA has provided no settings or options to change the CPU's behavior, nor mechanics for making the CPU intelligently substitute its reserves for evaluation or development, and we cant change CPU depth charts (even for "meaningless" preseason games).

As such, it always comes down to us in the community to to fix the things EA refuses to fix. Whether that be custom slider sets, disabling broken features (when possible), updating rosters to fix player ratings, or providing house rules for running Franchises. In this video, I want to share a method for forcing CPU substitutions early in the 3rd preseason game with minimal cheating.

After the disappointment of College Football 26, I wasn't sure if I would care enough to play this year's Madden. If the college game that everyone was excited about and praising last year somehow managed to get worse this year, that didn't bode well for Madden. As usual, I waited a couple weeks and bought it used, then still put off playing it for another week or so. After having to click through multiple advertisements for Ultimate Team and the stupid Season Pass, getting into the actual game didn't make me feel any better.

Just like with College Football 26, my single, biggest problem with Madden 26 (at release) is the inability to run the ball. Just like with the college game, blockers seem incapable of holding blocks, and defensive pursuit is uncanny good. There's like 3 run plays that even seem viable: draws from shotgun, read option keepers, and 01 Trap. With almost every other run play that I call, there is always a defender in the gap. Unless you are able to quickly react to cut back, or you have the stick skills to make a move or break a tackle in the gap, you'll be lucky to average more than a single yard per run.

That's the case for the user, anyway. For the CPU, every inside running play seems to break for 20 yards, and the CPU running back will successfully juke at least 2 defenders every play.

People online are saying that in order to run the ball, you need to utilize the new "Untarget Defender" feature in order to force your blockers to ignore backside defenders in favor of sending an extra blocker to the play-side. There are a few problems with this. First and foremost, as a matter of principle, I should not have to change the blocking assignments every single play in order to get competent blocking!

Running the ball was borderline impossible when the game launched.

Madden also doesn't bother to teach or explain this new "Untarget defender" mechanic. Unless you pay attention to pre-release promotional material, you probably won't know that this option is even available. It isn't documented anywhere, and there's no tutorials for it. I had no idea about it until I went online looking for advice on how to run the ball. Worse yet, this option is located under the "Pass Protection" pre-play menu, which means that a lot of users might not even realize that this feature can be used to modify run blocking assignments.

Almost as important is the fact that, unlike College Football, Madden does not show the actual individual blocking assignments of your blockers on running plays. It does for [most] pass plays, but not for run plays. I have no idea who the offensive line is actually going to try to block, so how am I even supposed to know that I should be modifying the blocking assignments? Or how am I supposed to know that the Untarget Defender command is even working?

The coach cam can show pass blocking assignments,
but not specific run blocking assignments.

If it ain't broke, break it!

Or at least, that was the case when the game released. In mid-September an update was released that seems to have inverted that problem so that running the ball is easy for the user, but the CPU cannot run the ball to save its life. I've had to reduce my Run Blocking sliders down to 20 or below in Franchise just to make CPU run defense competent, while tuning CPU Run Blocking into the 70s or higher just to make it so that the CPU running backs can gain positive yards.

Unfortunately, setting this slider so low leads to recurring problems where my own blockers will cut right in front of my running back right as he hits the hole. This is particularly annoying with receivers or tight ends who go in motion across the formation, away from the run, only to U-turn as soon as the ball is snapped and run through the hole as if to lead block. Despite there being a huge hole, my running back runs right into the back of one of my own players, has all his momentum stopped, and gets dragged down by a backside defender. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens frequently enough to really get on my nerves.

Maybe I would be able to fix some of these problems if the game would only let me see who each of my blockers is supposed to block on running plays. Then, maybe I could use the "Untarget Defender" function to force my pullers to block someone else, so that they don't get in my running back's way. But I can't do that because I have no idea who each of my blockers is actually supposed to block!

It would be really nice if publishers would stop being so reliant on post-release updates, and would actually put some QA effort into their games before they launch. That way, I wouldn't keep feeling like I have to write 2 fucking reviews for every one of these damn things!

Is it just me, or did EA release College Football 26 really early this year? Last year (and historically with the NCAA Football games of previous generations), the college football game would release in late July, about a month before the college football season starts. This year, however, the game released on 7th of July, over a month and a half from week 0 of the college football season.

Not that the extra 2 weeks or so would have made much of a difference.

I waited a couple weeks and bought the game used (and $20 cheaper!) off of eBay. This was partly because the early release date blind-sided me. I wasn't thinking about football season yet. Heck, I hadn't even activated my fantasy leagues or confirmed that people were going to play again this year, by the time College Football 26 released! I was also cautiously optimistic about this game, but still wanted EA to prove to me that they could actually improve a product before I would give them any more of my money with a retail purchase.

Despite not playing the game until it had already received multiple patches, it still managed to fall far below my cautious expectations, and fully vindicated my decision to not purchase a retail copy.

EA Sports College Football's sophomore year is not something to cheer for.

I am genuinely dumb-founded by EA's lack of effort and care with this year's College Football release. I really did expect that with the highly-anticipated return of its college football game, EA would put at least a year or 2 of solid effort into making a good, polished product, in order to build up some consumer confidence and good will -- you know, before they flush it all down the toilet and go back to being EA.

But they couldn't even be bothered to do that! It's just business as usual for EA. Except now they're selling us two shitty, low-effort football games, instead of just one.

The same, plus some options

First and foremost, so many of the problems from last year's game are still present, so I'll refer you back to that review. Yeah, I did eventually figure out how the option controls work, and get used to them, and even come around to liking them in last year's game. But kicking is still mercilessly difficult without any options to make it easier or less forgiving. This is despite the fact that 26 comes with a smorgasbord of new options for tweaking the ways that things like Wear & Tear and auto-subs work (which does resolve one of my biggest complaints with last year's game). But they couldn't be bothered to give the user any customization options for the kicking game, other than the choice of whether to hold or tap the buttons (the same option we were given last year).

There are extensive customization options for Wear & Tear.

There's still no tutorials or Skill Trainer to teach kicking or other game mechanics. So you're still stuck going to open practice and having to self-teach yourself (through trial-and-error) how to kick, run the option, use the Do-It-Yourself Reverse plays, use the switch stick, and so forth.

I think there's also more flashing indicators to tell me when players are triggering or disabling their abilities, and maybe also when they have Wear & Tear. I'm not quite sure, because there's no in-game keys that tell me what all the U.I. icons on the field mean, nor are there any tutorials or training modes that explain what all the icons and symbols mean.

This is a follow-up to the previous topic, in which I talked about gameplanning, and Madden's general failure to simulate the process of gameplanning for an opponent. This time, I will be talking more about the procedural element of preparing for the next opponent, which is the various practice and preparatory tasks that coaches and players perform in the week leading up to a match. Weekly practice is something that Madden also currently fails to simulate. But it's also something that Madden (and other football games from other developers) has made multiple attempts at emulating in the past. Some of the previous solutions that EA came up with are, in my opinion, much better than what is available now.

Skill Trainer was good practice!

I will begin by actually ranting about something that I like in modern-ish Madden!

Up until a few years ago, Madden's Franchise Mode allowed the user to play Skill Trainer drills for offense and defense as your weekly practice. In general, I love the Skill Trainer in Madden! I genuinely think that it is one of the best features that has ever been included in any sports video game ever. In addition to acting as a series of gameplay tutorials, the Skill Trainer also makes an effort to teach some basic football concepts and strategies to gamers. The Skill Trainer teaches users things ranging from how blocking schemes work, to how to read the conflict defender on option plays, to how to read different route combinations against different defenses. And it also teaches some defensive concepts such as how to play as a force or cutback contain defender, and which defensive coverages are designed to stop which route combinations, and much more!

The fact that EA used to incorporate these tutorials into Franchise Mode was especially genius. Each week, you could choose one offensive and 1 defensive Skill Trainer drill to run. Depending on how well you performed in the drills, your team would get scaled ratings boost whenever you call the relevant plays in the upcoming match. This allows the player to take the role of a coach and choose specific concepts to practice and focus on in a given week, depending on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the opposing team. If that sounds a heck of a lot like how I described actual NFL gameplanning in the previous installment, then yeah! That's kind of the point! Madden used to do this, and do it fairly well, but it doesn't any more.

Skill Trainer drills used to be part of Franchise's Weekly Training feature.

A few years ago, EA changed the Weekly Training feature in Franchise and removed the Skill Trainer. Now you choose very broad, vague concepts to practice, such as "defend inside run", or "throw the ball deep", instead of more specific concepts based on an individual team's scheme. Ironically, this new Weekly Training menu gives a more detailed scouting report of opponent tendencies, that would have worked better with the old training mode using the Skill Trainer. It actually shows which concepts the opponent runs most in different situations, which would have helped the user choose which Skill Trainer drills to run. Now, we have this extra information, but no Skill Trainer drills; and the more vague practice categories don't relate directly to the tendencies listed in the new scouting report.