QC's Long Snaps
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Written by Scott Hemphill
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Sunday, 08 July 2007 |
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There's an old Season 1 Tony Soprano quote I like to use regarding sports video games... "If you are going to show up, come heavy, or don't show up." Of course, we aren't talking about packing actual "heat"- but the same addage applies on the virtual gridiron. In short- up until this time, NOBODY has shown up feature heavy on next gen in terms of football. Of course, I'm talking about Madden 06 and Madden 07 on next-gen, as well as NCAA 07 next gen. All three titles were pale imposters of their current-gen, relatively feature-heavy cousins. Some will say that EA got lazy since it owns the exclusives to the NFL and NCAA football, while others point to the problems inherent to rebuilding engines on new hardware and the time needed to accomplish that. Whatever the case might be, one fact remains: The next gen efforts paled next to the current gen versions in terms of features. And...features directly correlate to depth, which feeds into replayability... However, things seem to have changed. By all accounts, NCAA 08 Next Gen, and Madden NFL 08 Next Gen- look to be some of the most "feature-fat" offerings of any year of EA football... and I'd probably say that- at least on paper- its the biggest feature bombardments since the inception of both series'. (Madden Football on 16 bit, and Bill Walsh Football on 16 bit.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 08 July 2007 )
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Written by Scott Hemphill
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Saturday, 13 January 2007 |
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Another NFL football season has almost come and gone. We're deep into the playoffs now, and not too far away from the NFL Draft. Its at about this time when I usually sit down and compose my own personal wishlist for the next installment of Madden on the game systems.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 27 January 2007 )
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Written by Quietcool72
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Tuesday, 15 August 2006 |
Well it’s that time of year again. Madden is almost upon us. So far, the early coverage has been mostly positive from those who have played the game. Granted, there are no reviews that are out yet that I’m aware of, but I’m always finding that people doing previews tend to drop calculated hints about how they feel about the game. Right now, Gamespot and IGN haven’t dropped much info in their “Madden 360 Superstar” previews that seem to hit towards many glaring problems. So- I’m keeping my fingers crossed. One thing that does kind of irk me is the revelation that defensive hot routes (abbreviated: DHRs) aren’t in the next gen game. To me, DHR’s are a built in system of checks and balances that help dissuade the always annoying offensive-only shootouts that can occur. Many of us have seen that with NCAA 07 360 already (it too does not have DHR’s). The lack of inclusion of DHR’s tip the balance more heavily towards offensive fireworks, and- lets face it, even with them Madden has always had a tendency to be a “big play” game. I worry that not having that feature will only feed this pre-existing dynamic even more. I hope that’s not the case, but we’ll see. But- in keeping this article focused mainly on next gen- I think I can say that it will be very important for EA to hopefully make this the last year of what I call the “pre-destined animation”. Since so much of the physics and movement in Madden and NCAA have to do with generating various animations at various times, what currently happens is that a pre-induced animation will cause your player to react wrongly (or not react at all) to the action on the field. Here’s an example: You are playing as the strong safety in a zone trying to cover a deep endzone corner fade on a WR. QB throws the ball, you are in great position to make a play on the ball and either intercept the pass or knock it down.. ..and your player gets hung up in some ridiculous, lengthy swat animation that you have no control over (and YOU didn’t even press the button to “swat” yet.. so you didn’t cause the animation at all.) The lengthy animation routine your player goes through misses the ball completely.. receiver catches ball. Touchdown. This despite your body position, and waiting till the proper time to jump/swat, and yet the AI opts to make that decision for you, and in return you get six scored against you that you could do absolutely nothing about. Lets face it, its one of the most annoying things in the Madden/NCAA franchise, and it has been for some time. As long as Tiburon keeps doing things with the “automated animation string” dynamic, we are at the mercy of what seems like a “random animation generator” inside the AI. The same is true on offense. Here’s an example from NCAA 07 for 360. You call a play action pass and your impact receiver gets a step on a CB in single coverage. You lead the pass perfectly, the ball sails perfectly down from the heavens at an angle whereby the wide receiver need only extend both hands out in front of him… you press the “catch” button to accomplish that very thing… ..and for some unknown reason, your receiver goes into a half-hearted one handed showboating catch animation where he barely even extends one hand to try to take a stab at the catch. The perfect pass sails past his one handed attempt (that could have easily been a two handed, easily secured catch attempt) only to hit the ground harmlessly and result in an incompletion. It wasn’t your pass that doomed the play. It wasn’t your well-timed press of the catch button that doomed the play. Instead, strike it up as another casualty of Tiburon’s “random animation generator”. Now, don’t get me wrong- I think their should be drops and misses by defenders and receivers alike, but those should not be so tied to your player getting induced by the underlying AI into doing something completely beyond your command. As it stand now, even players you control directly are duped into animation strings that you did absolutely nothing to induce or cause. Its been a problem with both football series from Tiburon for far too long now. Hopefully, the days of the “random animation generator” are winding down and will be replaced next year by better player physics modeling that has less to do with 3D player completing a long string of mo-capped animations. Hey, at least we can hope… Quietcool72
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 21 October 2006 )
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 11 August 2006 |
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Well it’s that time of year again. Madden is almost upon us. So far, the early coverage has been mostly positive from those who have played the game. Granted, there are no reviews that are out yet that I’m aware of, but I’m always finding that people doing previews tend to drop calculated hints about how they feel about the game. Right now, Gamespot and IGN haven’t dropped much info in their “Madden 360 Superstar” previews that seem to hit towards many glaring problems. So- I’m keeping my fingers crossed. One thing that does kind of irk me is the revelation that defensive hot routes (abbreviated: DHRs) aren’t in the next gen game. To me, DHR’s are a built in system of checks and balances that help dissuade the always annoying offensive-only shootouts that can occur. Many of us have seen that with NCAA 07 360 already (it too does not have DHR’s). The lack of inclusion of DHR’s tip the balance more heavily towards offensive fireworks, and- lets face it, even with them Madden has always had a tendency to be a “big play” game. I worry that not having that feature will only feed this pre-existing dynamic even more. I hope that’s not the case, but we’ll see. But- in keeping this article focused mainly on next gen- I think I can say that it will be very important for EA to hopefully make this the last year of what I call the “pre-destined animation”. Since so much of the physics and movement in Madden and NCAA have to do with generating various animations at various times, what currently happens is that a pre-induced animation will cause your player to react wrongly (or not react at all) to the action on the field. Here’s an example: You are playing as the strong safety in a zone trying to cover a deep endzone corner fade on a WR. QB throws the ball, you are in great position to make a play on the ball and either intercept the pass or knock it down..
..and your player gets hung up in some ridiculous, lengthy swat animation that you have no control over (and YOU didn’t even press the button to “swat” yet.. so you didn’t cause the animation at all.) The lengthy animation routine your player goes through misses the ball completely.. receiver catches ball. Touchdown. This despite your body position, and waiting till the proper time to jump/swat, and yet the AI opts to make that decision for you, and in return you get six scored against you that you could do absolutely nothing about. Lets face it, its one of the most annoying things in the Madden/NCAA franchise, and it has been for some time. As long as Tiburon keeps doing things with the “automated animation string” dynamic, we are at the mercy of what seems like a “random animation generator” inside the AI. The same is true on offense. Here’s an example from NCAA 07 for 360. You call a play action pass and your impact receiver gets a step on a CB in single coverage. You lead the pass perfectly, the ball sails perfectly down from the heavens at an angle whereby the wide receiver need only extend both hands out in front of him… you press the “catch” button to accomplish that very thing… ..and for some unknown reason, your receiver goes into a half-hearted one handed showboating catch animation where he barely even extends one hand to try to take a stab at the catch. The perfect pass sails past his one handed attempt (that could have easily been a two handed, easily secured catch attempt) only to hit the ground harmlessly and result in an incompletion. It wasn’t your pass that doomed the play. It wasn’t your well-timed press of the catch button that doomed the play. Instead, strike it up as another casualty of Tiburon’s “random animation generator”. Now, don’t get me wrong- I think their should be drops and misses by defenders and receivers alike, but those should not be so tied to your player getting induced by the underlying AI into doing something completely beyond your command. As it stand now, even players you control directly are duped into animation strings that you did absolutely nothing to induce or cause. Its been a problem with both football series from Tiburon for far too long now. Hopefully, the days of the “random animation generator” are winding down and will be replaced next year by better player physics modeling that has less to do with 3D player completing a long string of mo-capped animations. Hey, at least we can hope… Quietcool72
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Last Updated ( Friday, 17 November 2006 )
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 14 April 2006 |
Last night I was surfing around looking for the new Madden/NCAA previews that were due to come out, and judging by the high traffic at most of the preview sites, I was not alone. I really didn’t know what to expect, so I did go into it with an open mind. Judging from some heated debates I have gotten into over the past month on various forum boards out there, I can safely say that I was probably more optimistic than a good number of people who seem to be quite angry at Electronic Arts. So, brimming with anticipation, I was hopeful for a visible sign that EA was going to address Madden/NCAA’s graphics this year.
Unfortunately, judging by screenshots alone, that is one wish I did not get answered. I will say that the Pass-Look feature with the conical vision simulation of the QB’s head will probably be welcomed, and I think it opens up interesting strategic possibilities on both offense and defense. It’s also nice to see that the WR looking back for the ball animations have finally been implemented. (Still, I think many of us have an attitude of “Nice, but why the HELL did it take so long?”) I do look forward to more time-released revelations about Madden 2006 as the weeks go by. I will say that I’m not as impressed with the NCAA revelation thus far. The prospect of creating fictional freshmen to track towards the Heisman trophy in the “Race For The Heisman” mode just doesn’t do much for me yet. I’m not a big “fictional player creator”, although I do know my fellow site co-founder – Bangpow- is big into creating fictional players and bringing them through the college ranks. Perhaps I’m just more of a “sim-snob”, and I’ll have to wait for more timed feature releases in the coming weeks for NCAA Football 2006 to get me excited with other enhancements. Again, its VERY early yet, and EA is strictly controlling the release of info- as well as the exact days when that info can be released.
However- back to my reason for this article….
I’m not at all impressed with the still screenshots of Madden 2006’s graphics. Now, that doesn’t mean I think the game will be good or bad, because I would never make such a judgment on screenshots alone. Still, I think after what appears to be the 6th release of the Madden 2001 graphics engine with enhanced textures, EA is ripe for some criticism by anyone seeing even these still shots. Anyone at all familiar with the Madden franchise will probably recognize the player models as more of what we are used to- and have gotten used to- since 2001. Granted, EA could surprise us with mad frame-rates and thousands of extra animations, but I think its safe to say- we have what looks to be “last year’s models” in these screenshots.
Perhaps we could go one step further and honestly say that we have “2001’s models, with enhanced textures and slightly more polygons on the pads.”
It is because of this trend that I feel EA is losing some fans and earning some deserved criticism. I’m also of the opinion that Electronic Arts has been disappointing the members of the gaming populace who deem themselves to be what is referred to as “Graphic-Whores” for a number of years now on most of their sports franchises. I’m also of the opinion that even gamers that don’t claim to be “Graphic-Whores” (or “GW”s for short) also have desire for some level of visual enhancement in their sports games from release to release. I know I do, and I know of many others who do. Addressing this need – or NOT addressing it- is where myself and many other people feel that EA’s sports games haven’t lived up to expectations for several years now. From some of the other forum boards I follow, I see this trend as an ever-growing complaint about the EA football games since about 2002 after the release of Sega’s NFL 2K3, which myself and others often feel looked so good that EA should have reacted with a new engine and super enhanced graphics for Madden 2004.) Needless to say, we didn’t get it. And, at the risk of judging screenshot graphics, I don’t think we will get it with this Madden/NCAA 2006 release either.
Meanwhile, in the 2 years since NFL 2K3, Visual Concepts always managed to really blow out the graphics on their football product, reaching what I personally felt was a graphic peak of excellence with ESPN NFL 2K5 on XBOX, while EA appeared to merely pushed some quasi-enhanced dazzle knit jersey/pant textures for parts of their players uniforms. Keep in mind, I don’t believe that graphics are the end-all, be-all of the greatness of any football video game. That said, I also feel its something that should not be relatively ignored over the span of 5 game releases. This is seemingly what EA has done, and it appears that the same might be true of the Madden 2006 graphics- again- if only by the screenshots.
I once wrote an article for the old www.football-gaming.com called “Under The Hood, The Engine Is The Key” way back before the release of Madden 2004 (probably July of 2003). In the article, I predicted that EA might get caught in an unfortunate rut of “graphic engine-rehashing” until the next gen systems shipped. (At that time, the Next Gen Systems were thought to be releasing in late 2004). So, at that time- I was assuming that in a worst case scenario, we’d have to tolerate Madden’s “same-ol” graphics only through Madden 2005, but with an option to buy Madden for the Next Gen systems on 2005 as well. As we know now, those systems got pushed back 2 years later than expected, but that didn’t at all change EA’s reliance on the same-old Madden 2001 engine.
But I also feel we need to step back a second and remember EA’s recent claim that “Madden hasn’t done away with the competition, it has to compete with other popular games like Halo, etc.” Well, I think it is safe to say that if any of the publishers of other non-sports games decided to utilize the same basic graphics engine for SIX consecutive releases (and for 6 years in a row), their would be deserved criticism. Could you imagine if Id Software released Doom III using the old Quake II graphics engine from 1998? Could you imagine if Warcraft III had come out using the Warcraft II engine? Could you imagine if GTA San Andreas had the same graphics as GTA III, and the exact same city size, cars, and limited polygon engine? Now, lets take it one step further- multiply those proposed graphic “re-releases” by six years. Now do you see my point?
Electronic Arts really needs to address this problem. As gamers, we want good graphics and expect more improvement year to year. Its hard NOT to say that EA has been ignoring this fact in favor of “same old stuff.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping all the additions – those we don’t know about yet- will make up for some of this. However, I don’t see any way around the fact that EA’s 2006 football graphics appear to be pushing the same-ol “Staleness” as they have for the past five years. It’s also embarrassing when you consider just how little they have utilized the advanced graphics capabilities of the XBOX. (Vicarious Visions sure did when they made Doom III for XBOX!) To me, that’s disappointing. We’ll see what they can do.
However, if EA really believes that they have to compete with games from other genres, I think they had better start doing much better visuals to keep up with those games. As of this moment, it appears that the rut continues at least in terms of the graphics engine. That is indeed unfortunate, and at this moment I really can’t disagree with people who expected graphic enhancement of the series…
..and have been mostly ignored for what appears to be five releases now.
Hopefully, the feature list will be so fat that many of us can overlook this fact. Graphics ARE NOT everything, and that’s a fact. However, lets face it- there’s a little “graphics whore” in all of us. The sooner EA realizes this fact, the less criticism they will face. Sadly, by comparison to what was once Madden’s competition, it is nearly impossible to say anything other than Electronic Arts was quite lazy in the football graphics department during the PS2/XBOX generation of consoles. I would certainly hope such a trend IS NOT repeated on the next generation of consoles. I sure as hell hope that Madden NFL 2007 on X2 (or whatever) doesn’t look nearly identical to Madden NFL 2012 (with merely a few enhanced textures/shading).
EA, please take note. The grumbling noises you hear while on the web and on sports game forums are the “graphics whores” in all of us.
…and they (EA) would be very wise to learn from this “grumbling”.
Quietcool72
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Last Updated ( Friday, 13 October 2006 )
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