EA's John Madden Football 08 and moving on to 2009

[KevinJones34]

Originally Posted by zkramp

Madden 08 is a great game. Most realistic / best NFL game ever. I do hear a lot of people talking negative about the passing cone, but proper use of it is reserved for elite players. In order to use the cone properly you have to understand how to read defenses and route progression. Once you understand this, the game becomes much better. I could care less about features like the price of hot dogs but QB vision is great and adds to the realism of the game.

Oh for cry'in out loud.

Liking or disliking the cone has zero to do with your skill level or understanding of football. Very few people are unaware of what the cone is supposed to represent. The problem is that it LOOKS ridiculous and takes away from the realism we want. If they just had to add it, they could've come up with a more creative way. The bottom line is that the implementation of it blows.

But I'd rather EA stopped getting rid of features/things every year, and actually dig in and make them better. Take the graphics: '06 and '07 on next gen looked incredible from a detail standpoint, but the proportions needed work. But rather than just working on the proportions, what did EA do? They got rid of the whole graphics engine, made the proportions better, but 86'ed all of the great detail! Now the graphics look pathetic because the detail is so freaking low.

To say Madden '08 is the best/most realistic ever is utter nonsense. Being able to--every single game--flip guys through the air double-digit times, cause double-digit INT's, and double-digit fumbles, and having 99% of all kickoffs go through the endzone... that's not realistic. Not even close. And that's just a small sampling of all of Madden '08's problems.

NFL 2K5 was the best football game ever. Madden hasn't caught up yet. They're still many miles behind in fact. The Madden team has weak talent, and their headed up by morons who don't know squat about simulation, realism, or delivering an exceptionally programmed product. Get ready, because Madden '09 will almost certainly be worse with the NFL Tour guy now heading the project, and Peter Moore at the top spewing nonsense about casual gamers not being to get into Madden even though almost all of Madden's entire market is made up of casual gamers.