Pictures on Madden blog site

Fantasy draft and Edit player are in Next Gen Madden 08.

NBA live 08 confirmed for the wii

You can read the entire article here.

Publisher Electronic Arts announced that NBA Live 08 will release on Wii this October, marking the series' first appearance on the console.

I hope this is the first of many. 2ksports should come aboard the wii basketball train also.

Boogie: Stompy's Best

We know now that Stompy is going to get a wii for this game.


from Kotaku

Frankly, I was put-off by the current control scheme. It seemed unusually complex for a game clearly targeted at the Wii's more casual audience. Like SSX Blur, I went into Boogie thinking the game would feature a simpler, more intuitive, possibly remote-only method, only to find myself stumbling through my dance routine. EA Montreal may intend for players to more slowly ramp up, to become more accustomed to the coupled waving, twisting and stick control, but jumping into the game with limited play time made me wish for Brick House to end early every time. Granted, the game is still very early and there's more than enough time for fine-tuning, but there's one more aspect to the controls left to consider.

Ya, it took me forever to get used to SSX Blur's controls. I am sure this will be the same way.

EA Playground IGN interview.

I just read the one page interview IGN conducted with Dave McCarthy of EA Canada. It game me a good read what to expect from this new title.

• Mini Games
• Wii Remote only controls
• No online multiplayer
• A good variety of games from RC racing to Tetherball
  

EA is one of the Wii's biggest third party supporters, and have done a great job at making intuitively controlled games for the system. SSX blur, Madden 07 and The Godfather: Blackhand Edition have all lived up to my very high standards in Games. Hopefully this title lives up to the previous title's standards of quality.

I am also pleased to see an original title pop up on the Wii. Most of the games found on the system are ports of ps2.

Madden 08 Producers Blog: Daniel Castorani

"D-Cas", the one responsible for Devon Hester's 100 speed rating in Madden 08, explains the reasoning behind his decision. EA sports is going to explain the 100 rating with dueling blogs. First up: D-Cas himself.

It seems that everyone opposing the 100 SPD rating likes to point to a disappointing 4.41 second 40 yard dash time that Hester ran at the rookie combine. Now as easy as it is for me to counter with the 4.27 time that he clocked at the Miami Pro Day, I look at this totally differently. Running on a track in skin tight clothing does not directly translate to game day when the pads are on and ball is in your hand. If track speed was all that mattered when it came to being a fast player, than people like Justin Gatling and Michael Johnson would be lining up on Sundays! So how do you measure something so intangible such as game speed? You watch the games. And anyone who watched number 23 run down the field this season had to be amazed.

I don't know, former Minnesota Viking Michael Bennett ran a 4.13 40 time last year. The highest speed rating he garnered from Madden was a 98 in Madden NFL 2005. He has great speed on the track (9.91 100m) and on the football field, but he is an injury prone player.

In 2003, Bennett had consecutive games with multiple 60+ yard runs. No love for Mr. Bennett.

Now before you get all nostalgic on me, I’ll answer the burning question: Does this mean that we have proclaimed Hester to be the fastest man to ever play in the NFL? No. All this means is that we have decided to open the ratings scale up a little bit this year and that Hester deserved to receive the maximum on this scale. If we had decided to do this when Neon Deion was in his prime maybe he would have received the first 100- who knows?

I know that Neon Deion ran a 4.6 40 backward, and that is crazy fast. He would have smoked forward running Legendary WR Jerry rice (4.7 40), and maybe we will see that some day in APF2k9.

I am looking forward to more Madden Producer blogs on this subject and others. I am rooting for both companies EA and 2k sports to succeed in their football endeavors, for competition breeds quality.

Edit: It will also blow playing against the Bears, because cheeser noobs will use Devon Hester everywhere. He will probably even show up as WR.

A more realistic way to show his expertise at returner would be to give him 95 speed and 100 agility and 100 awareness. Speed is much too important in Madden to give someone a 100 that really isn't that fast.

NCAA 08 Preview

1up played an early copy of NCAA 08. In years past, I have used the NCAA game as a barometer for Madden. NCAA usually comes out a couple month before Madden does.

It looks promising, I really hope they are both good.

Madden Producer's Blog

Whenever I find I blog I want to keep tabs on, I hit the subscribe button in FireFox. Guess what? His blog doesn't have an RSS feed. COME ON. RSS feeds are essential in updating your product. Get with the program. Anyway, on with the story.

A few days ago, EA sports' Madden producer, Ian Cummings describes what drives him crazy about Madden. Oddly enough, the pet peeves all directly correlate to the features Madden 08 employs.

Missing Features

What happened to defensive hot routes? The strip ball button? Man lock? Defensive assignments? I actually took part in designing all those features, and not having them in next gen totally sucks. We all know Madden 06 was not what we wanted it to be. In the face of ridiculous adversity, we did ship the game, which many other teams weren’t able to do. But to not have these features in 07, what is the deal with that?

Gang Tackling

This is next gen. NEXT GENERATION. How are players still clipping through each other? Why do all the defenders fall down like bowling pins when a tackle starts? Why do we not have swarming defenders piling on to tackles and cleaning up?

Fatigue. Ugh.

It’s bad enough that the Madden 07 shipped without fatigue and that it had to be patched. But even with the patch, fatigue is barely even a part of this game! I can’t think of too many things that are more important to a simulation of football outside of stamina and fatigue. It changes the way teams play on so many levels! What good is having a big bruising back without fatigue? What good is it to run a no huddle offense without fatigue? What about a ridiculously hot game in Miami or the thin air in Denver? Those are real life obstacles NFL players have to deal with…why aren’t they in the game? Also, why doesn’t fatigue update dynamically during a play? Vick can run sideline to sideline at full sprint for 10 minutes until someone gets open in Madden right now. That’s obviously less than ideal. And what about fatigued animations? I’d love to see players breathing heavy at the line, or taking longer to get up, or even struggling to run for those last few yards on a big kick return.

Pre-Play Cut Scenes

Why don’t the players run to the line realistically from the huddle in the gameplay camera? I loathe cut scenes most of the time, mainly because I’m totally out of user control. I can’t set up my offense or defense, and after I’ve seen those cut scenes once or twice I’ve had enough.

Later in his blog, He made excuses for the shortcomings of Madden 07. Excuses are like buttholes, everyone has one and they are full of shit.

Only one thing can make the alienated Madden Fan a believer again, and that is a solid product.

You can follow this link to read the excuses.

Burnout Paradise

Kotaku posted a trailer that looks really really sweet. A press release accompanied the screenshots and trailer.


For anyone that has played Crackdown with me or has watched my driving in Godfather and other driving games, they know how much I love to crash. I hope I get points for running over pedestrians.

Hibachi!!!

Team Xbox reports Agent 0, Gilbert Arenas, to be the cover athlete for NBA live 08. This is great news for heze, my sparring partner in NBA 2k7.

“This is a dream come true,” said Arenas. “I’m a huge gamer and have been playing NBA LIVE since 1995. I never imagined that I would see my face on the cover of an EA SPORTS videogame.”

I wonder if heze is going to switch to Live next year, since his favorite player in the whole wide world is on the cover. Kevin Garnett could end up as his teammate next year. He wishes.

Madden 08 Gamespot Preview

During the NFL draft, Gamespot sneakily posted a preview of Madden 08. EA also released a few screenshots.

What did the Madden team at Tiberion add? Pretty much nothing so far. This version of madden looks like a patch release of Madden 07. This will probably be the game Madden 07 should have been.

It starts with overhauled animations, specifically tons of new branching animations. How many times in previous Madden games did you throw to a tight end or wideout near the sidelines, only to have the animation take the guy out of bounds when he clearly could have gained a few more yards by staying in bounds? According to producers, that will be a thing of the past, thanks to branching animation that was borrowed from another EA property: NBA Street Homecourt. No, you won't be watching Reggie Wayne execute triple back-flips into the end-zone, but on those crossing routes where he's heading to the sidelines, you'll likely see him plant his feet once he's hauled in the ball, and angle up-field to gain those crucial extra yards.

Should have been in years ago.

And speaking of tackling, gang-tackles, long missing from the series, debuted in the PlayStation 3 version of Madden NFL 07 and will now spread to include every version of Madden 08. As producers demonstrated in a video, tacklers can be added onto a pile at any point when trying to bring down a ball-carrier; equally important, tackles can be shed dynamically thanks to the aforementioned branching animation technology. One particularly cool video example of this showed Tomlinson, wrapped up by a defender, make a spin move, only to have an incoming defender run into the defender that first wrapped up LT, knocking him off the running back and letting Tomlinson gain a few more yards in the process.

Same.

Player fatigue has been a sore point in the past few Madden entries and the team has taken that into consideration with Madden 08, blowing out the feature this time around. As producers put it, every action on the field will count against a player's fatigue rating. You spend time scrambling around in the background with Michael Vick, and sooner or later he's going to wear out. In addition, temperature and location will make a difference to your player's performance--think of the thin frigid air at Mile High in December, or the sweltering late-summer heat in Miami. Just as in real life, those kinds of conditions will have an effect on how your team plays. This improved focus on fatigue should definitely affect how you play the game--do you go run-and-gun in order to tire out your opponent's defensive backs, or grind it out with your running backs in order to punish your foe's defensive line? Furthermore, you'll want to stay aware of your player's fatigue ratings as the game progresses? Calling a no huddle after you just sent your wideouts on streaks downfield? Bad idea. In fact, taking your time snapping the ball will actually benefit your team, as they get a chance to catch their breath before the next play.

Yes, Bug fixes. I recommend reading the entire article. Let me know if you come to the same conclusion. Madden 07 1.1

C&C 3 on Xbox 360: multiplayer impressions

Team Xbox got their hands on a some multiplayer C&C 3. You can read the preview here. One interesting mechanic/feature of this game is described.

One of the coolest elements of the game is the fact that you can use the Xbox Live Vision Camera to see and be seen by your opponents. When playing, you’ll be able to see the other players in the corners of the screen throughout the action, giving you plenty of opportunities to flip them the bird or moon them. Wait, did I say that? I meant “wave to them or tell them how well they are playing.” Granted, this isn’t one of those features that is essential, but definitely adds to the fun.

More games need to use the vision camera. I want to moon people that cheese me in Madden, flip off people that glitch in Gears Of War and stick my tounge out at people who play as Brazil in Winning 11.

Madden 08 first screenshots tomorrow

I just got this in my email, looks like we will see what EA has up thier sleeves.

click here for the email

All Pro Football 2k8

Since EA and the NFL inked an exclusive licensing agreement, the Madden Football games (06/07) have been dissapointing and sloppy. Madden 06 on the 360 was put together so quickly, a lot of the features that were in last gen's version were not there. I gave them a pass. First generation games on a new console are either ports from previous consoles or tech demos.

Madden 07 on the 360 was buggy at best sloppily excecuted at worst. The clock ran after the 2 minute warning if a penalty was called, the clock should stop. The menus were laggy offline. The game wasn't as responsive as the previous versions due to sloppy graphic programming.


Also, Madden 07's feature EA hyped the most: 3d Grass.

Madden 08's hype so far? The Madden Curse. It was a nice run for Vince Young, I hope he has good insurance.

On to what I really want to talk about APF 2k8. Here is the hook. Legendary players playing side by side. Teams will be made up from these players.

2k sports is hyping:

• Better AI.

• Instead of a 0-100 rating system, the rating system will consist of icons these represent the positive and negative effects the player has on the field. The interview with Game Informer uses an example of a mobile QB that is a fumbler. Sounds a lot like Culpepper. I wonder if they have a small hands icon. They also have special abilities. Game informer uses 4th quarter comebacks as an example.
  

• They are including game mechanics the NFL doesn't want madden to include for example: Injuries occuring in real time and having animations associated with them and on field banter.

One thing no one knows about right now is the online component. I will make a wild guess here. You will draft your team offline and you will be able to play that team on line. A couple of reasons for this. The teams in the game have no real life counterpart and the players will probably be all of roughly the same calibur, with the exceptions of the special abilities and small hands handicaps. If this is the case, I know a lot of people that will pick this up either with madden or instead of madden.

the price point right now: 59 dollars for ps3/360 versions. Visual Concepts and 2ksports need to work together to lower the price by 10-15. If they do that, madden is dead.