First off I am a HUGE Madden fan and a pretty strong supporter of Playstation.

 

This years Madden is a huge rip off.  It feels like an unfinished game.  The framerate issue has been discussed plenty here but thats not even the biggest issue.  The AI is horrible, here are some of my favorite examples.

CPU's ball , 3rd down 5 to go for the first down, 6 seconds left in first half,  they have the ball on my 35 yard line.  ok now a normal player is thinking 1 of 2 things. either throw a hail mary into the endzone or try a long field goal. well what does the CPU do - line up and punt!!  on 3rd down! on my side of the field!

 The game has done other odd crap, like its my ball, 4th and 1.  i go for the QB sneak and pickup about 4 yards and it gives them the ball like a turnover on downs.  Now to make it even wierder, they spotted the ball correctly. Meaning they spotted the ball 4 yards downfield and still didnt give me the 1st.

Another real smooth example, I get a major hit on thier QB, he fumbles, his OL picks up the ball with the scoop animation and without being tackled it blows the play dead.

When its raining, its actually only raining in the middle of the field, when you hit R2 to see the play and widen the view its not even raining on the sides of the field.

I have yet to see ANY wind in my franchise games.

The play by play announcer and the in stadium announcer never say the same thing.  Meaning after a play the play by play guy goes "White for a gain of 2" then seconds later the in stadium guy goes "White for a gain of 6".

You can never tell how many timeouts your opponent has.

The main menu lags if you dont turn down/off that EA ticker at the bottom.  Online this problem is about 10x worse.

And the general stupidity of the CPU is overwhelming.  They need a TD in the 2 minute drill. What do they do, come out in goaline package with 0 WR's then go no huddle still with no WR's.

There are WAY to many fumbles, I had a game last night vs cpu that had 9 total fumbles.

After a TD, my man Randy Moss is doing a little celebratory dance that starts near the back of the endzone. By the time he is done he has travled THRU the wall at the bottom of the stands without missing a beat. Then just calmly walks back out of the wall.

After a long run down the sideline Vince Young is pushed out of bounds. He is doing a little dance type thing to show he is pumped up but all I can see are the low res renders of players on the sideline. Then I notice the one helmet thats actually round instead of block shaped. Thats Vince among the crowd of PS1 level characters.

 Those are just a few examples, this list could go on for days.

EA gets away with this crap cause they know people will buy the game anyway.  I got a horrible feeling most all these problems are PS3 only and EA just explains it away with "we are new to programming for the PS3"  well how about this, until you actually produce a game thats next gen quality drop your price back down to $50.  Paying that next gen premium is a big slap in the face when its for an unfinished piece of crap.  Any tester that played more then 2 games would have a list 3 pages long of stuff thats wrong in this game.  Its unfinished crap.  And no it doesnt matter if its a pretty pile of crap, I still feel very ripped off.  And now I am hearing this same kinda crap can be expected in NHL 08 as well.

 

SCREW EA SPORTS!!!!!  They have killed my favorite game and charged me more then ever for the right to play thier piece of unfinished crap.  If you are gonna charge next gen prices then give me next gen quality!!!!!  I have a slight hope that they will release a patch for the PS3 version, but more then likely all we will see is the normal roster updates and that will be it.

 

On a side note, Screw the NFL too.  Some of the blame goes to them for selling out to EA and giving them exclusive rights to NFL team names and such.  Just so happens the last good Madden was the last year they had actuall competition.  The NFL also screwed the majority of thier fans over last year when they extended the exclusive deal they have with Direct TV for the Sunday Ticket package.  Why not let cable and satellite providers sell the package and thus open the door for the majority of NFL fans to see the games and not just satellite owners?

Wooo hoooo lets screw em good!!!

EA have pretty much said screw the ps3 by the sounds of things. Cant blame them though, to many developers the ps3 is sinking ship and they want to get off. Sony fans cant keep blaming 3rd partys because its sonys fault for making such monstrousity to work on. Its just like n64 for third partys except, I doubt sony will be savy enough to still make profit like Nintendo did or that sony fans will be as loyal as Nintendo fans were during there hard times.

Wow, that is pretty bad.

As for the 360, it was absolute garbage last year, so I'm actually VERY happy this year, it's like a 100x improvement.

But there are still some issues: interceptions are WAY too common. I'll give an example from the very last game I played: I was the Colts (very good team for those who don't know) against the Raiders (terrible), and I was up 31-0, and then the computer just started to intercept every other pass like the Raiders were a team of superheroes. It was ridiculous, I barely hung on for like a 10 point victory.

Fumbles are also somewhat too frequent, although not as bad as interceptions.

All I can say is given the difference in quality between 07 and 08 for the 360, maybe EA will make a really good version for the PS3 next year.

I have somewhat given up on EA, they don't seem to want to adapt to the PS3 technology. With regard to their Final Night Round 3 port for the PS3, although it didn't use the SPEs, it was overall still the best version available, back then I had good hopes for EA.

IMO the more they release subpar games the more first and second party developers will put them to shame. Soon enough I think they will look like a totally incompetent development company. Although Madden isn't exactly the kind of game I would like to play though, actually I find American Football / Baseball (or British Cricket) games quite boring.

This is not Sony's fault.

NEVER having wind in a franchise game has nothing do with the Cell's superiority and ability to befuddle lazy ass programmers. The fault goes to EA who thinks they have a cop out with blaming the PS3 but that dont fly when 2K has smooth football gameplay just not as shinny graphics or current players.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE

and mistermar the PS3 is not a sinking ship. If you havent noticed it has blown by the Xbox worldwide for a while now. And until the recent Xbox price cut had passed them in NA as well. The Xbox is the sinking ship.

MikeB first and second party developers cant put Madden to shame, EA has exclusive rights to the NFL. In other genre's I will be avoiding EA at all cost but I cant live without my NFL football.

I have to say one thing: What did you expect, it's EA.

MikeB said: I have somewhat given up on EA, they don't seem to want to adapt to the PS3 technology. With regard to their Final Night Round 3 port for the PS3, although it didn't use the SPEs, it was overall still the best version available, back then I had good hopes for EA. IMO the more they release subpar games the more first and second party developers will put them to shame. Soon enough I think they will look like a totally incompetent development company. Although Madden isn't exactly the kind of game I would like to play though, actually I find American Football / Baseball (or British Cricket) games quite boring.

 Actualy are you surprised? EA has always threaten the worst selling consol badly. Last gen it was Gamecube now it is PS3. Last gen it was PS2 that got the best version now it is xbox360. That is how EA works.

@dgm6780

The problem with you statment is that xbox360 is a sinking ship WW, not in USA. It is only USA that actualy plays NFL as far as I know. 6.7 million xbox360 against 2 million PS3 says it all. (if sony can start to eat that gap in USA I think we can see a better version of NFL).

@ dgm6780

NFL is pretty irrelavant to me, of course this may be of importance to people in the US. IMO realistic American Football (like Baseball and Criicket) implementations usually don't make good video games as IMO there are usually too many dead moments in such games. Some less realistic games inspired by Rugby are great though, like for instance Speedball 2, as they don't nearly have as many dead moments and more continuous play like 'soccer'.