Madden 2005 initial impressions.

in defense of illdefined, since you guys are questioning his knowledge of the games, when we had these arguments before almost everyone owed both games and had played both.

When it comes down to it you have to like one better, expecially for me since I dont play head to head, I only do franchises, I dont have the time to play season after season of both. So I decided I only play madden for franchise,a nd if someone never really played a football game before i might put in 2k5 because it more represents a football viewing experience. (well, with the lack of commentary)

Canes, if there is any consensus on this issue at all, thats definitely it. Franchise lovers love all Madden offers, and less dynasty oriented people seem to prefer ESPN.

but i maintain that it has to do with what's on the field. I haven't mentioned once the gloss of ESPN's presentation. it's amazing for sure, from in game pass and run analysis to weekly sportcenters, but that's not what makes ESPN closer to real NFL than Madden for me.

how they players look, what they do, and how they react on the field is an order of magnitude better than Madden. there's super realistic animations for everything like pushing on the backs of Olineman, incidental contact and calling timeouts on the ground. ESPN still has that super annoying waddle rotation on small direction changes, but you can finally cut and stumble and its never looked better. Madden has added a couple things here and there but they always seem like afterthoughts, no where near the attention to the details nor the love. Joe Crisp agrees about how the players themselves look and he sees more football players than any of us.

aside from the visual though, ESPN really makes you fight to score and to me the best part, really imparts the feeling of lobbing a pass just high enough to get over a reaching defender to your man. too much of a bullet and its picked, too much of a lob and the safety gets there and breaks it up. I've never felt the 'seam' so well before in a videogame.

its really fun to watch and play not sim.

out of curiosity, what difficultly level do you play on?

I ask this because on both games that animations and AI are completly different when you take it off of the default settings. Madden, on All Madden mode is the most realistic football game AI to date, hands down. The stats are par to those in real life, if you arent that good it definitly shows. You cant throw with accuracy while scrambling and off your back foot. Even the reviews state how much of a sleep madden took this year if you play on the all madden level. Things cant be real on the easier levels because it would be to hard. A beginer picks what receiver they are gong ot throw to before teh plays starts, much less look for the open guy and sets his feet first.

The main animation is espn is what I hate the most, running. Just plain old running. Its unnatural the way the the player moves. If you try to run at an angle he compleltly stops his forward momenturm, faces straight left, then faces the direction you want to run in. The animation is so bad that fast players get tackled by slow players just becuase they tried to turn. I had to adapt my running style knowing that natural movments were impossible. I hated that and for that reason along it makes the game miserable to play.

I haven't tried 2K5 yet but I probably will rent it and give it a try sometime.

Since I have been in this argument several times on this board, this is my conclusion:

If you want a football game becuase you are going to play a franchise, then you have no choice but to get madden in my opinion, its far superior if you play more than one season.

If you want a football game for head to head, or never play more than one season because you just play with current rosters, then you will probably buy espn and enjoy the extra presentation features that go along with the game.

No matter how many times we do the arguement, the franchise mode is always the most talked about. The animation factor bascially seems like its a personal preference more than anything. Everyone can state reasons why the same animation is better in each of the games. Both games have taken huge leaps from what football games used to be, neither is a bad game. So in my mind it comes down to if you want the presentation or the franchise.
I think that pretty much sums things up. If you're a franchise guy, Madden is your game. If that's not your thing, ESPN is the way to go.

It comes down to how you like your football.

out of curiosity, what difficultly level do you play on?

yeah doesn't seem you can judge either game by its default difficulty. in ESPN's default, every back is Marshall Faulk in his prime and in Madden's you can still throw it from anywhere to a guy triple covered.

i play AllPro on ESPN and need to move on to Legend, it took me a while tho, made my custom audibles and do defensive assignments on almost every play. it was tough vs. good teams tho, especially since the Skins rank so low to start with. LOVE the playbook tho, good Gibbs work.

im gonna try Madden on All Madden and check it out. i never claimed Madden was easy, just that all the DB swats/picks and scripted 'gang' tackles were never convincing. HATE the playbook. looks awfully familiar as does everything else. THAT, if anything should be different than last year. this is the biggest year for the Skins in a decade...

hopefully i'll see some new Madden animations like you say, but what i want to see is the same long, but seamlessly interruptible ones from ESPN. yeah that rotating running thing on ESPN is infuriating, worst thing about the whole game. helps alot to use the analog, which you should be using, but its shouldn't be a necessity. once ESPN can lean in runners like Madden i think ESPN would take the title w/o dispute. and do all that franchise stuff of course... any ESPN franchisers out there? how's the weekly prep thing?

whered u get this info?
i heard it at work from a representative of a big name gaming company.

oh good. hope you're right then. maybe it will inspire EA to really get into the engine next year. and inspire Sega and Microsoft to try even harder and gain marketshare.

i.e. better games

I did the weekly prep thing for a while. I liked how I could have an injured guy play becuase i gave him massages all week. Becuase in real life playesr play injured and at a lesser level. It was neat at first but then got kinda boring having to do it everyweek. But its an added element that im glad they put in, becuase you dont have to do it if you dont want to. Just like all the newspaper and email stuff on madden, you check it and do it but you basically know what its going to say or do everyweek.