Madden 2005 initial impressions.

[illdefined]

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.