EA has a stranglehold on the sports gaming landscape. Madden is in a place all by itself thanks to exclusivity rights. NHL has now distinguished itself as not only the best hockey game, but maybe the best sports game. FIFA has all but caught up to Winning Eleven Soccer and may have surpassed it this year. This leaves basketball. It is the one major sport that EA has a gaming license for that it just cannot seem to finally get, leaving 2K sports to hold that crown. At least for now. NBA Live 10 has brought EA back into the question of what basketball game to buy. The gap between NBA Live and NBA 2K still remains, but said gap has closed tremendously.
Ever since a labor lockout forced the NHL to miss an entire season, the sport has been trying its hardest to get back into favor with the fan base. Last year they made terrific strides as NHL 09 was the best sports game of the year by far, even trumping titles as Madden and FIFA. EA was faced with the decision on how to improve on what is an already stellar game. They followed the very simple, but effective mantra for NHL 10: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Whether you like them and their antics or not, Brett Favre and Michael Vick will be added in today’s Madden NFL 10 roster update. As expected, their ratings have decreased, but they still aren’t too shabby. Vick won’t be a starter, so you’ll have to modify your depth charts to get him in the game.
What’s uncertain at this point is how these additions will affect their respective team ratings. Will the Vikings become more of a powerhouse? Will Philly’s playbook have more prominent Wildcat additions? We’ll have to wait and see after we play the game with the roster update (which should be live now, according to a tweet from EA). For now, I’ll go back to destroying people with the Giants power running game.
The middle of August has been synonymous with many things: sweltering heat, jellyfish down the Jersey Shore, and Madden on the shelves. The yearly football juggernaut has arrived and those of us lucky enough to get our hands on an early review copy have not put this game down since we got it last Thursday. This is the best Madden of this or any generation. The title may have changed, but the product has remained the same. You won’t need to look any further for football on a console this year. Madden NFL 10 has arrived.
Amidst the myriad of changes in Madden NFL 10 to enhance realism, EA Sports added the ability to change the game speed. The Default, Slow, brings things closer to the actual speed on the field. However, it’s a bit too slow for a video game. Luckily, you can change this setting to customize Madden to your liking.
The first thing I recommend doing when you pick up Madden next week is going into the Settings menu and changing the Game Speed to Normal. This brings it back closer to last year’s game. It still feels slightly slower than that, giving you a touch of added realism, while keeping a balance with being fun. You can set the Game Speed to Very Slow, Slow, Normal, Fast, and Very Fast.
I haven’t had a chance to play around with all the speeds yet, but based on the ones I’ve tried (Slow, Normal, Fast), the “Very” settings have to be overly dramatic changes to the speed that you’ll only want to try after a few beers with your friends.
Make sure to check back Monday at 3pm ET when the embargo lifts on Madden reviews. You’ll be able to read our thoughts on this year’s iteration and see if it’s worth your cold hard cash.
I fired up a review copy of Madden NFL 10 for the first time today. As usual, one of my first stops was checking out the Achievement list. This year, there are 24 Achievements, most of which have a fairly high degree of difficulty. Each requires you play on the All Pro difficulty setting, which may be too much for the normal Madden player. You have to remember that Madden sells millions of copies every year to people who many would consider casual players. Most of these Achievements will go unrewarded to the majority who aren’t comfortable playing on All Pro.
A couple that jumped out at me include tackling Adrian Peterson for a loss 3 times in a game, tackling Antonio Gates inside the 5 yard line, forcing Kurt Warner to fumble on a sack, intercepting a pass intended for Randy Moss, and intercepting Peyton Manning 3 times in a game. A lot of these will remain unlocked on large number of consoles.
Sports game Achievements have run the gamut from too easy (the early titles of this generation) to way too hard (Madden NFL 10 could fall into that category). At this point in the life cycle of Achievements and Trophies, I would have thought developers could narrow in on the sweet spot, but it seems that hasn’t happened in the sports gaming world just yet.
It’s midsummer. We should be concentrating on baseball and the pennant race. We just had the All-star game, but what is everyone thinking about? Football. America’s new pastime has become a 12 month ordeal. We follow our favorite teams right up to the BCS, then signing day, then spring ball, then it’s on. NCAA Football 10 has accomplished many goals this time around. We get our video game football on a full month before Madden and get to play the college game better than ever before.
Listen, I absolutely love football. Love it. But when it comes to college football, I usually take a pass, especially on the video game side of things. I’m a big Virginia Tech fan and watch them whenever they’re on TV, but I don’t go out of my way to see what’s going down across the country. That’s why I was honestly surprised when I put NCAA Football 10 into my PS3 and haven’t turned it off in over 4 hours.
I’ve always felt that the NCAA games from EA took a back seat to the Madden series, for obvious reasons. This year, though, the new features and solid gameplay make it a winner in my book. You can create and edit teams online to share with people, use strategy in your pre-snap routines and setup certain plays by running other plays (i.e. running the ball a lot sets up the play action pass, making the defense susceptible to a long play), things never before possible.
We’ll have a full review of the game soon (and it’s not without it’s flaws), but for now, I’m going to continue my Dynasty with Virginia Tech. The only thing that will pull me away from NCAA Football 10 today is playing Battlefield 1943 tonight for Game with Loot Ninja.
NHL 09 was my favorite sports game last year. It was also in the running for my favorite game in any genre in all of 2008. It was that good. By far the best hockey game ever made, NHL 10 looks to expand on an insanely in depth hockey experience. Here is what the devs at EA have planned for us. September 15th cannot come soon enough.
The career mode in Fight Night Round 3 was pretty flat and linear. The team at EA is looking to change that dramatically in Fight Night Round 4. The game will definitely be a solid fighter, so check it out.
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