Madden demo sparks controversy
The Madden demo was made available yesterday via Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. I posted some impressions Monday hinting at the new features, offering my own feedback on those and hinting at some potential controversy. Needless to say, it was nothing compared to the avalanche of criticism that hit the web throughout most of yesterday.
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The Madden demo was made available yesterday via Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. I posted some impressions Monday describing the new features, offering my own feedback on those and hinting at some potential controversy. Needless to say, it was nothing compared to the avalanche of criticism that hit the web throughout most of yesterday.
But why ?
I'll save my thoughts on the entire game for the review at this stage, but by far the most controversial addition to Madden 11 is the arrival of "Strategy Pad". There have been a lot of other criticisms but this is by far the most discussed.
For anyone who hasn't tried the demo, Strategy Pad is the new method for making pre-snap adjustments. Cast your mind back to the old method (you don't need to think too far back, just slip in the NCAA 11 disc and you'll see the system working perfectly fine in that game) which used a combination of triggers, face buttons and the sticks to send players in motion, call player specific audibles or send guys on hot routes among other things. The Strategy Pad is an attempt to simplify that entire process by mapping everything to the D-Pad - that's everything... to the D-Pad. Every formation audible, every D-line adjustment, everthing from the point at which you break the huddle.
At first I found myself instinctively pressing the triangle button and attempting to do my normal pre-snap adjustments in the traditional way. I had read some details about this change in advance but the implications were far from clear.
I'll confess, in principle it sounds like a good idea but in practice, it just doesn't work. I have no idea if a focus group was consulted about this or whether those who attended the community event offered feedback on the idea, but you don't need to play the game for long before you realise it is impractical to use efficiently and effectively. For a start, it requires more button presses than before in many cases. And have you tried manipulating the D-Pad at speed, there's a reason why few games use the D-Pad for anything other than... well, anything in fact! It's much easier on the PS3 where the D-pad is four separate buttons than on the Xbox 360 where it's a single button and you simply press the appropriate direction, but it's a pain in both cases. I frequently found even my relatively slim fingers pressing it up when I meant to press it right. Given the speed with which the CPU snaps the ball and the fact that as a result you are having to execute these instructions at speed... the strategy pad is a recipe for diaster.
There are two stories emerging as to why this change was made. The first is that it makes it more difficult for those who exploit the pre-snap audible feature to employ nano blitzes and that might be the case. Admirable, in principle and in practise it certainly is more difficult, that much is true. I'm not entirely sure about that however since I am sure the better approach to solving that problem would be via gameplay. Either that, or gamers will always find some element of AI to exploit - it's like Apple trying to stop hackers from jailbreaking the IPhone, you can keep trying to stop them but they'll always find a way.
The second is that the number of different combinations of buttons and sticks was too complicated and difficult for the rookie Madden gamer - that elusive individual who desperately wants to play Madden but is overwhelmed by anxiety and intimidation from doing so. This is the more likely given that this strategy seems to be increasingly prevailent with every new release.
The solution ? I don't know if it is possible for EA to patch the old system (you know, the one that has worked just fine in Madden videogames for just about the last 10 years) but it's something that the guys at Tiburon really need to consider.
To understand the reaction however, requires some appreciation of the context. Madden 10 was critically acclaimed as the best version released on current-gen consoles. Most of the gamers who played and enjoyed Madden 10 would have expected the success to be built upon - enhancements made in all facets of the game, not just in terms of gameplay but in terms of presentation and offline/online franchise. Enforcing a major change to an important part of the in-game strategy was inevitably going to receive criticism, especially on the back of minimal or no improvement to some of those areas of the game that needed development. Thus, you have your answer to the question that I posed back at the beginning of this post - why the criticism ?
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