By Damon
A lot has changed since
EA released Madden 2003 with online play. The community has grown by leaps and bounds. People are now realizing that while they can still pound on the local guys they play with there is always someone out there that can put a pounding on them. The online gaming has made Madden grow in a lot of good ways but along with the good you always have some bad.
While Madden is the closet thing to playing in the NFL that any of us will ever experience it’s not perfect. No game can be perfect… It's a game. What most call nano blitzes are pretty easy to find by searching Madden sites around the internet. Some have tried to now separate these blitzes into two categories… “nano” and “enhanced”. Enhanced being a blitz that can be countered and nano being one that cannot be countered by the offense. I however do not believe in this separation intended to make enhanced acceptable and nano unacceptable. Both of these type of blitzes are created by moving one or more defensive players from there default spot (set by
EA) to another location. To me there is no difference. I believe the game should be played the way
EA released it to be played and not tampered with.
Now lets talk about the effects these blitzes have on the Madden Community. I don’t feel they affect the “hardcore” players as much as they do the players who aren’t as serious about Madden. Let me give you an example. Lets say that two high school kids play Madden against each other after school for a few hours and have very even games. One of the kids is browsing the internet one day and finds a detailed description of how to create one of these blitzes. He prints out the sheet and memorizes exactly what to do. The next day the kids play Madden and the new blitz tears the other player up. He can’t do anything on offense and looses every game by a large margin. The player with the new blitz finally tells his friend what he has done. The next day his friend finds a way to counter this blitz on offense on the internet but also finds another nano blitz he can use himself. All we have done here is create a vicious circle of glitches instead of a fun game for these high school kids.
I also feel that a lot can be learned about football from playing Madden and NCAA for that matter. If Madden had been what it is today when I was in high school I think I would have understood football significantly more than I did. I had no idea about the overall picture especially on defense, but only what I was assigned to do. Madden has taught me a lot of that over the years. But... when you add in these blitzes the game of strategy and football knowledge gets thrown out the window and it becomes again a game of who can nano blitz more.
What we can do about this is q question that is always asked. Here are my thoughts. First of all I am sure everyone has noticed that this year if you move a Defensive Lineman manually and then switch to another player he is moved back into his default position. This was a great addition by
EA but I suggest it be done for every player on the field. This would stop almost all of the nano and enhanced blitzes immediately. There seems to be no way to stop the blitzes from spreading across the cyber world but what I wish is that they were used by
EA only to prevent them from happening in the next release and not to promote them as valid gameplay.
