So, here's my impressions after playing it almost non-stop since midnight Tuesday. Just so you guys know, I'm on the Xbox360
- The gameplay rocks. This is by far the smoothest playing football game ever. Beyond that, the most realistic. Teams play like they do in real life. It's also insane how different it is using Tony Romo when I play my friend with default rosters, and then switching to Carson Palmer on my Franchise team that I drafted. I can make passes with him that Romo could never make. Subtle things like that make me love the game.
- Speaking of Franchise, it's solid as well. Fantasy draft returned, which made me happy. Relocating is also back. They don't quite give you the control of everything like you had in Owner Mode, but it's close enough.
- Passing works. I play on All Pro and I can actually throw the football. This is the opposite in NCAA. I play on any difficulty higher than Pro (or the equivalent) and everything I threw got picked. The AI was impossible to pass against, cause they jumped every route. Glad to see they fixed that issue in Madden. INTs are still somewhat frequent, but not to the extent of NCAA. I'm not terrified to throw the football.
- The game runs smooth as hell. I, as stated earlier, have it on the 360, so I get the joy of seeing it run at 60fps (poor PoS3 owners only get 30fps), and it definitely shows. The animations are the best I've seen in any football game.
- There are negatives. Interceptions are somewhat frequent. I throw quite a few, but a lot of them are purely stupidity. The o-line seemingly breaks down constantly. I've been sacked 19 times in 5 games in my Franchise mode, and whenever I play a friend of mine, I get sacked at least 6 times and he doesn't even blitz. Fumbling is also an issue. Bush has fumbled five freaking times in five games for me, slightly unacceptable.
- As for the AI, they can be stupid sometimes, and I'm playing on All Pro (2nd hardest). I pick off tons of passes. If you blitz five people you're almost guaranteed to hit the QB. To show how easy it is to sack, I've got 10 through five games with AJ Hawk. The QB has a tendency to make bad choices to say the least.
- Lastly, comeback AI is there, even in human vs. human games. Against the CPU, I ended up losing a game cause I couldn't score in the 4th. Their defense magically shut me down completely after giving up 31 through 3 quarters and scored 17 unanswered in the 4th, beating me 48-31. And today, against my friend, it was tied 17-17 going into the fourth. At that point, Romo forgot how to complete a pass and my defense forgot how to play and I gave up 36 points in five minutes. Slightly ridiculous.
In general, I love the game. It runs smooth. It looks great, and I'm playing on an SDTV. The AI is tough and plays like the the real life counterpart of the team. In general, despite it's flaws, the game is still the best football game since probably Madden 04 or 05 (I didn't like NFL 2K5) and I would definitely recommend it to anyone that halfway enjoys football games.
Lastly, not that anyone cares, I ended up getting 2nd place in a Madden tourney today. Invoked the 21 point mercy rule on my first round opponent, 28-7, and then what was supposed to be a 2nd round game ended up being the final round, and I got beat. Tied at 17 going into the 4th, my team forgot how to do everything and I got smoked that quarter.
