"We are now 3 weeks into the the official NFL season, and we have almost a full month of "professional" critic reviews and customer reviews for Madden NFL 13 to look at. Have PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 players of Madden NFL 13 agreed with critics on the game? Brew yourself some coffee, and let's take a look!", writes CoffeeWithGames.
VGChartz's Adam Cartwright: "This is the sixth entry in a series of articles I’m writing that will look at all of the games available in a particular genre on the Vita. The articles will highlight all Vita-native games, as well as any backwards-compatible PSP and PS1 titles that can be downloaded in English (i.e. from the EU or NA stores), and will include some commentary on how well those games run on Vita and whether they fill any missing gaps in the library."
In many ways, this past console generation was a brutal one for sports video games. While other genres flourished, sports gamers were subjected to an irreversible thinning of the herd, losing MLB 2K, 2K Sports football, NHL 2K, both NCAA basketball franchises, and seeing arcade sports games all but vanish. Competition, which breeds innovation, is weaker than ever. But that’s not to say some standout games didn’t arrive as well.
TG writes: Want to know who's going to win Sunday's big game? I'll tell you. It's not going to be the Broncos or the Seahawks. It's going to be John Madden.
Who ever wrote this must live in Denver. I know it's Legal there now but don't smoke too much. It may cause insanity.
Madden STILL lacks player weight, player momentum, proper foot movement (too much sliding and zig zagging), realistic looking sideline player models, enough penalties (is illegal contact or PI ever called that much at all in Madden?), good A.I, realistic attempts at tackles (the IE tackles really don't resemble tackles in real-life that much at all), a good and actual working challenge system, realistic pursuit on the ball, (players zooming to pick it off or sliding), receivers that aren't passive and actually try to move to get the ball, good CPU play, etc. They screwed the offline gamer with no roster edit, CO-OP PLAY, or watching the CPU play for those gamers who are either tired of blowing out the CPU on all-madden and want a challenge by building a great team and simulating it, or for the gamers that are physically impaired.
Apparently they couldn't even get uniforms correct: http://www.operationsports....
This is an example of why people hate Madden.
Oh yeah, they added Total Control Passing.
TCP was in a game made 8 years ago called "NFL 2K5", which was actually really good, for its time. That game let you talk to trainers to see if a player was injured or ready to go, they let you check your e-mail from your staff, and let you prepare your team for a game (by simulating film watching), something a coach ACTUALLY DOES, no, a coach DOESN'T "buy XP packages" or players DON'T "earn XP" and get better by putting up good stats Look at Aaron Rodgers, he got better by the coaching staff helping him out on the bench and fixing any flaws he had coming out of college (whether it was accuracy, mechanics etc.), not by letting Aaron Rodgers magically get great 500 yard passing games that will somehow magically make him a better player, which is EA's logic. hey let you practice b doing scenarios, but don't those get annoying have to do the same scenarios in which not even all of them work?
Yet IGN gives Madden NFL 13, a 9/10.
Nice observation and write up on an interesting topic.
It's become more and more obvious this gen that many writers from bigger outlets, like IGN, get some type of payment for reviewing big budget games such as Madden or Call of Duty.
Getting good reviews can be a make or break deal for publishers and landing in the 80-100 review percentile is almost crucial to have chance of getting the investment back. Of course, the investment nowadays is a lot bigger. Games cost more to make and in return need to sell more copies.
Also, these PR reviews can be easily spotted when you, as a somewhat experienced games has had a chance to play the game yourself. Like you said, sometimes they tend to ignore stuff to keep the scores high for big budget titles while at the same time bashing smaller titles for very minor issues.
I'm especially cautious when I see heavily online oriented games being reviewed before they are even available to the public (again COD). How do you make a fair assessment of the full online experience that way? Again, IGN probably has an agreement to publish their review at a time that is strategically good for the publisher i.e. a day or two before release.