NCAA Football/Madden 2005 : First Look

NCAA Football 2005

Taken from IGN.com

April 19, 2004 - As the seasons wear on, EA\'s two popular football franchises, NCAA Football and Madden NFL, are starting to look less like fraternal twins and more like distant cousins. NCAA Football 2005, for the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube, is taking another huge step towards differentiating the game of college football from pro football thanks to the inclusion of the new Home Field Advantage feature. If there\'s any doubt that EA isn\'t serious about separating the two football simulations, look no further than the fact that Playmaker control on the right analog stick --a huge addition to Madden 2004-- will not be included in NCAA Football 2005. Improvising on the fly isn\'t as big a part of the college game as the jitters, momentum and crowd noise of playing in a hostile environment so that\'s exactly where NCAA 2005 is going to hang its helmet.

The home field advantage will lend ratings and composure boosts to the home team depending on the size of the crowd and intensity of the rivalry. The developers at EA Tiburon have ranked the top 25 toughest places to play in college football with Tennessee at the top at the time of this writing. This means when the Vols host Georgia, the house will be packed and especially vocal throughout the game. The size and subsequent intensity of the crowd is limited by the size of the stadium so that 100,000+ screaming Wolverine fans in Ann Arbor will be louder and more disruptive to the visiting Buckeye players than a full house (90,000) at the Rose Bowl even if it\'s USC versus UCLA. The volume of crown noise matters because you\'ll hear the extra roar coming out of your speakers and the visiting players on offense won\'t be able to hear audible and hot route calls when they\'re on offense. The "hype the crowd" control will now come with an on-screen meter for the home team so you\'ll see and hear the crowd getting more and more intense as you repeatedly mash the button. When the crowd-o-meter maxes out, the screen will begin to shake and, if you\'re playing against a buddy, his or her controller will start to vibrate.

If that\'s not distracting enough for the visiting team while they\'re offense, the fact that audibles and hot routes simply won\'t be heard by receivers and backs could be devastating. This comes with a unique set of animations of wideouts walking around the line of scrimmage, leaning in and straining to hear the quarterback as he\'s barking signals. They\'ll shrug their shoulders and throw their hands up in frustration as an indication that your audible wasn\'t heard. This means that receiver will more or less be running a useless route on that particular play. The thought is, you were calling an audible for a reason; you saw something you didn\'t like from the defense. Now your receiver has no choice but to run the route that you called in the huddle, since he doesn\'t know what you want him to do now. Former University of Pittsburgh star Larry Fitzgerald told us that normally he would use hand signals to communicate audibles while playing in hostile environments but crowd noise would force them to keep it pretty simple. However, he\'s a first round pick for good reason.

Utilizing the home field to your advantage is obviously a way to take audibles away from your opponent at any point in a game, but all of this ties into the new match-up stick and composure meters in the game. If a true freshman is starting at quarterback for Florida at Neyland Stadium, he\'s going to be especially easy to rattle even before the defense starts riling up the Volunteer crowd. Before each snap you can use the match-up right analog stick to show the composure of each player on the field. There are only three settings --composed, medium and shaken-- so you can be sure the freshmen Gator is only going to be medium at best. When you push the match-up stick in different directions to check the position groupings, the composure meter over each player\'s head is a full, half or empty circle next to a dynamic overall ratings bar. Rattled players actually lose ratings points in categories crucial to their position while confident players will get ratings bonuses. This way you and your opponent will be able to quickly see who\'s hot and who\'s not on any play.

The composure meter simply lets you know who\'s more or less likely to crack on that next play. To cause a player to lose composure on either offense or defense you simply do bad things to them individually. A rattled QB is more likely to throw an incompletion or an interception so when he does, he becomes even more shaken. Consistently throwing to a receiver for big yards will boost his confidence and totally wreck the opposing cornerback\'s composure as a game goes on. But the system works on a more subtle level as well. Hitting a quarterback or receiver consistently even when they don\'t have the ball, when done legally, will eventually build up the composure of an individual. The new tipped and loose ball system will keep plays live a lot longer, so there will be even more opportunity to lay some big hits legally.

The visiting team can take the crowd out of games and stay composed by consistently completing passes, making key tackles, converting third downs and scoring touchdowns, obviously. Team captains are being introduced this year to counter the home field advantage. Upperclassmen can call timely timeouts to calm your players down and get them back into the game with a little composure. Kickers can be iced before a potential game winner as well.

Longtime NCAA Football fans who love building their own powerhouse programs will appreciate the fact that your composure management skills from game to game will build up over the course of the season. If you consistently get your team to perform in hostile environments, they\'ll come into games with more confidence and won\'t be bothered by the rowdiest of crowds. Again, Fitzgerald told us that this was the level he was on as a sophomore for the Panthers. The great ones stay composed. Sounds like composure will be a key component in building a Heisman Trophy winner in NCAA Football 2005.

The home field advantage and player composure components of NCAA 2005 are likely just the tip of the football in what will be a laundry list of enhancements to the franchise. For example, there will be all new user-controlled celebrations this time around, but when asked if that means in addition to the ones found in last years game or simply new replacements, EA reps would only re-affirm that there will be all new user-controlled celebrations. Because of this, IGN will have much more on NCAA Football 2005 in the coming weeks and months.

Videos(Right click to save):
Matchup Stick
Tip Drill
Big Hits

Madden NFL 2005

Taken from IGN.com

April 19, 2004 - "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

Those were the words of Joe Theismann, who ironically proved his own point by merely speaking.

And while nobody in football should be called a genius, the same can\'t be said about football game developers. EA Sports and ESPN Videogames continue to innovate the genre with competition fiercer than the Panthers and Pats, and in their 2005 games, both companies are striving to not only outdo each other, but themselves at the same time.

The Tiburon team, who develops the Madden series for EA Sports, has been working on Madden NFL 2005 since before the release of 2004, and feel like they\'ve been able to implement some new features and functionality that will separate and distinguish themselves from ESPN, even if they refuse to tell us exactly what all of those features are (they will be unveiled at E3 in May).

What we did manage to uncover, and even get our hands-on for a time, was already arresting and formidable, as the Madden game is following its namesake for possibly the first time in series history, working more to improve its defense than any other aspect of gameplay (the real Madden coached the Raider linebackers before becoming head coach).

Let Bruce-Bruce Hit It
While the NFL is full of jarring "de-cleaters" as the big man likes to say, the Madden game has traditionally been more about a defender diving toward the ball carrier, the ball carrier falling over, and the whistle blowing. Every once in a while, you might see the quarterback crunched and the crowd in the room will wince, but nothing close to the degree seen on a typical Sunday in Baltimore or Tampa.

This is about to change. And it\'s about to change in dramatic fashion.

Enter "The Hit Stick".

On defense, the right analog stick transforms into this aforementioned Hit Stick, where a well-timed flick turns into some of the biggest hits ever seen in a football simulation. All of these new hits were motion captured where the guy running with the ball in the funny black suit didn\'t know when or where the tacklers were coming from, and the results are a series of intense animations where you\'re left scratching your head about the current health of the poor guy who had to do the mo-cap work (hope he had insurance).

All of the hits are legal, clean shots that if performed correctly are more likely to cause fumbles than a typical tackle. But that doesn\'t necessarily mean that the hits will cause injury, as the NFL mandated that for EA to institute the Hit Stick, the increased violence couldn\'t lead to an increase in the number of players holding their heads and rolling on the turf.

There are more than 10 Hit-Stick animations, taking into account where the defender is attempting to tackle the runner. Whether you\'re launching yourself up high or grabbing the back of the jersey and slinging the ball carrier down from behind, you won\'t be disappointed with the payoff. The thing is, utilizing the Hit Stick carries with it a definite risk. When playing against the Falcons, for instance, it is easy to deliver a fierce blow to Warrick Dunn and watch him spiral down in pain. But try hitting a bigger back like TJ Ducket, and Ducket merely brushes the flying defender off and continues running down field. Also, since the defender more than likely leaves his feet to deliver the big hit, rather than attempting to wrap the ball carrier up in a more mundane animation, this also leaves the defense more vulnerable to missing completely on the de-cleater, and leaving a huge hole for the runner to burst through.

Leveling the Playing Field
But defense is not all about crushing tackles -- if that was the case, there would already be a statue of Chuck Cecil in Canton. So besides the Hit Stick, there are plenty of strategic additions as well, and for the first time, it really feels like the defense was given its due.

The biggest change to the defense is the addition of defensive hot routes. Using the right analog stick pre-snap, you can press down to blitz, up to enter a hook zone (medium zone to stop tight ends, hooks, curls), press left to play in spy formation, or right to drop into a flat zone. This will enable wannabe defensive coordinators the ability to match-up more effectively against opponents who are sending players in motion and calling hot routes of their own.

But that\'s not the end to the defensive improvements. You will also finally be able to call coverage audibles for individual players. So now, instead of having to press all of your defensive backs at the same time, bringing your safeties up with your corners, you can match-up more effectively by pressing with your best corner, while keeping your safeties back in their original coverage (this only works in man-to-man defense).

Also fixed is the area of defensive pursuit. Last year, no matter how good of a defensive player you were, there was always the Vick-factor. Yes, cover athlete Michael Vick could run around for days and wait for the open man or simply takeoff up field and was so damn fast, he could nearly beat you single handed. This year, Vick is still fast, but the defense will pursue him, and all ball carriers better, taking smarter angles, and generally playing the ball more intelligently. The defensive line A.I. for instance, has always been geared toward sacking the quarterback. This season, they will react better to the play that is happening in front of them, using a finer awareness of the field to try and cutoff Vick before he scrambles, and attempt to contain quarterbacks better in the pocket. Defenders will also do a more superior job of knowing where their teammates are, eliminating the instances of all defensive linemen chasing Vick to one end of the field and watching him throw the screen back to Dunn in the open flat.

The A.I. will also help nudge user controlled players toward taking the best angle. This sounds like a scary prospect, but it\'s really unnoticeable and is very subtle (it can also be turned off). If you\'re pursuing a ball carrier and about to make the tackle, but you\'re a little off on your angle, this will help correct your angle so that you can still tackle the runner instead of whiffing the wrap and diving right past.

In terms of defensive back A.I., the corners will play even more aggressive than last year, going for more picks and swatting at more balls. The strange bug of defensive backs going into a catch animation behind the receiver who just caught the ball also appears to have been fixed. You will even see more chucks at the line and fighting between wide receivers and cornerbacks. They don\'t just rub off each other anymore, as there are actual sequences of animations as the wide receiver tries to work his way off the line against press coverage.

The Muscle Behind the Brains
Not only did the A.I. behind Madden receive an upgrade, but so did the big man\'s muscles. All new player models include improved definition of pads, and athletes like David Boston looking more ripped than ever with sharpened (some would say juiced) looking biceps. New animations include helicopter spins for receivers who are hit mid-air, defenders striping the ball with one hand while attempting to wrap the runner with the other, and blockers who finally sprint on counters and lead the way for the running backs.

Outside of the lines, the weather will change during gameplay, showing off the new rain, snow, and haze effects, as will the lighting inside the stadium depending on the time of day.

On the Clock
Overall, Madden already looks extremely impressive. Is it a work of genius? We\'ll have to wait to see the finished product for that determination. But either way, the defensive engine already appears to be quite a bit smarter than any game in Madden history. So smart, in fact, it would even make good old "Norman" proud.

Videos(Right click to save):
Pre-Snap Defense
Hitstick

Looks good... I\'ll probably be getting both.

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All people do is complain about how EA puts out the same games over and over, yet they continue to innovate in ways like this.  Oh, and someone would be pressed to say any place is harder to play than The Horse Shoe.