Madden 10, Still Kind of a Turd

So I got Madden 10 (before the NFL season for the first time ever), and due to general boredom and being sick this week, I've played it top to bottom before the real NFL has taken a single regular-season snap. The verdict? Please, for the love of God, let NFL 2K come back so that there will be some competition to make sure the bugs get ironed out of Madden.

It plays mostly competently and looks great, but stutters at times, which happens often enough that occasionally you'll screw up a play or miss a kick due to it.

The thing that bugs me is that the AI is completely brainless. When you're on offense they basically just blitz you on every play. When you combine that with your O-line's inability to hold a block for more than 3 nanoseconds, you've pretty much got to run nothing but quick slants and screen passes all the way down the field. Don't even bother with rushing plays...they practically get to the quarterback before the handoff on rushes. And you could run 28 straight play action passes and the stupid AI would never adapt. Your 29th play could be a run and they'll still madly blitz past your cardboard O-line for a 5 yard loss. I don't even know why they put counters and misdirection plays in that game. The computer is never fooled. I guess it might be effective if playing against your friends, but unfortunately, I have none. Actually, I've never liked playing sports games against my friends because we're never equal in skill...either I can blow them away or vice versa. Anyway, I digress.

So the AI blitzes a lot, but you can still easily beat it, all the way up to All-Pro. When All-Pro ceased to be a challenge, I ramped the difficulty up to the maximum All-Madden, expecting the computer to get smarter, but it doesn't. Instead, it makes your players slower, your opponents faster, and now your teammates don't block downfield anymore. Seriously, Jason Campbell went 17/17 against me in like two and a half quarters before I had to shut the damn thing off.

Oh, and the player switch algorithm is borked too. Several times a game I press the button to switch to the nearest defender, and instead of cycling to the defender 2 feet away who's facing the offensive player and perfectly positioned to make the play, the game switches me to the defender 10 yards downfield.

This is what happens when we eschew free market capitalism with exclusivity deals.