“Bill Abner (longtime sports video game editor who’s worked for Computer Games Magazine and GameSpy) got (a retail copy of) Madden early. Basically, the verdict: it’s complete shit,”
“Have you tried the demo? All I can say is what the HELL was EA thinking? A HOLOGRAPHIC JOHN MADDEN?… I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned off with a game before. Add into that Bill Abner’s comments that in the full game, there are NO CPU Sliders, because hey EA knows your difficultly level, and I just cancelled my preorder.”
On the game difficulty testing: “At this point, I was actually laughing out loud. The actions of the secondary blocker for the running back show you that the CPU AI for the game is broken… before you actually get to play it. Talk about a time saver.”
“The funny thing is that I saw at least one instance where I allowed an 8 yard completion, but still got a passing grade for that particular test. Then on the next play, they made a 2 yard completion where I knocked them out of bounds… and failed the test.”
Some thoughts on FaceBreaker: “Facebreaker was EA’s attempt at bringing fun games like Ready To Rumble over to the next gen? Well they have done it — except it’s without the fun,” and “I think we’re all better served to just avoid EA’s attempt to try and make a horribly simplified fighting game with an absolutely awful control scheme,”