Video comparison between Madden 08 and 09 shows off graphical improvements

Samit, what do you think these details they're talking about that you apparently can't see. Extra plays? Announcers yelling different things? I'm curious what these evolutions that sports fans get excited about are, because I have no idea myself.

Don't let Jim hear you say that, lol.

it looks like they just changed the textures instead of making them actually better

@adultswim810: Um, what? If they changed the textures, and they look better, then how is that not “actually better”?

@Aerox: Well, it’s hard to explain if you’re not a sports gamer, but basically, even the smallest gameplay changes can make all the difference in a win or a loss. Things like the Hit Stick and Playmaker controls in Madden are “big things” — they were game-changing new features when they were introduced.

But, for example, if you’re allowed to “break out” of moves before the animation finishes, that’s huge. Think of hitting the O button to do a spin move, realizing that it’s going to end up in you getting tackled, and quickly tapping R1 to juke right instead. If you have to wait for the spin animation to finish, you’re going to get tackled. But if you can juke out of the spin before completing the move, you could be off to the races toward the end zone.

Seriously Samit how is this not just an incremental improvement over other Madden games.

The biggest change to player models "noticeable improvements have been made to light reflections on players’ helmets.". Destructoid likes to talk big about people going too easy on crappy cash whore video games, (Madden in particular) but then you go and cup EA's balls when they start showing this shit off.

Did you even read the "If you love it change it" Madden article?

@RestingSound: As far as I’m concerned, the player models looked fine last year — they didn’t need too much tweaking. Snow, however, is a big deal this year because of how crappy it looked in past years.

And if you read BigPopaGamer’s “If you love it, change it” Madden article, you’d know that it was pretty much completely tongue-in-cheek. Or at least, I hope it was, because if you want any of the stuff that BigPopaGamer talked about, then go play an arcade game. Madden is a simulation football game, which means that it tries to replicate the real game of football as much as possible.

If I didnt sucks so hard at football games I would get this, which sucks being how I f'n love football. GO BEARS! But I'm with you on the snow, most of the time it looks like a dusting.

Also I would like to point out that I recently got a 360, and I can glady play Tiger Woods 08. I'm a happy man.

Samit, you are right on the money. I was on my soapbox in the comments section of VE3D's Madden Comparison post saying the same things.

I think this stuff is pretty impressive. Its too bad its taken the 4th version of this generation (06, 07, 08, 09) to get there though. For NHL it only took 2 years (07, 08) to get really good and be a legitimate sports game of the year. They did a good job in showing the difference which isn't readily apparent to the people who say "$60 roster update!". I think that some of the Madden 08 stuff looks a little more blurry than it should though (especially in the footplanting comparison).

I'm so sick of the haters. Yes, from a casual view, 90% of the game is going to look the same as last year, 90% of the game is going to play the same as last year; thats true for any sports game. Football never changes, so its always going to look and play like Football! But the tweaks to the League Modes, AI, Animations & Online play can make such a huge difference in a game like this. Its easy to slap together a game that approximately looks and plays like Football and has a career mode (Madden 06), but its much harder to get all the details right and have a balanced AI which is fun to play against, which is what they've been doing the last 3 iterations. Its not just a roster update.

I don't understand why people who don't play sports games hate on them. Do they go around and hate on other genres that they don't like to play? I don't like Turn-Based Combat in RPGs, but I don't go around bashing Final Fantasy 7, because I know its one of the best games out there and it wouldn't be fair for me to judge the whole game based on one aspect that I dislike. Also seems like the Jap RPGs have had relatively the same formula to me since the NES days, but again, I'm not going to hate on it because I haven't actually sat down and played one start-to-finish.

Haters are delusional to think that they aren't throwing resources at this thing. Someone who DOES play sports games can notice a big difference year-to-year. There are people working on this game 11 months every year. If you don't feel the work of a team of people for a year is worth $60, then fine, thats your business. But don't think that they just have one guy come in and work on the game for a few days, and say "HAY GUYZ HERES MADDEN 09!". Some people say that these games should only be $30 since they come out yearly. If they cut the price in half, would people be satisfied with half the amount of work done on the game being cut in half?

Five easy steps to make Madden decent.

Step One: Throw out everything involving offense in this game, right down to the last coffee stained sticky note.

Step Two: Implement a decent running system. Likely source; NFL 2K5. Hell its been years now and they aren't allowed to make NFL games anymore so they probably won't mind.

Step Three: Implement a passing system that does not reward the 20yd drop and bomb.

Step Four: ....?

Step Five: Profit

Alternatively I present the two step program to profit, of which I am confident EA is fully aware of.

Step One: ....?

Step Two: Profit!

It's official: GameTrailers is biased against the year 2008.

Static models are easy.

So, what did they do as far as animation is concerned?