Two videos and some screens released today give visual context to Madden NFL 11ās āGameflowā, described in Totiloās preview yesterday, and other features that designers say will halve the amount of time required to play a game.
Locomotion is showcased with Gameflow in the second video; this to me looks like an attempt to stretch out running plays and make them more exciting, rather than the vast majority of them locking up in a tackle animation at first contact, contact that is difficult for most to avoid under the old control set.
The rest of the screens give us a freeze-frame look at those concepts, plus one not mentioned ā the new kicking window.
If the playcalling in Gameflow is indeed authentic Iāll be thrilled with this. When they talk about the Saints throwing eight consecutive passes, Iām the kind of guy who would worry that calling that was either unrealistic or exploitive. But Iām not going to study two dozen teamsā game plans, so offloading that to the game, if executed well, is great. The problem is the play-calling AI in EA Sportsā football singleplayer modes has been horridly rigid and boring to date. This is going to have to be very deep to get good marks, and we canāt tell from just a few minutes of video.
As for running, game time, etc., these are the kinds of things theyāve worked on improving, in some fashion, for years. Yes, itās nice that they get that players donāt want siloed versions ā a training wheels family game here, a tailored AI experience there, etc. But a lot of us have heard this sort of thing before, just expressed differently. Maddenās pitching itself as reinvented, yet again, and will really need to live up to that claim.
