I should have the PC version of Madden by mid week. I’ll be blogging my thoughts on it as I prepare my GSpy review. In the meantime, there are a few people that already have the game. Blog Reader Mossfan led me to a thread at Operation Sports that is a tad disconcerting. Again, this is not ME saying this stuff to chill with calling me a gloomy gus, but if this is true it’s going to be quite the bummer.
For those of you that have not heard what the problem is, here is what Fred said:
“20 yard dropback shouldnt be an issue this year. whats going to be an issue is what we talked about on the radio show tonight, which is that animation where the CPU does a jetpack animation for you. Its tough to stop. we labbed with it online earlier tonight. You could send 3 guys in zone on that one WR and it couldnt be stopped a lot of the time.”
“ok this “jet pack” animation is definitely there and its damn easy to do. You just throw the ball high and the CPU will do the animation for you. Marcus from MM (Madden Mania) and I tested it. I’d tell him, what WR I was going to (throw to). He’d try dime, nickel quater, shading inside, and manually took his safety or DB. It worked, rarely. Most of the time the WR caught it. He could be surrounded by 3 guys and they couldnt stop it. Even when he was there manually for some reason the ball would just go above him and the wr would catch (it). Its pretty lethal on curls because the wr jumps. I havent figured out a way to stop it consistently.
BTW, it doesnt really matter how good your WR was. I was doing it with Mushin Muhammed, and he got injured and Justin Gage was just as effective. I could do it to the other side of the field as well and Bobby Wade, who sucks, would make the catch all the time.”
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Ok again this is not my observation; I’m simply the messenger here but this is in fact coming from a Madden website, and not vindictive NFL2K fans (of which there are many.) This super lob was in Madden 2003 and 2004 but was fixed last year so it would shock me to see it back in ’06. I’ll be sure to test this myself with the PC edition next week and I hope that these guys are exaggerating its effectiveness or maybe it’s something a very slider tweaks can fix. I REALLY want to play a good NFL game this year, so I hope this is all being overblown.
The Blog for the Sports Gamer 
Can’t wait for you to get the game and let us now how bad this flaw is. I was really looking forward to playing Madden this year after NCAA let me down and now this pops up. By the way, I do not think Fredsmooth21 has touched the sliders in attempt to try and fix the problem, so maybe you will be able to pull this off.
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The game isn’t even out and they are already ripping it. I guess its ‘BROKEN’ and they haven’t even played it. What a bunch of professionals!What a wonderful group of people. If the games aren’t 100 percent perfect, they are ‘broken’. What great logic. They should just renamed this site :webitchandcomplainbecausewesuck.blogspot.com
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Never saw this in 2003 or 2004 even though I play a couple of hundred games online a year.I did see the video of a full game of 2006 and I didn’t see anything like this except maybe one 3rd and long pass completed to Holt against a prevent defense. But I didn’t think Holt jumped real high for it so I’m not sure it was the infamous jetpack.Oh well, we’ll see. I think Vision could slow you down enough that it’s hard to take advantage of. Then again, Precision will let you throw high so there could be a lot of jump balls.As long as streaks aren’t as easy to exploit as they were before 2005, we should be okay. If they are, I guess Madden just keeps going in circles.
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Hasn’t stopped you from reading, NCAA2004. And you think we’re pathetic? Why not take the time you spend coming up with killer blogspot domains and just play more NCAA 2006 if you enjoy it so much. Or get a good therapist; one that prescribes drugs, preferably.
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Ahh ncaa2004, I was hoping you’d show up. A) Why not go and yell at the guy who made these observations? How is this possibly my fault and where did I say that the game was “broken.” Oh, wait, I didn’t. Take your Riddlin and then read the post again. B) I don’t play NCAA 2006, when I played it, on Varsity. That late game AI ineptness was on AA. But arguing with you is like arguiubg with a 4 year old. You hear what you want to hear. Oh, and just so you know, the game level has nothing to do with the late game AI, but why let facts get in the way of unabashed company loyalty?C) I’ve never liked the NB2K series, as I said in the post about the preview. I do think it’s cool what they’re trying to do. Again, you hear what you want to hear because you’re either such an EA Sports fanboy that even the hint that another sports game made by another company could be good destroys your own self worth…or you’re just an idiot. Either way you’re a very sad little dude. And I pity you. But feel free to keep making insane points that make no sense, arguing over things that people never even said in the first place. I’ll be happy to smack ’em out of the park. It’s like debating a Chatty Cathy doll.
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You know, if I didn’t post on message boards I never would have guessed that there are people like NCAA 2004 roaming this world. Scary, don’t you think? I really hope that you are a young kid and not some ignorant adult.
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Doesnt surprise me in the least. I was afraid of this…where’s their incentive? It’s simply a by-product of a company that rid itself of all it’s competition. Broken, not broken…bugs, bug-free. It makes no difference to EASports as the game will be a huge seller either way.
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Have any of you taken time to read the thread in question?The guy who posted it doesn’t even have the game, he was commenting on someone elses post. That someone else then came into the thread, said that the original poster had blown it out of proportion and that they had already found ways to stop it and it wasn’t a huge problem.The original poster then started arguing with the guy, the same guy who he was quoting in his post! Basically you have a guy trying to stir shit up, he was happy as hell until the guy he was quoting showed up.Some of you people should take the time to read, instead of just following Bill’s word like he was a cult leader. Christ he even said it wasn’t his opinion!
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Didn’t know how to edit my first post. I went back and re-read the whole thread. I might have been wrong when I said the poster was trying to stir up crap, as he asked for the thread to be closed. Seems like the whole thing just got blown out of proportion. This is what happens when someone gets the game early and posts something like that without taking the proper time to test it.
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Yeah, that is what happens. People came to the thread and it was too long for them to read it all so they started posting things that were not relevant and the whole thread got out of hand.I am surprised you did not notice that the thread starter (me) was also the first person to comment in this part of the blog :).
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I just blogged the review of this abomination of a game. Please speak out if you are a fan of competition in the football gaming arena. Competition is good for everyone. -Santoromonopolion
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