Digital Sportspage Blog

All sorts of impressions up at the Winning Eleven Blog. It’s worth a look if you want a lot of information on this title. First impressions seem positive. A quick rundown:

- More deliberate game speed, much more simulation than arcade style gameplay
- Much better balance between speedy dribblers and defenders
- Reminded players a lot of PES 5 (aka Winning Eleven 9).
- Addition of “Become a Legend” mode, which is essentially Fantastia mode from the J-League version of the game. Also, there is an online version of this, though it might be you and your buddies against the CPU, not human versus human multiplayer.
- Much better ball physics
- Rain effects gameplay better
- Better grass textures
- Better manual passing with right stick
- Skill moves now done with left stick/analog pad
- As for edit mode, I’ll quote the PESFan report:

PES 2009 improves on this again with the return of emblem editing, which will make the team selection screen much easier for me! You can either use the Pixel Paint method unveiled in the press release, or you can import a jpg file off the hard drive for the badge. The kit editing has also been improved upon with new template designs, as well as the ability to import jpg files off the hard drive for sponsor and manufacturer logos with enough room for 40 team’s images to be saved. There’s enough room on the shirts for one badge and one ‘logo’ design to be displayed at once so the people in the editing section should be able to make some top notch designs! Boot editing misses out again but with a plethora of designs and colours to choose from, PES players with a boot fetish should be satisfied with the amount on offer. The standard player editing options still exist, as do the team options. One added extra is the ability to import your own crowd chants, so all the scousers can finally replicate famous European nights with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ being belted out by the home fans in the dying minutes of a game.

And with all this good news, it looks like EA now has the exclusive license for La Liga. Though there’s no information as to whether that affects PES 2009.

Some more Head Coach impressions…

* I am still loving the draft, as I’ve played it over a few times to see some of the variation. However, I’ve encountered one problem. First, if you offer to trade up and make it to the negotiation screen, it seems like the CPU will always take an offer from one of the other teams (if you don’t make an offer). You can wreak havoc on the draft order if you keep asking to trade up after every pick.

* After the draft, you have the opportunity to sign five undrafted rookies (another great addition). In addition, you end up with a lot of camp invitees as well, all signed to near minimum contracts. Since you essentially no nothing about them, their overall ratings are highly inflated. For example, Geno Hayes who was scouted as a 57 overall shows up as a 77 overall. This is not a problem for the human user, as they realize that these ratings are inflated and will change as the pre-season continues. But the CPU doesn’t no this, and you can trade these players for high draft picks. I offered to trade an “86″ rated offensive lineman who wasn’t drafted, and got offered a second round pick from a few teams.

* I really wish the graphical engine was the same as in Madden. Not that I’m a graphics wonk, but there are fair number of issues with tackle animations not linking up well, or other oddities (spying linebackers seem to be having an epileptic fit on the field). However, playing from one of the far camera angles, this is much less of an issue. And watching the game up close, I absolutely love seeing a quarterback go through his progressions.

* Playbooks give me mixed feelings. It’s great to have a penalty for adding new plays/playbooks. But really, do professional football players need to learn a nickelback blitz all over again? Since I still haven’t made it through a full pre-season yet, I’m curious to see how playbook knowledge affects regular season games.

Although it needs a little polish, I am still having a LOT of fun with the game.

I played quite a bit last night, taking the Dolphins from the off-season, in order to go through free agency and the draft.

* I like the timed aspect of free agency…it really puts pressure on you to make a decision quickly. I signed quite a few free agents, since the Dolphins have tons of cap room. However, there wasn’t a lot of variety…you basically wait for all the other teams to bid, and then once there’s only one other team left, you make one bid. I’ve never seen the other team make a bid above that, and you always get the player.

A nice improvement would be having to decide whether you want to submit a bid without knowing if the other teams have bid. It would force you to be involved in bidding, instead of just watching and waiting for the price to stabilize and deciding whether you want to pay one bid more.

* I absolutely love the draft. It is extremely interactive, with lots of trade offers, player information, changes in approval ratings, the ability to trade up and trade down, etc. Playing with the Dolphins, I chose Jake Long with the #1 pick. One minor issue: my GM recommended I choose Long, but I wanted to look and see what teams were offering me to trade down, out of curiousity. In order to look at trade offers, you have to reject your GM’s recommendation, which makes him angry. I ended up choosing Long anyway, so that was unnecessary.

With the first pick in the second round, I really wanted to take a cornerback, but there was a run on the position. This was great, because I kept getting tempted to trade up to pick a good corner, but never could make an offer that would make a team trade down. None of my slated corners were available, so I ended up choosing a wide receiver (Devin Thomas). My next pick was late in the second round, and I wanted Brian Brohm. With nearly every pick before my late second rounder, I had to decide whether to try and trade up or hope that they wouldn’t pick my guy. (Something that would help: the ability to see the picking team’s need in order to judge whether they would be more/less likely to pick a certain position in the next round.) Fortunately, he dropped and I chose Brohm, followed by the corner Godfrey a few picks later.

Finally, with the last pick in the second round, DeSean Jackson was still on the board, as well as a 75 rated corner. I really didn’t need a wide receiver, but I wasn’t happy with the corners available. So I looked to trade down and got a very good offer from the Ravens. However, there is one thing about Head Coach that isn’t very intuitive: once you go into a negotiation screen (whether it be contract negotiations, trades, free agency), you can’t back out to do any research. I tried, and lost every trade offer, and was forced to pick Jackson (a pick that the fans loved). You have to remember to do your research before going into any of these screens, or you won’t be able to do anything.

Unfortunately, I don’t have too many gameplay impressions, as I kept getting a dirty disc error in the second half of my first preseason game. If I can get the game to work, I hope to have more impresssions later today.

Our NCAA Football 09 review is up.

I wish I could find the article or forum post at OS, where one of the developers said that Madden has a relatively small design team compared with other EA games.

I think that’s the reason by NCAA and Madden are slipping in terms of quality. NCAA and Madden have been been buggy messes. You can debate that having broken zones is bug. But usually the developer that release buggy games was 2k Sports. Things just didn’t work in their games.

In the last few years, we have seen some real issues from this team. In fact, Madden has needed a patch the last three years. Problems like draft classes not working and online issues have been the biggest. But this year’s fix list is incredible from a company that usually releases the most stable games.

Why? The demands of creating a next-gen game is more than Tiburon is allocating. EA Sports won’t do this but Madden needs a budget and team the size of games like Spore, Halo, Call of Duty. EA Sports do not want to commit those type of resources for a game that is released every year. It might not even make that great of a business sense.

Madden is their flagship title and it needs two patches even before it is released. And none of this really matters.

If there was a NFL 2k9, you might see that game steal some of Madden sales. When the exclusive contract was signed, people thought only innovation was to be hampered by the deal. Now it’s that EA Sports knows it can ship with bugs, some huge, that will barely affect sales.

I don’t believe it can do that every year. Madden’s sales have been relatively stagnant since killing off NFL 2k. And there have been some evidence that pre-order for Madden is down. There are signs that Madden is struggling to find new markets and consumers. Older games are being more cautious yet very demanding on Madden.

Yet, Tiburon and EA Sports can stave off all of this by giving Madden the resources it needs.

JRod also runs his own blog — Sensible Coasters.