Madden-ing Glitch Irks Gamers

theodp writes "A vexing glitch in Madden NFL 2005 has players complaining in online forums and even demanding a recall. Because repeated offensive shifts exhaust the defense before the ball is snapped, EA's forced online players to turn off the fatigue setting, which disables the exploit, but spoils the realism of the game. At least you've got an excuse for that first-round Madden Challenge loss."

Re:yes, however...

[Mike Hawk]

Why do you assume it was never caught? Just because a bug wasn't fixed doesn't mean noone knew about it.

Re:Wait a sec...

[Alkaiser]

That's not a "cheat", it's the way the game works. That's a "bug". You can find a good player who won't exploit it, but the blame lies on the company for producing it not the player for using it.

This isn't the first completely retarded Madden bug. The first version on the PS2 I had, it took me 2 games before I figured out an onside kick didn't have to travel 10 yards in the Madden world. Pretty soon, the computer was getting blown out 210-7.

Re:Why don't they just patch it?

[EllF]

If and only if the patch directly relates to the online play experience. This probably falls under that umbrella definition, but Microsoft -has- been funky in the past about allowing patches.

Re:ESPN2K5 has similar issues

[AvantLegion]

The DT "exploit" (more like an AI hole) can be dealt with by having a back stay in on pass protection on that side, or better yet, call play-action passes (which show run block and don't try to hone in on stunting linemen) Shouldn't exist, no, but easily dealt with.

Manual Blitz...

[way2slo]

Big deal. Logical game flaws have been around for decades. Back in my old SNES days, I found a logic glitch in Madden '95 where I could sack the opposing QB about 90% of the time it called a passing play. It would also stop most run plays for negative yards too. The trick was this:

I pretty much worked out of the nickle and dime defensive packages the whole game. Right before the snap, you quickly adjust my defensive line close together and nudge them an inch forward then you pick on of the two in the center and have them take a step back. When the ball is snapped, their offensive linesmen will block yours, but the one that is suppose to block the one you control will block someone else. The double-teamed defensive tackle gets plowed out of the way leaving a nice hole for you to run through and sack the QB. There were a few run plays that could counter this, but the computer rarely called them. In season mode, my record for sacks by a single player is 136 by Bruce Smith. I don't know how many his teammates had, but it had to be similar.

Another one of my favorite SNES games with broken logic was NHL Stanley Cup.
#85 of the Oilers scored 473 goals in one season with only 917 shots on goal. (The counter rolled over somewhere around 250)
Most goals by a team in a game: Oilers 30 out of 51 shots on goal
Most goals in a game by a single player: #16 St. Louis - 17 out of 24 shots.

The trick was to get a break-away with a fast skater, come up along the boards and angle towards the net at the dots, then when you get to the dots - coast. This draws the goalie away from the net and towards you. When you see him advance, you skate around him to the front of an empty net. Some goalies are quick enough to recover, but you should still be able to sneak in a few goals a game against the best.

Another game, Super Tennis, the easy way to beat Don J. is to lob to one of the back corners then run to the middle of the baseline. Don J. always smashes back up the middle. You use his hard smash against him by returning it up the opposite side of the court.

So what?

[Grave]

I find it vaguely amusing that Madden is beset with glitches right after EA won the big contract with Microsoft to secure XBox Live! support. I find it much more amusing that ESPN NFL 2K5 is a superior football game for much less. At the game store I work at, we've sold a roughly equal number of the two games. But most of the Madden sales were on release night and in the two days following. I've not heard a single person say that they liked Madden over ESPN after having played both. Not one. That's pretty surprising when you consider how picky a lot of gamers are, especially with football games.

Of course, I enjoy seeing EA Sports suffer a bit, because they pushed out all other competitors, and had a near defacto monopoly on sports titles. It looks like ESPN's $20 gamble has worked, however.