Loaded it up for the first time, and I’m stuck on the title screen with the football spinning at the bottom.
I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want to kill the mood, but at this point I can’t not say something. The game feels like a mess. My experience (4 exhibition games on All-American difficulty): 5 pick 6’s and a punt return touchdown… in 4 total games. 6 roughing the kicker penalties… the [uck fay]? I couldn’t call [uck fay]ing timeouts. It’s not 100% of the time, as I was able to call 1 or 2, but for the majority of the 4 games, I couldn’t call one. Caught a ball on the 1 yard line with 8 seconds… couldn’t call one. Down 2 scores and got a stop on 3rd down with 2:45 to go… couldn’t call one. The button didn’t work, and the menu didn’t offer an option. I even tried changing controllers. Nada. Unbelievable. Defense is almost unplayable. CPU players will bump into the ball carrier and not even try to tackle him. If you switch players after the throw, it regularly changes to a ridiculous option. User controlled players can’t turn with any sort of fluidity. AI blocking is laughably bad at times. 6 guys blocking 4 and they just let a guy run free. Or a DE will literally just run around a Tackle. Absurd looking. Some stats of note from my 4th game: Lost 70-56 (5 min quarters) Threw for 662 yards and 7 Yds Opponent ran for 250 yards and threw 7 TDs Oh, and I can’t access any online modes. All kinds of different error messages.
The commentary is goofy too. I think half the games I’ve played it said something like “this offense is firing and that’s why they have a big lead” even when the score is close Only saw one roughing the kicker, in fact I have barely seen any penalties at all. I think maybe 4 through about 8 games? That said I’ve only played one non-Road to Glory game so far. I had one game where the classic EA crap happened and it decided that I was not going to be able to do anything right. When I finally got some momentum and came back and was dominating the second half, the defense got 3 of their 4 sacks on the day… consecutively… to push me to 4th and 30 and out of tying field goal range. Didn’t have problem with timeouts. It’s not exactly a new thing, but you’d think with a 10 year break maybe they could have improved the coach playcalling in Road to Glory. I think it’s actually worse than it was then. All that [itch bay]ing and I’m still having fun. But yeah I haven’t played a football game since like Madden 23 so I have a whole lot of rust, particularly on D
I haven’t played a football game in 10 years. I put it on varsity. Seen 2 or 3 roughing the kicker penalties, 2 or 3 holding penalties. Haven’t had any trouble calling timeouts. AI blocking seems fine, idk. Pass defense is definitely a challenge. Best teams I’ve played are Kentucky and Iowa so not really ramping that up yet. When I throw a pick at this point it’s my own damn fault. I think I threw 1 pick 6 early on, and gave up a punt return TD on my first punt because I didn’t understand holding X to fill the meter and also shanked it. Will be interesting to see how the AI and stuff changes when I ramp up the difficulty
Honestly haven't paid any attention to the commentary, but the game forcing you to watch all sorts of extra shit before games, halftime, in between plays, etc. is annoying. Hopefully there's a setting to cut that shit out. Interesting - I've seen tons. Had a number of weird PI penalties too. A couple phantom ones on the CPU, and one offensive on me where my guy just didn't try to catch the ball and ran right into the defender, who intercepted the ball anyway. The defense is weird. I'm sure some of it is skill, but it's hard to understand how I can get so close to the ball carrier at times without engaging.
Yeah man - a good portion of it is definitely skill based and having not played a football game in some time. I have a natural muscle memory built up to hit stick by pushing the right stick towards the ball carrier, but I believe that makes you cut tackle now. So that hurt me a lot too. I'll have to weed that out of my game over time. I also played my 4 games against Alabama and Kansas, the latter of which is surprisingly good with an awesome dual threat QB and solid RB. And again, I started on All-American difficulty. But there's also a lot of weird shit that makes defense feel unnecessarily difficult: I had 1 play where I user controlled the LB, who was manned up on the RB. The OT showed run from the jump, so I immediately moved the sticks to run my guy hard off the edge into the backfield. He just stood there. The game literally would not let him move, even though I was user controlling him and telling him to run full speed into the backfield. It was like I wasn't allowed to play the game. I had another play where I blitzed right up the middle. The offense ran a read option play, so I took the RB. The QB kept the ball and ran the opposite direction. I had a CPU defender right there waiting for him, unblocked, and the defender just ran right past him - not in a way where he thought the RB had the ball or anything. The angle he took did not suggest he was chasing the RB. He just ran beside the QB, and then turned around to chase him, almost as if he never saw him or something. I took a video of this one, it was so bad. And, yeah, I could have switched players to control the outside defender and tackle the RB, but again, it was a read option play, so it was unclear who actually had the ball. I took the QB because that was the guy directly in front of the defender I was controlling. More generally, it's hard to explain just how weird the tackling proximity is. I frequently felt as if I was right on top of a ball carrier, just for my defender to not engage, or to dive and somehow miss. It was incredibly frustrating to consistently feel like I was in the perfect position, just to not even attempt to tackle. It also might have been my defensive line sucking, or a combo of my DL sucking and the Kansas OL being really good (?), but it just felt like constant giant holes for them to run through. I'd be in a run-stopping defense, with a play called to specifically stop the run, and the dude would just run through the line untouched anyway. Big gains were pretty standard, and they broke a number for long TD runs as well, to the point where it just left me thinking "I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do to stop that." Just a weird experience.
I had one pick 6 where the CPU threw it to a hitch on the far outside, and my corner, who was sitting in Cover 2, intercepted it while off screen. So I scored a Touchdown off an interception that I didn't do myself and didn't even see happen lol
There is nothing wrong with this though, right? There would be something wrong if that never happened.
I don't love the fact that it was off screen, but I get what you are saying. It stood out because it was my very first game and was an incredibly dumb throw for the CPU to make. The majority of that game felt like the CPU was calling plays as if it knew what I was running, and the opposing team (Bama) felt far superior to mine in almost every facet... and then... "wait... he threw THAT?" It felt so random and out of place.
If this is aiming to be a simulation (and that is what they are aiming for), sometimes bad throws will be made by the CPU. The hard part is being a human who simulates the performance of a high level QB's ball security. The CPU should be simulating both good and bad performances. And Milroe definitely has some bad throws every once in awhile. Exhibit A:
I can think of a dozen things people complain about from the game that you actually see on most Saturdays. Blocking is actually another example. When blocking is good, it is good. When it ain't, it's ugly.
