Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

WARNING! Rant incoming!

The Kranz, one of our long-time podcast listeners called me out on my wish for the Madden series to just die. In our forums, he wrote:

Millions of people love Madden, yet you want to kill it and without solid reasoning George. Don’t cop out and say “competition” because you didn’t come to that til you were prodded by other podcast member. Do you just hate sports in general?

Oh, Madden, how I hate thee… let me count the ways…

There are SO many reasons why the Madden series should die. Madden 06, 07, and 08 all come to mind as the top reasons. It has taken 5 years… 5 YEARS before they even STARTED approaching the featureset that was present in NFL 2k5.

In fact, I STILL play NFL 2k5 quite regularly. No other football game since then has even approached it.

One main beef with Madden has always been the playbooks and other elements of the interface. I hate the way they lay things out in that stupid EA Sports interface they have in all their games, now. And when it comes to pick a play, (at least on previous versions) the interface gets herky jerky. That’s inexcusable.

I’ve also hated not having online leagues. NOW, this year will be the first time a Madden game has online leagues, so I’ll reserve judgement on Madden until I actually play it, but every year… EVERY YEAR I plop down $60 for the next roster update because I AM A FOOTBALL FAN and I’ve been disappointed EVERY TIME.

And I’ll tell you what… judging by the awful horribleness that is NCAA 09, I am not optimistic.

From a gameplay standpoint, Madden has always felt turnover-heavy. I guess that can make for an exciting game, but it mainly just detracts from the overall experience. There also seems to be no gradation between deifficulty levels. You’re either completely destroying the CPU players or it’s OMG HOW MANY INTS IS THE CPU GOING TO GET? 20 IS ENOUGH! Oh, I should also mention that the AI is horrible when it comes right down to it. Also, in 08, lineman are pretty much useless for who knows what reason.

Don’t even get me started on owner mode. With 05, you could manage ticket prices, and all sorts of other aspects of your franchise. Still can’t do that.

Oh, and 08 had no formation substitutions! W! T! F! SRSLY??? Yeah, so you can’t move LB’s and WR’s around on different formations. THAT IS PURE GARBAGE!

Should I go on? Should I start mentioning the game-freezing bugs? Or the framerate issues on the PS3?

Also, John Madden is a complete babbling tool. I wish they would take him back OUT of the game.

Wait… do I hate sports? So now, if I hate Madden I must automatically hate sports? What kind of sense does that make?