After a weekend of ESPN NFL 2K5...
 

I'll let you know right away that I went into this year rooting for Madden.

I couldn't hold out. I had to buy the game. The $20 price was just too good to pass up. I brought it home and popped it in. I ran through the basic training tutorial. Played a few games on Pro. I'm at All-Pro level now.

2K5 is a really solid game. It's a lot of fun and real nailbiting when you get a good game going. Then you get to a 3rd and short on offense, pull that perfectly placed R trigger to scramble and try to run it in for the first, but your players don't block for you. or...you rush the quarterback and and get through the o-line and the qb rolls out into one of my dbacks, but the dback is literally running circles around the tight end who's stopped and waiting for a pass. or...you intercept the ball and everyone on your team doesn't know what to do so they stand there while the other team get by them and tackle me. I've never returned an INT for a TD and be surrounded by my own team. I've only played 15 games though.

You get what you pay for. Sega got me to buy their game so they can brag about how many millions bought their franchise. I doubt their marketing trick is going to work in the long run though. There are way too many bugs and missing AI in this game. Madden should lower their price just to buy some of the ESPN players hearts.

Well, I think the game is pretty solid, but it's had to have the perfect AI in football; there are so many variables.
I'm not certain of much in life, but I guarantee there will be glitches in Madden that people will be bitching about as well.

And not to criticise or anything, but do we really need yet another ESPN NFL 2K5 thread????

Is their a way to check on the status of the espn servers. I cant seem to find a game online right now.

i just requested you to be on my friends list look for me online

Re: After a weekend of ESPN NFL 2K5...
 

I finished my first "season" last night, although I hate not just having a single season option only, instead of this Franchise BS. Flat out, the passing game completely sucks, yea it may be real close to simming the real game, but that doesn't make it fun. I'm averaging at least 3 interceptions each game, with under 100 yards passing.

I have been playing on the pro difficulty with all the passing relevant sliders all the way down with no difference. The defensive line seems to get through way to quickly and no matter who I throw to, by the time the ball gets to the receiver, he is covered by three guys. I find it completely impossible to throw over the middle close to the line, way to many bodies, either gets tipped or intercepted, doesn't matter if it's a hard or soft throw.

The running game is a completely different, it's way to darn easy to run on the comp AI, even with sliders above average. I had over 2000 yards this morning when the season ended with the Panthers.

The franchise mode sucks, I just want to play the damn season, not deal with ridiculous trades and free agents.

The "Crib" is a useless add-on, which the time implementing it, could have been used to polish the gameplay.


I do enjoy the game and will continue to play it for quite some time. Saving replays is really nice, although if it's a very long run, the beginning of it seems to be cut off, making that replay useless. I haven't tried online yet, I don't think I'm quite ready yet heh. I don't understand why they don't have a single season option, instead of having to go through Franchise though. I don't play Strat games because of micromanagement, this football games franchise mode reminds me of those.

I find the passing to be quite easy after I ran through the basic training.

This is how I read the defense:
snap the ball (don't move the qb at all, let him drop back on his own)
check to see if any lb are blitzing. if they are, check the primary reciever and either pass or scramble. if no one is blitzing, check the rest of your recievers and find the open man. if you find the 1 on 1 coverage, just lob it up, you'll catch it. I think its guarenteed from what I've read on other forums.

If you want to make passes in the middle, choose a slant 90 slant, drop back and just throw to the guy if he's open.

Another bug I found...
I don't know how you guys play football games, but I only hit the catch button when I have to fight for the ball and get the extra advantage. If I pass to a reciever thats wide open, I'll let the computer catch the ball for me so that I can run after the catch without the weird momentum switches. In 2k5, the open man won't always catch the ball on his own. I'm amazed by how many dropped passes are in this game.

Extra buttons...
While looking for the forced fumble button, I found that the right analog does little shakes for your ball carrier. I haven't used it yet, but its pretty cool. The manual also has the intercept and pass deflect button wrong. I still haven't found the force fumble button.

There is no way you should have been able to finish a whole season with out learning how to pass. Have you gone into the practice mode and scrimmaged? Are you using Maximum Passing? Hot Routes?

The game does have flaws but passing is not one of them in my opinion, you just have to learn how to play. If you do the above mentioned things you should quickly lower your turnovers. When I throw an interception I can almost instantly tell I screwed up as soon as it leaves my hand.

I honestly do not mean this as a personal attack but if you are throwing that many picks it is your own fault, not the games. Once you get it down the passing game is the best of any game ever.

Good luck, I hope this helps. If not then it may just not be the game for you.

p.s. For the record......last year Carolina had 2091 rushing yards.

p.p.s. Find me or another DVDtalker to play on Live and we can show you some passing pointers. I am not an expert but it may help you.

It most likely is me, I haven't played any football games seriously, since Madden '93 on the Genesis. I remember passing use to be easy back then, probably to easy heh. I haven't used maximum passing yet, will try that today, hopefully it will help. I can be impatient, that's probably part of the problem. Even when I had one on one match ups, by the time the ball got to the receiver, he was covered by 3 guys 75% of the time. I really want to get use to passing short, over the middle passes for low gains, for clock control. Throwing a bullet in that situations either gets it tipped or dropped. Lobbing it, either intercepted or my guy never makes it to the ball and it hits the ground. Maybe I'm not giving him time to run the full route, but the DL doesn't give me much time before sacks start coming heh.


Somewhat unrelated, I really like the VIP system, I'm suprised this wasn't implemented till now.

If you actually think that the number of drops in ESPN 2k5 is 'amazing', please, for your own mental health, stay far away from NCAA 2005. -smile-

i suck at passing as well... very tough to make the decision to whom i should pass to. i'll see X w/ 3 guys covering and i'll still pass to him :doh!: and of course, chances are, i'll get intercepted.

so, what i've been doing is calling a running play when i see that they have a lot of guys defending the pass.

but, i think i really just need to practice more and learn to make better passing decisions.

You ain't kidding :D

Follow the tips I wrote above about reading a defense. You should take a look at how you're matched up before the snap too. If you see a zone coverage (look to see if one of their guys aren't lined up against yours, or send a man in motion. If not one follows him, then they are playing zone and not man to man defense) use the hot routes. Throw your star reciever in a straight run upfield. Have your QB stay in the pocket as long as possible and then scramble out to the open if you must. Once the reciever has ran past the zone coverage, just lob it to him. He should be open. If its a man play, use your slants and curls for short yardage. You're man should be able to create some seperation if you time it right.

Learning to read the defense should be a priority if you want to learn football, in general. You'll love the game a lot more once you've got it figured out. Don't bother picking up Madden this year if you can't figure it out. It's a lot easier to do in 2K5.

A Tip: You should practice your plays in scrimmage a few times just to learn the timing. Watch what your players do when your QB stops dropping back.

i spent a few hours playing this game over the weekend and came away impressed overall. generally, i found offense much easier to play than defense, but i guess scoring is fun. one thing i didn't like was how difficult it is to catch an offensive player from behind. it seems to be nearly impossible. not that realistic imo. all in all a solid game easily worth $20.

1.Sliders
2.Raise/Lower the difficulty
3.Practice

It's amazing how some people blame everything on the game when a lot of it is probably their own shortcomings as a player.

People demanded that Sega/Visual Concepts fix speedy WRs being run down by slower defensive players from NFL 2k through NFL 2k3 because of the inherent unrealism, and it was finally implemented in 2k4.

You can only run somebody down and tackle him if the player you're controlling is faster than the guy with the ball. There's no magical speed boost given to defensive players anymore.

In my opinion, this is hardly something to complain about.

I noticed that even the EGM reviewers complained about too many dropped passes in ESPN. And the first thing I thought of was... NCAA!

They obviously did not watch any Seahawk games last year.
Tons of dropped passes all season long.

Went back through Basic training and scrimmaged for awhile. I'm able to see the deeper routes receivers open up. I'm using maximum passing, which does help when your running a slant and two defenders come at you. I've also been toying with hot routes, mostly when I see the coverage is skewed to one side of the field. I'm still having a lot of difficultly in the short middle of the field though, and that is what I practiced most in scrimmage.

My last game I had 300 odd passing yards, sounds good doesn't it? Unfortunately that was on 9 passes completed out of 20 in a 28 minute game heh. Passing percentage is still way down, and intercepts are still to frequent(4 in this game). Starting to get a feel for it though, so it's a start. Running game was much more realistic that game as well, 28 carries for 134 yards or so, instead of 8 carries for similar yardage.

I haven't had that many problems with the passing. I've thrown quite a few interceptions but most of them come from either forcing a pass or having the ball bounce off the WR's hand.

Have any of you played in a league before? I was just wondering how time consuming the leagues can get. I'd like to join one but I only have about an hour a night to play games.

Cowboy, It really depends on the league. It could take as little as one hour week (Think one game a week for 16 weeks + playoffs if you make it.) Most people can schedule one game a week with one other person.


But some leauges like to see 3 or 4 games a week which can be a scheduling nightmare. Not only do you have to find time to play, but you have to sync it with your opponent.

Like I said earlier "It depends on the league."

Does anyone else have the problem of the mouths not in sync with the speaking? I have not seen Suzy or Berman say anything synched up.

They don't sync up. It would take a while to get all the things they say to sync up. Maybe on the next gen systems they'll get it.

It's funny like a bad kung-fu movie.

Yeah, it sux. If they cant do it right don't do it at all I say.