This isn't the Madden Challenge sendoff that I'm planning to have. It's something I wanted to mention because this site is dominated by Madden and Smash.

There's been many complaints from Smash players about how Brawl is heavily dependent on defense. The game is not tailored to those that are aggressive. Therefore, players can be passive in their attack without the risk of being punished for such.

In short, camping is dominant.

But imagine if those players saw what happened this weekend at the Madden Challenge. There was a bit of camping taking place. Actually, A LOT of camping was taking place. You wouldn't know it was camping unless you had knowledge of both communities. A Madden player would say it's someone "clocking."

Here's the deal for those who don't know. A preliminary Madden Challenge match is 8 minutes. So there's just two minutes for every quarter. If you score a touchdown first, it is almost a death knell.

So what does this have to do with camping?

I didn't put 2 and 2 together until this afternoon, but it should have been evident after Friday's final involving Young Nephew.

Neph used the Minnesota Vikings, which has the best running back in the game, Adrian Peterson. Neph went fullback dive, fullback dive, fullback dive.

If fullback dive was a pizza, I'd weigh 500 pounds after Friday night because of the amount being consumed.

But there was more to it than just fullback diving an opponent to death. Since Neph scored first a lot of times (mostly by using fullback dive), it was the perfect zero-risk move. He had a lead, why do anything risky? You see, if people complained about "camping," then they would want Neph to throw the ball and attempt to score faster, put up points. If Neph could win 7-0 or 3-0, he would be content, because a win is a win.

It's easy to point out Neph since he won a regional, but the thing is, EVERYONE did this in one form or another. There were a couple matches -- I think one was RG and another was Secret -- that if were the equivalent of a Brawl match would be downright criminal.

Both players got the ball first in a preliminary contest. No, they didn't try to score right away. They went fullback dive until they were faced with a fourth down (which I believe happened one time between the two guys). Not only did they try to clock the whole first quarter, they tried to clock the whole first half!

Now imagine this.

There were two guys, one being Secret and another I think was Neph, where they didn't get the ball first to start a preliminary game. They stop their opponent on 3 or 4 plays and get the ball on a punt or turnover. And now, they begin to clock by using fullback dive. They score in the final seconds of the first half to take a 3-0 or 7-0 lead.

And guess what? They get the ball to start the second half. Brutal. Their opponent did not see the ball in the second half. Game over. Thanks for showing us your 4 offensive plays and 25 defensive setups.

Thing is, in an 8-minute game, this strategy works very well. So can you call it the Madden version of camping? I had to think about that for a while. If you have a one-stock lead in a round, do you have to be on the offensive? Do you have to do anything? Not really unless you're playing DSF or Futile. You could run away and just pray that the timer was turned on and it goes to zero.

Labels: madden, super smash bros brawl, tournament strategies

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 9/07/2008 08:38:00 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.