This has been the first Madden I have played since Madden NFL 2003. I purchased the game about 3 months ago, so there has been plenty of time to fix bugs. I played the game almost for about 10+ hrs a week for about 8 weeks in a row, which over the last 3 weeks has fallen to about 1 hour a fortnight. I have now picked up Madden 2005 and I'm having a better time playing that, which is 14 years older. I dabbled in Ultimate Team for a few hours, but the mode is too focused on microtransactions and/or grinding that I don't believe it's worth it. So this review is mainly focusing on Franchise and a bit of Longshot. Let's begin...
The Good
- Presentation during games is great and the commentary is at a good standard.
- Graphics look great.
- Ultimate Team has a great selection of players both current and historic.
- When the game is working properly it can be a lot of fun. I particularly remember being Walter Payton and on one play he was unstoppable as multiple defenders attempted to tackle him but got the shoulder.
- I really love the idea of sprinting isn't always good. To perform certain moves, you can't be at full speed. When sprinting, you are sacrificing the versatility of your movement and instead have to rely on using your momentum to get past defenders. Really good mechanic.
- One detail I noticed was when playing in the snow and rain you see players slip over when trying to change direction at too quickly. This is such a nice piece of detail.
- Longshot was cheesy but not something that made me want to never play it again (Looking at you 2k16)
- Don't know what the correct technical term for it is, but the physics are pretty cool (but glitch easily). For example, I intercepted a pass, but press triangle one too many times, making my player hurdle into my other player, landing on top of his shoulders. The player now carrying the ball-carrier fell over backwards with the momentum of being hit up high.
- Some nice uniform options for each team including classic uniforms.
The Bad
- There is an annoying difference in timing for kick meters online vs offline. Where I would press X for accuracy offline, is about a second too late for accuracy online.
- With footsteps changing the depth of the snow, you would also expect people falling over into the snow to happen as well. I can have Lynch running full speed, leaving his footprints in the snow, but after hitting the ground with 3 defenders on top of him, they all get up and leave no marks in the snow. How do feet change the snow but not 4 players hitting into the ground?
- Many times you will see players running over top of players on the ground and their lower legs just bend at the knee high enough so they sort of fly over them. It's pretty funny but surely not an intended feature.
- No create-a-team or uniform creator. Plus side is you get to see a lot of people repping classic uniforms.
- Relocating only has a few locations and uniform options.
- Limited options to play on the same team with friends online, have to do a certain Ultimate Team Mission.
- Cannot be on the same team with friends in career mode (Was this a thing or am I dreaming?)
The Ugly
- Franchise is (to me) completely broken and unplayable. Unless you are willing to play full quarters, your stats, or the AI's aren't adjusted to an equal level. With the way the development works in Franchise (Stat leaders are given quick development, whereas those who are at the bottom lose their development), you are expected to put up a full games worth of stats in whatever quarter time you have chosen. If you can't, all your players fall to the bottom of the categories and begin to lose their quick development even if they were a top prospect that still has great skills. A fix would be similar to 2K's MyLeague, where you can normalize stats to minutes played.
- Above also goes for anything you try in Career mode.
- Good luck having a career mode as a HB. I've seen many reports, with replies from EA staff saying that this is being worked on. The problem comes when doing training as a HB, where no matter what you do to meet the challenge criteria, it fails you as soon as you reach the endzone, saying you didn't score a touchdown, even though you just did. Because of this, you have to simulate this training mission, meaning it will come up again and again until you complete it, which is impossible. This means you are stuck at getting a bronze medal each time, slowing your stat development to a crawl. (Update: Seems to be fixed in Madden 22)