REREVIEW 2 MONTHS LATER!

i just sunk 90~ hours into a 25 year franchise LOL
i got very attached to the players i drafted. after my franchise qb retired (my stopping point for this self contained series), it felt like i had just completed a 50 hour long story game LMAO
maddens franchise mode is probably the only bright spot of the entire game.. but tbf it still has a lot of its own issues.
since finishing this long ass franchise, i've found the game very boring so... yeah. probs wont sink many more hours into this. ultimate team is terrible, the mycareer thing isn't good, and there's lots of glaring issues all over in madden.
can defos still find enjoyment though

My previous experiences with madden were primarily on the PS2 and the last I owned was 09 on the PSP, so now I that I have an up to date non-Nintendo console for the first time in a good while, I thought I'd see what had changed with Madden. As you can probably guess, the answer is "not all that much." Well, not all that much except it now runs like dogshit. The damn main menu brings the PS5 to its knees and both performance and quality mode hitch like hell despite not even being all that impressive-looking compared to what this machine is capable of. It's clear that the yearly cycle of Madden has taken its toll, and I imagine something this rushed and barely functional is all the developers could manage while ensuring the next one releases on time.

It's sad, just about the only novel addition I've found is a mode reworking the Create-A-Team of old into a loot box-driven affair. I would've tried this out more to assess if it has any value at all but this is where the menus struggle and inappropriately overlap each other the most, a few jpegs with players' faces on them clearly being too much for the Playstation 5. I spent most of my time playing a custom career and planned to log this as completed once I got a ring in that, but I just lost interest after my goofy creation John Darksouls' third season. Didn't character creation back in the day involve a bunch of fun flavor like rolling your parents' professions and such? I miss that. Anyway, this mode is just too repetitive and requires far too much menuing and mindless practice between each game to be worth it. Still, this is where I had the most fun and when you're enthusiastic enough about football it's still a good time. That's the thing: football is fun by default. You'd have to really fuck up to ruin that, and modern Madden isn't yet that much of a disaster.

There are still various projects out there updating Madden 08 for current rosters and such. I'm not going to say that outclasses '24 in every respect, the passing mechanics are a fair bit richer now and for the novelty of being up to date this will probably be what I reach for to play head to head locally, but for the most part 08'll probably serve you about as well and at least the menus will fucking work.

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Side note: This is an example of one of the many reasons intellectual property is bullshit which steals from what should rightfully belong to us all. Football games would be so much better if we weren't stuck with a single company holding the license for the league which is practically synonymous with the sport itself.

Another year.... another bad madden.

The game looks pretty good. Like the UI is nice and I quite like the presentation for the games. The actual commentary for the broadcasts has remained as bland as its been, but the broadcast presentations are fun.

But yeah, none of the "next gen" features are really worth it. Momentum is very annoying and so stacked in favor of your opponent its ridiculous. Simulation in franchise is ONCE again so dependant on playbooks. You can build up a super team and still go 10-6 losing to an 8-9 team in the wild card if you don't have the proper playbook. Also, get used to seeing the Cowboys and the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. The Falcons too, oddly enough.

I sunk a good bit of time into the game and Franchise mode can be decent fun, though I think a good chunk of that is just coming from NFL season hype.... I only bought this because it was on sale and I didn't have Madden for next gen.... if you don't play Ultimate Team then there's no point in upgrading to the next Madden game. Hell, if you don't mind the proper facecards and stuff, then playing modded versions of NFL 2K5 or Madden 04 will provide a far better experience for significantly less money.

This is my first Madden in a few years. I played a full season in Franchise mode playing offense only, using a custom-made QB. It took about ten hours to make it to the Super Bowl, and it was just so lame. The UI is wonky and glitches out. At certain points, the UI would just flash and stutter back and forth, it caused a headache when I played in the dark, and I wouldn't be surprised if this bug has the potential to cause seizures in some individuals.

There are no more alternative camera angles. You used to be able to customize the camera angle while playing, but that feature is gone. There seems to be no instant replay anymore either? How is that even possible?

The announcer lines are broken. My QB ran for an NFL record 2,200 yards and 30 rushing TDs. Once a quarter in the Super Bowl, my QB would go for a run of 20+ yards, and the announcer would say "Wow! With that run he has surpassed Lamar Jackson's QB rushing yards record". I did that in the regular season in like week 12 lol. They also kept saying the coaches were holding their breath every time the QB ran it. Like I get it, it's hard to program for these bizarre situations, but almost nothing else changes about these games year-to-year. I'd love if they started accounting for these crazy situations. If they can have those thousands of voice lines in Hades, then Madden can put a little more effort in than they currently do. And I only had the announcers on for the Super Bowl. EVERY other game I had them muted.

This is just such a step down from all the sports games I love. I hope something changes fundamentally in this genre, because almost everything released is utter garbage.

Positives? The animations are smooth. It looks authentic. That's really all I can muster. It kinda looks like the real thing, if you can look past the glitches, the terrible replays that don't show the full plays, and cuts off at weird moments.

And keep in mind I haven't even interacted with the predatory online features. What I've played is about as pure as Madden gets.

I'll go back to playing my modded NFL 2K5 roster. And when I get my Switch fixed I can continue my Retro Bowl career. Don't think I'll be coming back to this one.

The game is very much the same in a general sense. But it is actually a significantly better experience than 23. The animations/camera angles alone make it feel far more immersive. And more importantly, far less game breaking bugs. You can go a play session without something going wrong! Unreal! Revolutionary!

I also like the Minor improvements to player customization.

Thats about it. Would recommend if its on sale if you are playing the hell that is 23

I love football. It's my favorite sport by far and one of my favorite things period. I also like video games, and the fact that EA is in charge of the only official NFL game and practically the only major football game is an embarrassment and a dissapointment to me and a lot of other people.

Let me start off with the good, and unpopular opinion: Madden, gameplay wise, is amazing. While it isn't a simulation game like EA so desperately wants us to believe, it is very fun and complex. It has it's moments of weirdness, mostly interceptions that should have been caught or vice versa, but all in all it feels very fleshed out. Playbooks are extensive and varied, throwing, catching and running all feel very good. One of my favorite things is how different they make each team feel, just like in real life the ravens aren't going to play the same as the bills or even teams that don't have that "x factor"(not the madden feature, the thing that makes that team special) feel different. One of the big things that is upgraded here is the franchise mode, and I think while the updates here aren't mind blowing since they were just features taken away from the previous maddens then re added, they are still improvments.


Now onto the bad. This is a game without soul. This isn't me blaming the devs since I know it's EA doing this but this feels like a game made by robots, especially when you aren't actually in the field playing the game(which is practically the only good part of this game). Let's start with presentation: it genuinly baffles me how shit this is. Pre game. no matter if it's an exhibition game or a playoff game(it's slightly changed in super bowls but even then it's just a couple different graphics), you get this weird thing of the players just standing awkwardly in a room with led lights and a basic trap beat in the background. Compare it to something like madden 11, where you could see the players come off the bus, commentators would give analysis of the game and of the different player matchups. During the game, you would have crowd noises cheering, which you do have here but it feels so fucking lame and inconsistent, I hear the crowd chanting something around once every five games. Also, the commentary is so boring. It's been the same for 7 YEARS, same people, same voice lines, istg if I hear "OH AND HE FAKES IT!" one more time I'm going to lose it. There is so much more to the presentation I hate but I can't fit it all in one review. The one last thing I do want to talk about presentation though is the SHITTY ASS MENUS. I cannot believe how a game this major on the PS5 has menus this slow. I know this sounds like a nitpick to people who haven't played, but trust me navigating any menu, main, franchise or any other menu in game is a nightmare.

One of the reasons I feel there is no soul to this game is the lack of features. There is a list of over 70 features missing from previous maddens, ranging from fun silly things like setting the prices for concessions in franchise mode to big things like create a team. Putting aside MUT which I have never and will never touch, the only things you can do here is franchise, superstar, and normal matches. To start, franchise is franchise. There is a bunch of shit missing, scouting is still shitty, but all in all its fine, like I said it's better here than 23 although that's not a very high bar. Superstar is what replaces face of the franchise from last year and it's exactly the same just with even less story or content. First of all, NO trading?? What the fuck? Second of all though literally there is NOTHING to this mode. All you do is create a player(who may I add you can't even play as any position you want to), do the combine which I admit is pretty cool, then get drafted to a team for four years and have to stay with that team, and you just play games. It is also very very easy, I'm on all pro playing on simulation as a wide receiver and I've already gotten MVP, x2 rookie of the year, offensive player of the year x2, won the super bowls, beaten the overall record of receiving yards in my rookie season, and have average like 300 yards a game. There is genuinly nothing to this mode, not even basic interviews and stuff like in franchise.


After all that though I still have hope. Not in madden, I think it's gonna continue being shitty until the NFL realise they're missing out on a shit load of money when they sign an exclusive deal, but my hope is in CFB 25. I genuinly haven't been this excited for a game in years, and from everything we've seen, and the amount of time it's taken to develop, this might be something special. I'm cautious ofc since it's still EA, but I have hope. Also despite all my criticisms of madden, I rated it 1.5 cause it's still fun as hell to play, I think gameplay wise there isn't much you can improve, it't just everything aside from it sucks balls.