I say it's sad because EA has done an embarrassing job with recreating player faces. Sadly, the player face modification is frustratingly absent outside of the Face of the Franchise. You can load up the standard Franchise mode and lock it to a single player and get the exact same experience as Face of the Franchise, minus the awful cutscenes. These instances are infuriating, as all these bugs are not unique to "Madden NFL 20," and I've been experiencing them in the game for years. Countless times I've thrown touchdowns and had the game show celebration dances and trigger touchdown commentary only for the next play to show the ball turned over to the opposing team or placed short of the goal line. You cannot pause or return to the menu, but rather have to kill the game process entirely, losing all progress. God forbid you find yourself in an overtime situation and throw a game-winning touchdown, as this causes some sort of error that results in an impassable screen where the game tries to simulate to your next possession, even though the match should be over. Trying to play smart, situational football in this mode is an exercise in frustration. You will routinely end games where your receiving corps totals 12 or more dropped passes. I've lost count of how many drives I had stall two to five yards from the end zone, only to have the AI opt to not take the 3-point field goal and simply turn the ball over to the opposing team. It is always in your best interest to pass on every down and never gamble giving the braindead AI the opportunity to ruin your progress or chance at winning. You take control of your quarterback when he is on the field and are given the option to call plays. The on-field portion of this mode is almost as awful as the front-end portions. None of the nuance or drama of front office NFL business is represented, despite being a series staple 15 years ago. You can request to be released via a menu prompt and get the opportunity to sign with one of a few suitors offering the same nondescript offers. There are no real choices to be made in the career mode outside of delegating minuscule XP assignments after leveling up or choosing to accept a generic new contract that is presented with no dollar amounts, years, or any information at all. "Madden NFL 20" promises that its new Face of the Franchise career mode offers the best ever experience, but "Madden" vets will quickly see that it is a half-baked "Longshot" retread, right down to reusing coach models, voice acting, and neurotic agents or front office personnel as part of its "narrative." Sure, you can now alter how your Face of the Franchise player's facial features, but the core experience is just as dull and meaningless as it was in the last two games. While the game sold very well, finishing second in overall sales to "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" that year, longtime fans felt it was still a greatly inferior product to predecessors like "Madden 2004" or "Madden NFL 10" in core gameplay and features.įast forward through five more "Madden NFL" releases and what has been changed or added to the game that brings an evolution in how the game is played (or even bringing it up to parity with decade-old forebearers)? The series has seen nothing more than a sprinkling of Band-Aids like ball carrier UI prompts and dreadful attempts at career modes like "Longshot." Surely, that level of fun and polish would arrive with "Madden NFL 15," released in 2014, but it was not to be. Having just launched on a new engine and hardware, it was forgivable for "Madden" to not be feature complete or as refined as the standout releases of generations prior. Sadly, when it comes to "Madden NFL," this is not the case.īeginning with "Madden 25," the first version of the game released on PS4 and Xbox One in 2013, the overall package was sparse. This line of thinking makes all the sense in the world if you assume that the product is strong at the core and that this core is a meaningful step forward from the previous generation. Obviously, you can't expect sweeping changes to the underlying design philosophy of a game like this on an annual basis when it is so deep into the life cycle. "Madden NFL 20" is the seventh iteration of the series on this generation of consoles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |