"I don’t care if it’s a knock on ‘Madden’ or whatever, but I’m going to continue to play ‘ESPN NFL 2K5’ on my Xbox because it’s better graphics, better physics engine and a better game overall. You would think them being associated with ‘Madden’ they would know football, but apparently not.” This is a quote from Madden 24 cover athlete and Quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, Josh Allen. One would hope since EA Sports chose Allen to be this years cover athlete that all of his issues with Madden have been addressed to the point that he would no longer care to gush about an 18 year old video game from one of EA Sports major competitors, but I guess sometimes money speaks louder than words.

Let’s face it, regardless of how much the Madden franchise sells each year, everything I read on community forums points to the fact that not many people are happy with the job EA Sports and Triburon are doing with the franchise, people simply buy it because there are no alternatives, or they play NFL2K5 on their Xbox, like cover athlete Josh Allen. At least until EA opens the money sacks and offers you money to appear on the cover, and I can’t really blame him, who wouldn’t take the roughly $100,000 to appear on the cover, even if they do have concerns with the game. From all reports EA Sports and Triburon saw this year as a make or break year for Madden which saw them pile up a list of features with made up names that promised to both entice people back to the series and satiate die-hard fans that had valid gripes about the game including the removal of features that have been in the game since Madden 08, the wonky and frankly abysmal o-line play, animation based play which isn’t really suitable when it comes to football or any sports game for that matter and the lack of attention paid to the franchise mode in the game because with the advent of Madden Ultimate Team mode back in Madden 11 it seems that EA Sports are more intent on turning Madden into a casino rather than actually replicating a simulation of real life football, how the NFL allow this to take place is beyond me, but I am guessing license money has a lot to do with it.

So let’s get on to what is new in the game this year, as per usual EA Sports released a long list of features filled with buzzwords such as ‘SAPIEN technology’ and ‘FieldSENSE’ to entice players back to the game but do they actually make good on any of their promises to improve the game? Thankfully Face Of The Franchise and the absolutely cringey story mode that goes with it is gone, Longshot was such a misfire that my eyes tend to twitch when the word is even mentioned. This year ‘Superstar Mode’ is back, having originally been removed from the game back in 2013 and replaced with ‘Face Of The Franchise’ in later versions, for those unaware Superstar Mode is where you can create your own player, as long as you want to be a QB, WR, RB, Linebacker or CB - because apparently other positions do not exist in Football, well at least in EA Sports version of it. You then get to go through the NFL combine by completing mini-games appropriate to your position such as the 40 yard dash, bench press and cone drill and then take a football related IQ test in order to determine your position in the upcoming draft, not that any of it really matters as you will find yourself starting for the team you are drafted by no matter where you are ranked, at least I did with the five different players I created. The player creator is not very flexible and it is nigh on impossible to make a player that looks anything remotely like yourself, NBA2K and MLB The Show are leagues (pun intended) ahead in this area.

Once you are drafted by a team you then get to play in games and earn experience amongst other things in order to upgrade your players skills and apparently earn tokens to buy celebrations and different skins for your player. Quite frankly the progression system is very confusing and you will find after every game you play that you are assaulted by a plethora of animations showing how much exp, other tokens and items you have earned for your performance. I only really cared about experience and improving my player, the celebration animations and skins you can earn feel like a push to make what is essentially a single player mode into a money making multiplayer mode. This is further evident from the fact that Superstar, a single player game mode, has a link to a monetised shop allowing you to spend money on buying items for your player, I am very wary of things like this creeping into the game, and you should be to. There are a few cutscenes scattered through the mode featuring real life NFL players, thankfully though you don’t have to sit through a 10 hour cringefest like Longshot (my eye has started twitching) in order to get to the meat of the mode where you actually play as an NFL player.

The cut scenes are absolutely terrible though as per previous years, it seems like the whole animation department at EA Sports can only render human models that act like they are made out of plastic and wood, they animate stiffly and the faces suffer from ‘uncanny valley’ syndrome, the textures are also low resolution and akin something you would expect from a Playstation 2. Superstar while touted as a returning feature is a very basic stripped down mode compared to what has come before it, in saying this though it is actually what I found to be the most enjoyable component of the game, think of that what you will. Once you see that Superstar Mode also includes a mode called ‘Superstar Showdown’ where you can compete online then everything I mentioned about links to the in-game shop start to make sense. The showdown mode is basically where you can take your superstar online and compete in 3v3 and 6v6 matchups all while showing off the bling you have earnt whilst upgrading your superstar, of course cash is always an option in lieu of spending the time to earn items though, because of course it is.

Franchise mode itself despite some of the features added this year is still an awfully barebones experience compared to Madden from ten years ago, not to mention the game-breaking bugs such as the fact that if you import a draft class into the franchise mode then every single player becomes the exact same player model with the exact same jersey number. Imagine playing through 5 years of a franchise mode and then importing a draft class only to have it brick your entire franchise save, absolutely unforgivable and quite frankly reminds me of the even more catastrophic bug from last year that totally bricked players online franchises, Bugs! If it’s in the game, IT’S IN THE GAME! The on-field presentation has been significantly stripped back as well, the Amazon branded replays are gone (they were one of my favourite features in the past few games) and the promised exterior shots of stadiums only exist for very few teams currently, the featured ‘post-play emotion engine’ does nothing at all to add to the authenticity of the presentation at all, which considering they have touted it as a new feature, is not so great.

The new training camp mini games are fun at first but get old rather quickly and sometimes you even get a random training facility that spawns in the middle of the field while you are practicing - I honestly can’t believe that this bug still exists in the game. The new draft generation engine is a positive feature and does work well from the limited experience I have with it, the new relocation options are nice, especially the added cities but it would be nice if they allowed us to design our own uniforms instead of having to pick from a limited selection of uniforms and names, I can imagine that the NFL has pretty strict rules regarding this though so I can give EA Sports a pass on this one. A host of new and worthwhile commissioner features have been added for online leagues, the only problem with online though is the frequent disconnections that seems to occur at random times, I started a single player online franchise and was disconnected over 5 times in the middle of games, this gets pretty annoying, I can only imagine how anger inducing it would be for an online league with many other people playing. Franchise, despite the touted new features, is pretty much how it has been every other year, broken and barebones, now with the added feature of even worse presentation than before.

Ultimate team or the ‘card pack casino’ as I call it, is the same beast it always has been, either grind for a ridiculously long time to obtain cards or open your wallet to do it the easy way, I am pretty sure EA Sports prefer the latter and this is why they make grinding for cards to be such a time sink. In spite of this I can see the attraction that many people have to this mode, it is fun to build up a team and then test them out online against other players, it is just a shame that it could and has been done so much better elsewhere. You only have to look at the MLB The Show franchise to see what the standard template for a mode like this should be as that game has multiple interesting reward paths that you can complete just by playing the game, Madden 24 doesn’t respect the time you put in while grinding and would much rather you take the easy route and buy your way into having a successful team. This is football and not a casino and that’s a hill on I am willing to die on.

One bright spot with Madden 24 is the on-field action, I can honestly say that playing the game feels much better than in years past, the o-line improvements are a step in the right direction, though not perfect, as sometimes your o-line players will roam around the field like they are the victims of a frontal lobotomy, most of the time though they do seem to react a lot better to opposing players than in past editions. Running the ball also feels greatly improved this year, it feels easier to identify holes and cut right into them and head downfield which is great, as in previous years running backs felt like large lumbering hulks rather than the speedy and powerful players they are attempting to recreate. Passing also feels greatly improved and is easier and more satisfying than ever to drop a dime to a receiver streaking down the field or to even lead one of your receivers into a spot where the defences coverage is lacking. There will still be moments where line-backers practically glide across the full breadth of the field and swat down a pass unrealistically but it seems these moments have been greatly reduced.

This is honestly what is so frustrating about the Madden franchise, it seems whenever the on-field experience is improved that everything else suffers for it, sports games should be improved year by year through a constant influx of improvements, not an approach where features are removed and then are brought back years later and touted as new and improved. The on-field action is fun, even great at times, it is just the nuts and bolts that hold the game together that are holding the franchise back from levelling up, the menus themselves are one of the biggest issues, even if I was to be kind I would describe them as absolutely abysmal, they are slow, clunky and feel terribly outdated, it is a frustrating experience trying to do even the simplest things such as upgrade your player in Madden and you will sit there staring at a blank screen for a lot of the time as the next set of menus load in, I honestly don’t know how the game was released with the menus in such a sorry state.

The game has improved in the past few years, even the most jaded of fans have to admit that, but the main problem I have personally with the franchise is the rate of improvement. The best course of action and a way to bring back the franchise to its glory days would be for Tiburon to take a year off and take a good look at the current state of the game including the Frostbite engine (as I think it has never really been a great engine for sports games) and then come back hard with a totally new and revamped game on a new engine. I am enough of a realist that has a fair understanding of how the game industry works and how profits drive everything these days to know that doing what I just described is not viable in such a profit driven industry, so honestly each iteration of Madden is most likely going to end up with minimal improvements each year, where old features are added back and bugs are fixed but introduce new ones in the process. The ONLY thing that will change this is if the NFL license for simulation football games is not exclusively owned by EA, competition will be the only thing that drives true innovation and improvement for not only this franchise but for simulation football as a whole.

Madden NFL 24 is really only worth paying full price for if you are a die-hard fan or haven’t played the franchise in the past few years, otherwise I would be looking to pick it up down the line during a sale.