In many ways the game is vastly improved. The new physics engine is a breath of fresh air but the game's still off.
I believe the developers at EA sports do not care about tweaking the A.I. to make it more challenging without making the game cheap, as if they decided "no one plays offline anymore!" Well I for one can not stand to play this game online due to all the glitchers, cheaters and cheesers. Believe it or not there exist people like me who like to play offline franchise (which doesn't exist anymore, but I'll get to that in a minute) and play multiple seasons importing and drafting players from the year's NCAA Football game, which, oh yeah , doesn't exist either making that game pretty much worthless to me. So now I'll actually review the game, just had to get that out there. They no longer care about people who want to just enjoy Madden like we did in last generation PS2 and Xbox games with franchise mode and a decent CPU challenge.
Graphically the game looks nice for the most part. Player models, the color the lighting and the fields all look great. Jim Nantz and Phil Sims look pretty good before each game as they lead you into the pregame. One problem is that there are allot of hitches here and there, cut-scenes sometimes do not transition well during team intros and warm ups. There are also still allot of generic faces on players like Lesean McCoy and Jason Babin to name two. I believe every starter should have their face in the game, and when I play as the Eagles (my favorite team) I see three fourths of the team has generic faces. I would also like to see them include tattoos again someday to make the game look more authentic. I'm a small details kind of guy so this would be very nice for me.
As for the gameplay its pretty much what you have come to expect from this stale rerun series. The new thing is the infinity engine which surprised me for how well it works most of the time. Now players can get hit from virtually every angle and the player will react accordingly. There are now dog piles onto the ball carrier and no more players just jumping on the ground to give an illusion that they were in on the play. Like I said this works most of the time. It makes the run game so much better to see your player get hit and redirected into another defender. This makes the difference between inches in football so great. You can break tackles and meet two defenders at the first down marker and they can stop you dead in your tracks as opposed to an animation triggering and it carrying you across the marker to move the chains. Where the engine doesn't work is when a player gets nudged for a tackle. Sometimes players barely get touched and go down. Also you will notice post-play that sometimes the players twist and bend in awkward ways. This doesn't break the game for me but I'd like to see how they can improve it in future installments.
The passing game has finally been improved . for years I've wanted them to add new pass trajectories instead of just a lob and a bullet. They've added these new trajectories and it makes the passing game so much more fun. I can now lead passes, finally throw over a linebackers head, and throw towards a defender with his back to the ball. I have played many games so far and I may have only thrown two interceptions that I feel weren't my fault. Once a player jumped several feet in the air to make an impossible pick and the second time was the classic Madden overthrow to a free safety when your receiver was wide open. Often times the picks I throw are because I was rushed or too aggressive.
The pass coverage in this game is atrocious and that's what ruins it for me. Man coverage always gets beat on any route that has a change of direction and zone coverage is worthless. Your players WILL NOT leave their designated zone, they are very slow to react to passes and never pick up a player when there is no one in their area. As soon as the play starts they back peddle to their zone and just sit still when they get there. When I play the CPU I'm amazed at how easy it is to exploit a simple button hook route. The defender literally sits 3 to 4 yards behind the receiver on a button hook and wait until they catch the ball before they attempt to tackle them or make a play.
The blocking is still not where it should be. Running tosses and sweeps is just not reasonable in this game. I can have my toss going to the left where there is no one over there on defense to make the play and yet I will gain a yard most of the time or lose one. Very rarely does a toss get good or decent yards. As soon as the ball is snapped the defenders outrun your o-line or shed their blocks with ease to make the stop. One positive is that on pass plays the defensive and offensive lineman seem to engage in a struggle rather than the old one animation winners of previous games. What I mean is when in past games, as soon as the ball snaps the linemen engage in an animation, a winner is chosen at random. This year I find that the line of scrimmage can actually move and the o-line can actually keep the defenders at bay rather than winning or getting beat off the line so quickly.
The game modes are disappointing to me. As I said there is no traditional Franchise mode, instead there's connected careers which can be played online or offline. Now you have to either be a player of a coach and try to meet goals to become a hall of famer. I think this is a decent idea but they could have at least left the option for people to take over their favorite teams and play a franchise mode without all the gimmicks. I also hate the fact that you cannot import players from NCAA 13 either. This ruins any kind of recruiting, scouting, and drafting in Madden. I loved playing a season in NCAA and drafting players from that season into my franchise. I just don't like the new connected careers and cannot find myself very involved. The be a superstar is also now part of connected careers as well. This works well to an extent. The thing I do not like is that you can pick what team to go to, what system you want to run, whether you were a high round draft pick, undrafted, or late round. The difference will determine your players skill attributes. There is NO option to be drafted randomly to any team in any round. One positive is that you can actually climb the depth chart and win position battles instead of becoming an instant starter. I just miss the possibility of going to any team instead of choosing the team I want which is no fun.
All in all this game is much better in some ways but worse in others. It's hard to describe for me. I enjoy playing it casually but I am a die hard football fan and I usually invest allot of time in my sports games, especially Madden but this years game doesn't seem to have more for me other than a quick pickup game here or there. My connected career modes go unplayed therefore I have no real reason to keep coming back to this game other than boredom or because I'm in the mood to play it after watching real NFL games. Theres no real depth for me in this years version of Madden. That on top of the fact that the CPU is too easy on all pro and impossible to beat on all madden is just getting old for every year since we hit this current console generation. I constantly have to tweak sliders to make the game a challenge and at the end of the day it makes the game feel like a sloppy mess. This leads me to believe the designers do not care to make a challenging but fair CPU because they assume everyone plays online.
I don't know, I got this game as a birthday gift from my brother this year which is nice because I usually buy every Madden in hopes of it finally being the game we've all dreamed about. It's definatley a step in the right direction but they need to improve the pass coverage, tweak the infinity engine and CPU difficulty levels and give us back the standard traditional franchise mode without all the gimmicks and bells and whistles.