We finally have another big-budget football game to compare Madden to! Yeah, sure, it's another EA Sports game, so it's not much of a contrast. We still haven't gotten a proper new game from 2k, so we still don't get to compare Madden against another studio's vision. In fact, the closest thing that we have to a direct competitor to Madden is probably still NFL Pro Era (which released its first sequel earlier this year, but I haven't played it due to on-going elbow pain). Pro Era is, however, a VR game, and more of a middle-budget "Double-A" game, and so it also is not directly comparable to Madden.
So how does Madden look when compared against the only other football game at its level? Well, not very good -- which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. I'm not exactly loving College Football 25. In fact, I've been a pretty outspoken critic of its since its release. I didn't have a honeymoon period with it the way that so many other reviewers and critics did, and I was noticing and reporting flaws and limitations from day 1. Unsurprisingly, my biggest complaints about both game are the things that they don't do, but which the other does.
There are multiple commentary teams.
To copy-paste, or not to copy-paste?
There are some features from College Football 25 that did find their way into Madden. Just like the college game, Madden now has multiple broadcast commentary teams. In fact, Madden got 50% more broadcast teams, as it has 3 different commentary teams, instead of CFB's 2. They are of mixed quality. Mike Tirico's line delivery might be the worst of the bunch, and it's often stilted and disjoint. Kate Scott, on the other hand brings a lot of energy -- maybe too much energy! She is a welcome change from the normally sterile and lifeless Madden commentary. Greg Olsen is probably the highlight of the bunch.
In real life, Brandon Gaudin and Charles Davis commonly calls day games on CBS (usually AFC matchups). Greg Olsen usually does day games on Fox (usually NFC matchups), while Brock Huard is an analyst for Fox. Mike Terico usually does Sunday Night football on NBC. Kate Scott is the regular announcer for the Philadelphia 76ers baseball team, and has called some preseason NFL games. Which of these commentary teams calls any given game in Madden's Franchise Mode is completely random, and the user can't even choose which teams gives the commentary for any given Franchise game. It isn't based on the day of the week, or on the time of day, or on which teams are playing. If you want a specific team to only call Monday night games, for example, you would have to start the match, then quit and restart until you get the commentary team who you want.
Even if it is random, the extra variety is welcome.
The half-slides from College Football 25 have been imported into Madden.
Madden also ported over the revised slide protection mechanics that allow for a half-slide, which is a welcome addition to the game. This feature is, however, plagued by the same problem as in CFB25, which is that you can't view the blocking assignments on any play action play, or when playing as the away team -- which is more than half of every passing play you'll ever call. Also, for some reason, they didn't port the overlay that shows which blocker is going to block which defender on running plays. So I can't be certain if the play is going to be blocked the way that I want it to be, or if flipping the play will improve the blocking, or if motioning a tight end or fullback to a different position might create a better matchup or leverage advantage.
Madden also imported the new kicking meter and Read Option controls that were introduced in CFB 25. I'm already familiar with both these concepts from CFB, so I'm not having nearly as much trouble adapting to them in Madden. Unlike CFB 25, Madden does have the option to revert the kicking meter back to the classic meter from previous Madden games. No such luck with the Read Option controls though.
I often do skill trainer drills when I boot up a new Madden game for the first time, just to see if any of the new mechanics have changed the way that the game feels, or if there are any new mechanics that need tutorializing. I was pleased to see that, unlike College Football 25, Madden still has a Skill Trainer, and it's still being updated with new drills and content. For example, I don't recall the "Pocket Pressence" drill in Skill Trainer mode in previous years.
The tutorial for the new kicking meter is just a single text overlay, and the rest of the tutorial is just flat-out wrong.
I was less pleased to see that the Skill Trainer is still poorly-maintained and half-assed. The new "revamped" passing mode is not tutorialized anywhere, nor is the new kickoff rules and mechanics. The "updated" tutorial for the new kicking meter is literally just an extra text overlay inserted before the text from previous years' field goal and punt tutorials. The field goal kicking tutorial still claims that the kick meter will show the full arc and landing spot of the ball, and that the trajectory will sway with the wind -- none of which is still true. There's also no explanation of how the accuracy meter works, or of the overcharge penalty. So once again, EA is showing little-to-no consideration for tutorializing its new mechanics.
In addition to many tutorials just being wrong, there's plenty of tutorials and drills that just outright broken. That Pocket Presence drill, for instance, has a few reps in which you're supposed to stay in the pocket for 3 seconds against a 4-man rush, except that the plays that the game selects for the defense are actually a 6-man blitz. These reps are damn near impossible to successfully complete, and the only way that I was able to complete them was to manipulate the pass rushers by sliding one way to bait the defense in that direction, scrambling the other, and then throwing as soon as I reach the end of the highlighted pocket area. In other instances, the game selected broken offensive plays, in which the QB doesn't drop back at all, stands at the line of scrimmage, and immediately takes a sack from a defensive tackle.
The "4-man rush" Pocket Presence drill actually blitzes 6 defenders,
but still expects the player to stay in the pocket for 3 seconds.
As for the option, Madden's Skill Trainer does include tutorials for the option. I've already discussed how I completely mis-understood how the Option works in CFB 25, and thankfully I had that resolved before going into Madden. I'm used to the new Read Option controls, and have even started warming up to them a bit. NFL teams rarely run Triple Option, and the Flexbone does not exist in NFL football at all. As such, the new option controls aren't as problematic as they are in College Football 25, and an option to revert them to the classic (hold button to hand-off) mode is far less important in this game, compared to the college game. Though I still think that such a setting should be in the game.
CFB 25's Wear & Tear system is not in Madden.
I'm too lazy to play, coach
Unfortunately, Madden completely drops the ball when it comes to importing CFB 25's best new feature: the "Wear & Tear" injury system. That system in College Football 25 is superior to Madden's Progressive Fatigue in every conceivable way! It does suffer from some of the same problems as Progressive Fatigue -- namely the fact that CPU teams are horrible at managing it. But Madden actually includes a full suite of features for managing a Wear & Tear system, which College Football 25 completely lacks.
Madden has a weekly practice feature that allows the user to choose whether to practice in full pads or half-pads, and whether to devote more reps to the starters, backups, or a split of the 2 groups, for every position group on both offense and defense. These features would work so well with Wear & Tear, and it is absolutely dumbfounding to me that Wear & Tear is not included in Madden, and that College Football 25 does not include any of these weekly practice features.
In fact, being able to replace full-fledged practice injuries with some additional Wear & Tear would be a great addition to the system. Having to decide if a player who sustained Wear & Tear from practice should play in the upcoming game, or sit out to recover, would add a great wrinkle of strategic planning to Franchise Mode that is completely missing in the game's current binary injury mechanic (a player is either "injured" and cannot play, or he is completely healthy and performing at his full potential). I was expecting to see Wear & Tear here, and also to see revisions to the CPU logic so that CPU teams would manage it better. But nope! And it's especially surprising, considering that the hard-hitting impacts of the new tackle physics was a big marketing pitch of this year's game.
Being able to sit players with Wear & Tear from practice would have added strategy to Franchise.
Instead, we're stuck with the same buggy, barely-working Progressive Fatigue system that results in every CPU teams' starting running backs being "too tired" to play in playoff games or the Super Bowl.
Anything that College Football doesn't have?
So I talked a bunch about stuff that is either already in College Football 25, or that is missing from Madden. So what is actually new in this year's Madden? Well, simming through a Franchise, I didn't notice a whole lot new other than the new commentary teams, a bunch of menu U.I. changes, and some superficial cutscene stuff. I had to go online to figure out what, exactly is new in this year's game. Supposedly, CPU roster-management is improved, but this is something that would require playing through multiple seasons to verify if it works. So the verdict is still out on that one, and this certainly isn't the first time that EA has claimed to have made such fixes. Really the only new thing that I saw in Franchise is a few new Training Camp mini-games, including a desperately-needed mini-game for offensive linemen.
The new kickoff is in the game.
There is, of course, the new "dynamic kickoff" rule in the NFL. Madden did implement that, and it mostly gets it right. There's even a few "trick" reverse return and option return plays to maybe spice special teams up a bit! Though the more basic kick coverage and return plays available lack variety and don't have any variations for more exotic blocking schemes or cross-field laterals. It will take some time for NFL teams to figure out how to use the new kickoff rules, so I don't really blame Madden for not anticipating teams running trap and power blocking schemes in kick returns. And I wouldn't be surprised to see some teams pulling coverage players back to basically play as "safeties" as the season goes on. I doubt that these kickoff plays will get updated over the course of the season, or even in the upcoming years.
I also want to give Madden 25 some Brownie Points for taking another small step forward in gender representation. In addition to 1 of the 3 commentary teams having a woman giving play-by-play, this game finally lets the user create female coaches with one of about 8 female faces across a reasonably representative group of races and ethnicities. And, of course, there are still female referees on the field. Still can't create female players though, nor will female players ever appear in the draft classes. And I hope that if you're trying to create yourself, that you actually look like one of the 8 female faces available, because there are no options to customize the face, customize the body, or give your character more accessories The options for faces, clothing, and accessories is highly limited, but it's better than nothing, I guess.
Users can finally create female coaches!
There's also a whole bunch of new or revised storyline cutscenes to see your custom coach in (whether that coach is a man or a woman). I like that these new story scenes include actual press conferences and conversations with reporters. However, the cutscenes look pretty bad, and the dialogue and choices are atrocious. There's a complete lack of nuance or context in any of these scenes. Many of them make absolutely no sense.
I had to roll my eyes through a whole press conference asking the Bears head coach whether Caleb Williams will start this year or sit for a year to learn the offense. Like, were they really expecting me to say "yea, Caleb is going to sit behind the 'veteran' Tyson Bagent to learn the offense."? What a fucking joke! The week before, they asked me whether Montez Sweat or DeMarcus Walker will win the "position battle" at Left End, even though DeMarcus Walker is 10 points worse than Sweat, and plays on the opposite side. Really, the only position battles on the Bear's depth chart this year was for the backup quarterback role, center, and maybe the 4th and 5th wide receivers. But yet, the game didn't ask me about any of those closer competitions, and instead insisted on trying to create drama where none exists.
And whenever the reporters ask questions about the performance a given player, the available responses always boil down to either talking about that player like he's friggin' Jesus, or completely throwing him under the bus. There's no in between, none of the wishy-washy cop-out "We, as coaches, need to put the team in better positions to win" kind of responses that coaches always give in these sorts of situations.
Oh yeah, Caleb Williams is definitely sitting for a year behind Tyson Bagent ... right...
Perhaps the single worst storyline event is an interview at the beginning of the season that sets your "team identity". The reporter asks what is the strength of your team, then follows-up by asking what is the weakest part of your team. Then she asks you to set a goal for that weakest part of your team, and that season-long goal for the worst-performing part of your team becomes your "team identity". So if my passing game is the weakest part of my team, because my O-line is bad at pass protection, and I'm playing a rookie QB, my goal is to either gain 4000 yards passing, or throw for like 40 TDs. I can't set a more realistic goal along the lines of "don't loose games with my passing game". You know, maybe let me set a goal to limit turnovers or sacks, which could then be accomplished by playing my style of football: running the ball, controlling the clock, and playing good defense!
It's like this game utilizes some childish "gotcha!" reverse-psychology bullshit that was written by an 11-year-old. You basically have to play the game ahead, find out what all these storyline interviews ask, and then re-load an old save and tailor your answer to the non-sense logic that the game utilizes. Or just use the general rule of thumb to always answer in the exact opposite way that you would if you were asked these questions in real life.
It's also annoying that these scenes are broken up the way that they are. I wish they would just put all the press conference questions into a single press conference scene, instead of forcing me to load back out to the menu, select the next press conference, and then sit through another loading screen and establishing shot of the press conference room.
There's also cutscenes for the NFL draft now, that include Commissioner Goddell standing at the podium and mouthing the name of the next pick (because there's no actual voice dialogue for any of these cutscenes). This is done for the first 10 picks, and for all user picks. For the top 10, the player will also walk out onto stage, hug the commish, and pose with a jersey with the number "1" on it. For other user picks after the first 10, there are 1 minor variations of the same cutscene of the coach getting way too excited about who she picked, and of the draftee receiving the call and posing with a team hat.
It all looks fine. It's the same brand of bland and sterile that is the case with all Madden cutscenes, but it at least ads a bit more pomp to the biggest event of the NFL off-season.
Improvements to the draft are mostly superficial.
Functionally, however, the revised draft is a bit of a dumpster fire. Many of the old problems and limitations with the draft still exist, and the "improvements" are almost entirely superficial. There are mock drafts, but only for the 1st round. After the first round, the user has no idea which player the other teams might be picking with their upcoming picks. As such, you have no idea if you should try to trade up to get your fourth-round steal before someone else picks him. I also can't view a history of my previous picks, so if I forget which players or positions I already picked, I can't go back and see them before deciding who to pick next. At the very least, the "draft grade" that tells you if a pick was a good pick or not at least seems to be more accurate. You won't get boo-ed off the stage anymore for "reaching" for the 45th-ranked prospect with the 43rd overall pick.
Nevertheless, I feel like the draft in Madden 25 is a net downgrade due to the fact that it seems to have removed the user Draft Board. I couldn't find any way to actually change the order or priority of my "favorite" prospects. Scouting and drafting has always felt like a total crapshoot, and now the one piece of control that I did have (being able to prioritize my draft prospects) seems to be gone.
Is it even possible to change the order of my draft board?
Doesn't even resemble NFL football
I had a hard time believing that Madden could play worse than College Football, given the awful defensive play and pursuit in the college game. Madden 25 does not resemble NFL football at all, and College Football 25 (despite its awful defensive A.I.) blows Madden out of the water!
First of all, the CPU never runs the ball! At least, not in Franchise Mode. At the end of the preseason, (playing 15-minute quarters), all 3 of my CPU opponents had run the ball a combined total of 20 times or so. And several of those were QB scrambles that were credited as runs in the end-of-game stats. Granted, I play the Bears, and my preseason opponents were the Bills, Bengals, and Chiefs (there apparently isn't a Hall of Fame game anymore, so I didn't get the 4th game against the Texans). Those are all dominant passing teams. But guess what? According to teamrankings.com, the Bengals do have the 3rd highest pass percentage in the league, but the Chiefs are only at 52% passes, and the Bills are at 42% passes. Yet all of these teams were averaging over 50 passing attempts per game, and only a handful of runs.
CPU teams in Franchise actively refuse to run the ball.
This was a problem in last year's game too, and it was thought to be caused by the adaptive A.I. play-calling. If the first few run attempts got stuffed, the CPU would give up on the run prematurely. So if you just let the CPU gain yards in its first few rush attempts, it would continue running the ball for the rest of the game, even if every subsequent run gets stuffed for a loss or short gain. That isn't even possible in this year's game because I wasn't seeing the CPU's first rushing attempt until their 3rd or 4th possession. At that point, I was already running a Dime or Quarter defense and guessing pass every play, but would still stuff the run on the off chance that a run gets called.
Instead, I had Joe Burrow throw for 250 yards and 3 TDs in the first quarter of a preseason game, and for the backup receiver to have 150 yards and 3 more TDs in the second half, while playing against my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-stringers. The CPU still won't sub any deeper than 2nd-string in preseason games, and will still put veteran superstars in rotation roles. I still saw X-Factor defensive linemen showing up as Pass Rush replacements throughout the entire 2nd half of those preseason games.
The game also still treats the 3rd preseason game as if it is the "dress rehersal" from back when there were 4 preseason games. It plays the starters through the 3rd quarter in that 3rd preseason game. Instead, the NFL doesn't really have a "dress rehearsal" preseason game any more. The closest thing is the 2nd preseason game, in which the starters usually only play the first half (at most). The 3rd preseason games are supposed to be treated as a rest-and-recovery week that has the starters playing very little, so that the coaches can evaluate their reserves before cut days. But since EA doesn't care about creating a realistic football management sim, they don't care about making the preseason behave like the real-life preseason.
The CPU still plays elite starters late in preseason games.
And I'm complaining about preseason because I didn't really get any further than the preseason in any serious attempt at a Franchise playthrough. There is a bug that prevents custom draft classes from being loaded into Franchise, and I didn't want to start the regular season until I could get that custom draft class loaded. I'm still waiting. And I'm not even trying to use an imported TeamBuilder team, which, according to forums and social media posts, has also been completely non-functional! Maybe the Franchise Mode will actually be functional and fully playable by the time the real-life NFL season is half-way over, sometime in late October or early November? I won't hold my breath...
PRO-TAK problems all over again
The physics has somehow gotten even more wonky. I will give EA some credit here: when the physics is working, it does look good. Sometimes it even looks great. But it doesn't work on a consistent enough basis.
The biggest problem is that "collision boxes" seem too big. Defensive players can make tackles without physically touching the ball-carrier. Defenders will get sucked into blocks from several feet away from a lineman, which will also cancel out any forward momentum that the defender had and prevent any kind of tackle attempt as the ball-carrier passes. Receivers running drag routes and defenders strafing across the formation will also frequently bounce off of invisible walls. Fumble recoveries are happening through player bodies, or contorting the recovering players' arms into impossible positions. And so forth.
This is like, Madden 10 or Madden 11 "Pro-Tak" levels of bad physics. You remember the "Pro-Tak" tackling engine?
The Chase & Tackle drill exposes the wonky physics. You can Hit Stick the runner through the dummies!
One of the best and easiest ways to see this is to play the Chase & Tackle mini-game. This removes all the players except for the single ball-carrier and 1 user-controlled defender. When the CPU ball carrier approaches the blocker pad dummies, go ahead and aim a hit stick right at the dummy from the opposite side. You'll still tackle the runner through the dummy without actually touching the runner. You can do this consistently, and it's way easier to see without the chaos of the 20 other moving players. This isn't some nitpicky edge-case fluke that I only started noticing after dozens of hours of gameplay, and after meticulous reviews of instant replays. I saw this multiple times, in real-time, in the very first attempt at the Chase & Tackle Training Camp drill, at the very beginning of a new Franchise. Aside from a few demo Play Now matches to get me into the game (and in which I also noticed weird physics stuff happening), this was literally the first thing I saw after starting to play the game proper.
This didn't happen in last year's game. If you hit stick the blocking dummy in last year's Madden, your defender would just bounce off the dummy or get stuck on it, and the CPU runner would run past you for an easy touchdown. It looked like un-realistic garbage in the previous games because of how rigid the blocking dummies are, and how the defender would just crumple to the ground at the collision. But at least the game respected the physical presence of the blocking dummy, and didn't allow me to tackle the runner as if the dummy weren't there.
But that isn't the extent of the problems. Also like with PRO-TAK (and with the first generation Infinity engine), add-on tacklers can actually have the effect of canceling the previous tackle animation, and actually allowing the runner to break the new tackle and stay upright for a huge gain. A runner can literally be falling backwards, be halfway to the ground, then be hit by another defender from the front, and suddenly stand back up to continue running. I habitually try to "clean up" CPU tackles on defense, because I'm a huge advocate for "wrap-up and clean-up". This has been serving me well in Madden for years now (and also works well in College Football 25). But this gravity-defying tackle-canceling effect is literally costing me games because the CPU will score cheap touchdowns off of plays where the runner was already half-way to the ground when I arrive with the "clean-up" hit, and should have been tackled, only to bounce back up and score because I made the mistake of thinking that a little thing like gravity would work the way it's supposed to.
This runner being dragged down by one tackler will stand back up after being hit by the second tackler.
The worst Madden ever?
The game is just so un-believably, in-excusably bad. Is it the "worst Madden ever"? I don't know. Maybe. Probably not, but I certainly wouldn't argue with anyone who thinks so. Having a better football game to compare it to for the first time in a decade certainly doesn't help the impression of this Madden.
Honestly, it feels like it's little more than a collection of new cutscenes. EA keeps "revamping" things that worked just fine, while absolutely refusing to address any of the long-standing issues that drive people nuts. Since the cancellation of the NCAA Football series, "BOOM Tech" is like the 5th or 6th different tackling / physics system. "Revamped Passing" is the 4th different passing system. This is the 3rd or 4th time they've added running backs being able to "get skinny". It's the 3rd or 4th time they've supposedly "fixed" zone coverage. It has new kicking and option controls, just 'cuz...
But yet, we can't get simple requests like a gods damned "Run vs Pass Ratio" slider? Or fixes for Progressive Fatigue? Or a larger staff of assistant coaches, with actual coach names and likenesses? Or the ability to include performance bonuses in player contracts? Or add conditional draft picks to trades? Or have an actual position battle mechanic? Or a proper stadium creator? Or program CPU teams to sub all their reserves into preseason games? Or even just give the user the ability to set CPU depth charts for preseason games, so we can do it ourselves? Or replace the 2 or 3 crappy character creators with a single character creator that actually works well and has lots of customization options?
Despite what many critics might say, EA isn't cheaping out with Madden. All these new cutscenes and character models cost a lot of time and money for artists and animators to create. But all this money only ever seems to go into fluff content (like superficial cutscenes), rather than EA ever putting the money and work into actually making the game tangibly better to play. What even is the point of continuing to dump money into this game? Why not just create a live service Ultimate Team game, update it a few times a year, and sit back to collect free MUT pack money?
Once again, I'm glad I waited a couple weeks and bought a used disc off of eBay for, like $40. Which is still overpriced, but at least EA didn't see a penny of it.
Collision-detection is highly erratic.