The John Madden franchise is the most celebrated and long-lived football game franchise of all time- it continues to sell yearly updates on every major system (sans Nintendo) year in, year out. So, how does the latest iteration of this game compare to the very first one for console systems?
Let’s just get this out of the way- Madden ’23 is a joke. It’s absolute garbage. Without the Madden name behind it, no one is buying this game. The “Face of the Franchise” story mode is the worst Lifetime movie ever made- and I say that not only because it’s far-fetched, teenage fit inspired insipidity but it’s about football, so most women watching Lifetime would hate it. The Ultimate team stuff has very little mileage and the in-game collectible thing is so played out, Tom Brady wouldn’t wear it to the Superbowl or do a commercial about it. Then you get to the actual Franchise mode. This is still the bread and butter of the game to me; you can do a whole career path starting with the owner, coach or a player and there is a lot of flexibility and options. You can even start fresh with a draft. But the main issue here is the longevity: after one season, you’re filling your roster with imaginary people with the DUMBEST faces.
But the major thing that gets me here is the change to the game AI- there’s a new passing system which is needlessly complicated and kills the snap decision, fluidity of the game to better drop passes in exactly where you want them to go like it’s a Mario Party game or something. So, to balance out this new system, they made the defense AI super jumpy- I can’t even play a game on Easy mode w/o getting picked at least once! You can’t run out of the pocket either- no matter what your blockers are doing, the defense will get away and grab you like you stole something. The game is just not as fun as years past.
Ok, so how’s the original stack up?
So, it’s super primitive – that’s the major drawback.
There are around 16 teams to choose from, time limit on quarters and a pretty decent sized playbook to go along. Buttons are a little hard to get the hang of but once you do, it honestly plays a lot like Madden does today. Outside runs, I found, were really good and pass protection isn’t as bonkers as it is in this recent edition. There are way more similarities than I would have though. Now, the players are just numbers and don’t have names but the bones of this are still in place; amazing, after all this time, all the extra packaged garbage they’ve added to Madden and what works is the gameplay (to a degree.) Playing the original was totally fine but it feels a bit jurassic compared to the options even at the PS1 generation of gaming. So, do it for nostalgia but probably not much else.
bobombblast 