Madden NFL 16

Editor’s Note: This review was written by one of our contributors at the German-language version of DLH.Net. We hope you’ll appreciate this unique take on America’s favorite sports franchise.

Each year, we look to EA Sports to provide us with the latest version of the most important sports gaming franchises in the world. Here in Europe, the game we’re all waiting for by the time season rolls around is FIFA – you know, that game with the round ball. But across the pond, however, things are a bit different; for decades now, Madden NFL has been the official game of the National Football League and all the hype that goes with it. It's also known for the "Madden Curse" that supposedly affects its cover athletes.

The legend surrounding the Madden Curse has grown due to the fact that no player appearing on the cover of a current edition of the game has ever been on the winning team of that year’s Super Bowl, and many athletes who’ve appeared on the cover have even had to cut the season short due to injuries. But enough with the mystical stuff – it’s time to get in the game.

Bread and Circuses

The media and fan circus surrounding the NFL is bigger than anything else in the world. The appeal of a sport with vast tactical depth played by athletes of tremendous size and physical ability draws millions of Americans to TV screens across the nation every Sunday, and each year more and more Europeans are tuning in as well. For years now, Madden has done an amazing job of bringing the feel of this captivating sport to home consoles, presenting the struggle over what looks to us like a big leather egg in an over-the-top style that is gloriously American. We played the Xbox 360 version – yes, I know – but despite the somewhat outdated capabilities of this last-gen system, the game was still very impressive, with incredibly sharp graphics and and an astounding level of detail. True, the fans were (like in most EA Sports titles) mostly generic, cloned specks of sprinkled throughout the massive stadiums, but honestly who even cares about fan diversity when you’re out there on the field?

The most important figures – that is, the players – are always depicted with great attention to detail. Helmets glint under the stadium lights, no matter what the weather’s like. Football is a hard and dirty affair, and you feel it with each tackle, even if you're playing from the comfort of your living room.

The Star of the Game is the Team

Whether you choose to play as an individual player, manage the skills of your whole team as head coach, or pull the strings behind the scenes as general manager, the gameplay in

Madden does a great job of portraying relatively accurately the way each position depends on the others within the context of a team. No matter how good your running back is, if you don’t pick the right play and if your offensive line is unable to clear a hole for him to run through, his skills aren’t going to amount to anything on the scoreboard. The basic controls during the plays themselves are for the most part pretty easy to get the hang of, and there’s also a detailed tutorial at the beginning of the game for players unfamiliar with the series.

Of course, the wide range of possibilities that open up to you if you want to throw a pass to your wide receiver, among other things, can take some getting used to. Over the last 20 years or so, Madden, like FIFA, has evolved from a push-button arcade-style game to pretty serious simulation. But in general, even beginners shouldn’t have too much trouble once they get a little bit of practice. Choosing a play, on the other hand, can be pretty complicated. While the “Ask Madden” feature always gives you a nice range of options, even these can be overwhelming with players who haven’t with no experience to speak of. Unfortunately, there’s no true beginner mode that takes the decision out of your hands completely, or, for instance, explains to you why a screen pass – provided you even know what that means – is your best option in a given situation. This means that for players who have absolutely no knowledge of the sport, Madden remains a closed book.

Even more confusing is when you decide to play as coach, managing your players’ talents even when the team’s not actually playing. Drafting, training, and player development are packed with information and statistics that should keep even seasoned players occupied for hours. I’m sure this is awesome for especially avid fans and number-crunchers, but for everyone else it’s a bewilderingly complex exercise in data management. Thankfully, you can have the game make a lot of the decisions automatically (and in ways that make sense), so that you can decide for yourself just how deep you want to get into these details apart from the actual gridiron (as they say in America) itself.

RPGs Everywhere

If you survey the current gaming landscape, it’s hard to avoid the impression that a game can’t get published nowadays without a PR department touting its range of “RPG elements”, whether it’s a simple first-person shooter or even a sports game. As such, Madden lets you earn experience points by playing games, which you can use to upgrade your team, or your player, depending on which mode you’re playing in. In this way, you can increase the accuracy of your short, mid-range, and long passes, or your offensive line’s blocking capabilities. Of course, the same thing applies here: this is a great option for people who know their football, but for beginners it’s a bit too much. You could ask whether there’s really a need for such a wide range of possibilities in sports games at all, since at the end of the day what most people want to do is control the action on the field, not get lost in a sea of details, except perhaps in GM mode.