I’d like you to join me for a brief exhibition. Stick out your lips like you are about to kiss someone. Take your left hand. Press it firmly you your lips. Blow as hard as you can. That sound you hear? That’s Madden 24. This make or break year has swiftly devolved into ‘break’ which argues that truth is relative still. We know Madden is not going to give up the cash cow. We know that the efforts being made are also the best their present administration and tech can develop. We know it isn’t even close to being enough. Madden 24 is already broken. It is broken in some of the fundamental ways that Madden 23 was broken. Because of this, the game is destined to plateau as a failure on all metrics, even if it does receive a higher score than last year.
I’ll start with the bad: I already lost a franchise. This core problem with servers losing franchises has not been fixed. I’ve been at the game for two weeks and 50% of the franchises I began are already inaccessible. I’ve been playtesting the game, helping to track down glitches and errors and the biggest one is still entirely in play. This is huge. They brought thousands of people into the playtest and offered %50 off the game at launch because we suffered from this issue. Now we are faced with the same issue again. It is a game-killer to say the least. It is no mystery why the best working part of the game is the only part that involves micro-transactions and the worst performing sector is the one designed for individuals playing long-term. This fundamental philosophical break is what I believe will end the 25+year reign of the EA game. Eventually the NFL will nix the private contract, and we all know what is going to happen next. A better platform game will emerge. Quickly.
In the meanwhile, we have glitches-both visual and from a save game/franchise standpoint as well as shortcuts that make gameplay just meh. To name a few: graphical anomalies among drafted skill positions make the the jerseys glitch incessantly. Increased (albeit unrealistic) locations for moving your team but the same exact set and number of name and jersey options–which are no longer limited to a specific city. Mini games now are required to improve skill points during training.
All of this is bad. I haven’t even gotten ‘granular’ yet, so I suppose another ten minutes is required…