Mitchell Sambaer

Don't waste your money. First Madden I've bought in a few years, and I quickly remembered why I stopped playing them. Never been much of an Ultimate Team guy, so I usually play the Career or Franchise mode. In the Career mode (called Superstar), I played out my Rookie contract with the team that drafted me, and decided to decline my extension and enter free agency. My player's "value" was so high that not even one team was able to offer me a contract. So then the only option the game offers you is to retire 4 years into your career because no team can afford you. When it happened, I looked up if there was any way to avoid it or go back to before I declined my team's extension, and found that people had the same experience with previous versions of the game, which means it's been an issue for multiple years and EA just hasn't bothered to fix it. So then I switched to Franchise mode, with the role of a player. I was a QB, and when you're upgrading your player, you can only choose 4 different QB packages to upgrade, with different throwing attributes in them. My QB had a 62 speed, so I had no ability to scramble or run whatsoever, and there was no way to upgrade my speed or several other important attributes that didn't have to do with throwing. Super frustrating. Throwing the ball is also very frustrating. I'll be set in the pocket with no pressure, open receiver, and it's an inaccurate throw for no reason. Also, many times on deep balls, my receiver will have a step or two on the defender and I throw a lob pass, it says perfect accuracy, and the receiver just makes no effort to catch the ball. The ball literally just lands a foot in front of him. If he just put his hands out in front of him the ball would've landed in them. If you throw a ball up for grabs, your receiver will never come down with it, and if there's any sort of contact whatsoever after a catch, they very rarely hang onto the ball. Overall, the game was fun at times, but in my opinion the cons outweigh the pros and there are too many to justify the price of the game. Will likely be the last Madden I buy.