Edward Kitrick

I was very excited for this game, but trepidatious after years of mediocre madden releases. Luckily, this game exceeded my expectations. Gameplay wise, this might be the best football simulation video game ever released, certainly better than the last decade worth of Madden games. The new passing system is fun and intuitive. The wear and tear system is a great addition, and it works well. The game manages to replicate the atmosphere of a college football stadium surprisingly well. Graphically, the game is near perfect. Some of the player models need work, but that’s understandable given the scope of the game. The stadiums are beautiful, and the crowd is lively. The various game modes are a bit bare bones, but they are fun and appear endlessly replayable. There are a few noticeable glitches that definitely need to be patched, but none of them are game breaking. The only unforgivable issue is the repetitive and annoying drum line that plays on a loop whenever you’re not in a game. As someone who spends quite a bit of time every week looking at recruiting and such, the drumline gets very old very quickly, and the only alternative is muting my television, which is equally boring, but less likely to give me a headache. My biggest fear for this game was that it would be a madden clone with college teams, it is not that at all. Given the fact that this game was built from the ground up, I am very pleased with the result. There is room for it to grow, And I am not 100% confident that EA will pull that off. But they impressed me this year.