The Giant of an Industry

The newest installment of the game, and definitly the best so far.

Madden 20 is the 38th installment of the series. The whole Madden game was started in 1988 with the first game called John Madden Football. The games have progressively gotten better and have had many additions to the game as well as removing some things. As you may know, there is a new Madden released every year and it has the next year on the cover, for example, Madden 20 came out in 2019. 

In this installment of Madden there is an exciting new feature called QB 1. it is a game mode where you can make your own player and make decisions for him. Some of these decisions include choosing what college he plays at for two games (after the school brings in someone better and you wait all four years at this college) during the college football playoff. After you play one or two college games you are then thrust forward into the NFL combine where your performance in certain drills makes your draft stock go up or down. You then meet with three teams, the New York Giants, the Miami Dolphins, and then the Washington Redskins. You then go on and play your career.

There is a new thing called an X factor, these are given to 50 players. All X Factor players will have an X under their feet on the field, and when they are fully in the zone the X will start sparking and flashing to indicate it’s on. It can be turned off and on without limit during the game assuming the conditions are met. While in game you can go into coach camera pre play and see your X Factor players, and you can also see the opponents X Factor players. 

Waiting for the team ratings to be released.

Overall the gameplay has plenty of quality-of-life updates too, including perhaps the biggest of all, an overhaul to the no-huddle look. In the past, you never wanted to run the no huddle look the players had to hold a button and pray everyone gets up to the line, all while you are trying to choose a play. It was tedious and seemed to go against the purpose of it to begin with. Well not anymore, you hold the button and the players are at the line and the ball can be snapped, but you have a four second run off in exchange. Visually the crowd sucks. From a distance, they look like they’re reacting as fans at an actual stadium would. But the closer the camera gets to them the more duplicates and texture issues players will notice. It’s not a major issue if players mainly care for gameplay, but it can give things a hit in the immersion department. Finally if you are thinking I might go get this, and have no idea about the NFL, here is who you should and shouldn’t play with. Starting off with the five worst teams, the Miami Dolphins are the worst followed by the New York Giants, Buffalo Bills, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Arizona Cardinals. The five best teams are The Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, New England Patriots, and the Green Bay Packers. These were purely based on the overall of the teams. All things being said this is a great game and has had many improvements from last year, and has some big strides for next year.