Madden 19 – Review

Madden has changed the way gamers approach the sport of American Football, for people in the UK Football is played with their feet and NFL has a similarity to Rugby.

EA have continually improved the game each year unlike some of their other games *cough Fifa *cough. Madden 19 has many new improvements on its predecessor with the addition of Schemes for your offense and defense in Franchise mode to Draft Class creator and many other new features.

Draft Class is a very intense build system where you/community creators can create draft classes for you in import into your franchise modes and when it comes to draft day you can draft in fictional characters from past, present and future, you could even create a real to life draft class to keep your franchise mode up to date. It does take a long time from the research on real players and creating them but some people go to new lengths to make a real to life visual of the players to give you that authentic experience.

Schemes as mentioned previously you can install these to your franchises now and they have an added effect to your team, the game portrays the level in which each position benefits from a set scheme and if you play the plays in game that are effective to that scheme each player gets an xp boosts to their overall, I had a RB (Running back) rated at 75 overall but when I changed the scheme to fit my team he went up to an 88 overall rating. So schemes can help with the overall feel for the game and also gives a huge boost to your team. You will however get some players that don’t fit the scheme but their overall rating and control of them is no different.

The player growth in Madden 19 has changed to a skill point system which in my opinion is perfect, yes you can still auto upgrade your players when they reach their milestones but having more control over it is much better. Once a player reaches a certain threshold on their xp they gain a skill point which can be awarded to a selection of areas of expertise, some boosts the scheme fit of that player and others just overall attributes but using a skill point on one of them upgrades many stats on that players ability. I had one that increased 6 of his defensive stats as with him being a rookie this helped get him stronger very quickly.

Longshot – Homecoming is back with part two, there has been quite a lot of players saying that this mode was crap compared to last years and i feel they’re on par with each other, loads of gameplay and story and a good story at that. Devin is now drafted to the NFL with the Cowboys and Colt is trying to make it as a musician and also is dealing with family issues as he discovers he has a step sister. As you play through trying to establish Devin as a starter QB for the cowboys you uncover the depth of difficulty it is for a football player to make it which i found really interesting. Colt’s story takes us a bit deeper with emotion as he was a great WR (Wide receiver) in high school but was always in Devin’s shadow. As he embarks on his journey he comes to the halt of becoming a high school coach which i found so enjoyable as the games feel faster to me and visually you see the difference compared to Devin’s NFL career.  

MUT (Madden Ultimate team) is back, EA’s cash cow is in the game but unlike Fifa where as wu tang said “Cash rules everything around me cream gets the money dollar dollar bill Yo!” madden doesn’t focus around getting money from players, don’t get me wrong it has microtransactions but it clearly states that you’re guaranteed to get a good player in the pack, it is random but not shit luck random. Whether this is due to the new legislation in belgium about gambling in games and loot boxes with young people i don’t know but i’d like a similar feature to be on Fifa 19. Anyway back onto Madden, they have included Solo battles which allows you to compete against other MUT players in weekly solo challenge tournaments you can compete in a leaderboard reward system as well. Solo battles features custom squads from Madden Devs,  NFL Players and celebs etc. this feature was used in Fifa 18 and really gave solo players more opportunity in FUT so the addition to this in Madden is really cool.

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Overall the game has been polished and the gameplay is tighter than ever, players have unique runs and movements to their real life counterparts, you can celebrate in the red zone after a TD (Touchdown) and the overall feel for the game is outstanding and is up there with one of the best Madden games i’ve played to date.

8/10