Madden NFL 16 - PlayStation 4

This game is worth every penny. Madden16 is truly one of if not the last GOOD Modern football game. The graphics are solid for the time period. The gameplay is where the game thrives giving it a 9/10. Where EA needs to improve is on the sliders and how it effects gameplay. I wont lie to you EA Sports Madden is a Joke of a company. They have gone steps in the right direction for years and years and yet the game still sucks every year and it also gets worse every year. Franchise Fans this game is for you, I myself love the connected franchise mode Id rate it a 7/10. Where Franchise could've been better was having old features that were in past maddens. Where you may NOT want to buy this game,Madden 15-16 have this feature in common in connected franchise in free agency the signing system is tedious and frustrating its visually anxiety. However to avoid this you could go to settings and switch free agency to CPU's responsibility. Free Agency is better in the sense the players have more decision on where they want to go. Second feature that may make you NOT want to buy the game is, There is no option to re-sign players until offseason and where some may find this a pro it can be very annoying for some. The re-signing means ALL your players that had their contact end. For example lets say you signed a 25 of free agents well you'd have to resign 25 free agents all at once. Last Feature, Fantasy Draft although cool and helpful it was its first year being in the game. This mode can take quite some time to finish drafting we are talking up to 30mins or longer.Thats the Pros and ConsI love Madden16 in comparison to the rest of the Xbox One Maddens! I highly recommend this game to all football gamers. The person selling this game also had done a great job. The game looked new and there was 0 sign of damage, very much held with care. Would Recommend and I thank you!

This is my favorite Madden update in years. Despite the trend towards Madden Ultimate Team and neglect over player/franchise mode, this game feels largely revitalized due to the changes to the Wide Receiver mechanics. The options to chose the type of catch (and throw - high/low) adds depth that I never expected this franchise to reach. Player matchups are more important than ever and options for team building are expanded as a result.Additionally, the new scouting mechanic is a lot of fun and adds a real-life risk to draft picks that previous incarnations did not have. You only can see the top 3 characteristics for player - everything else is a mystery until you see combine results in the offseason. It is hard to truly know exactly how good a player could be - which I find great and engaging unlike other games where you could figure out the system, making scouting and drafting a chore.The final major change was with player experience. Most players don't get a ton of EXP in practice or even in games which makes drafting and free agency all the more important.Otherwise, not a lot changed from prior incarnations. If you like the Madden Franchise, you know what you're getting.

It worked good

This year's game actually boasts a number of new features, but when you squint a little, you can see the kinds of subtractions Dickson was talking about. Things that used to drive me crazy, like the awkward tackling animations that made players go instantly limp when hit, are much less prevalent. Instances of running backs getting hung up on linemen are way down from earlier games. Commentary has been reworked to be less painfully repetitive (though it's still pretty bad in certain situations). And the menu system, long the bane of this series, have been reorganized in a superior (if still imperfect) way. These are small changes, but they go a long way toward making this year's Madden a better overall experience.Which isn't to say that Madden NFL 16 doesn't feature plenty of new additions, and that those new additions don't come with their own set of brand-new problems to be subtracted in some future sequel. Take, for instance, the new additions to the passing game. Quarterbacks get an added ability to throw passes high and low, which is nifty in and of itself, but factors in more heavily to the game's new catch mechanics. Madden 16 now allows receivers to catch balls in multiple ways. As you throw to a receiver, an icon will pop up above their head, indicating what the computer has determined to be the best option among aggressive, possession, and run-after-catch scenarios. RAC catches put you in position to get big yardage following the reception; possession catches essentially position receivers to secure balls while in traffic; aggressive catches send receivers leaping into the air, arms (or arm, if you're cover man Odell Beckham Jr.) stretched outward to make a spectacular play that could easily be broken up by a well-positioned defender.This is by far the best attempt Madden has made toward making receiver play compelling outside of simply running after a catch. That said, the system has its quirks. Any receiver with a decent jump or spectacular catch rating will try to make some ridiculous-looking aggressive catches, and while they're more likely to be broken up than other catch types, they still work a little too often, especially in online play. You can tell the developers were deeply enamored with Beckham's spectacular grabs from last season, because now lots of players go for absurd one-handers and other unrealistic catches, and somehow end up catching them anyway.Most of the defensive changes from last year remain intact and just as functional. EA is touting new, "organic" gang tackles, which boils down to allowing multiple defensive players to redirect a ballcarrier's momentum without locking into a bunch of canned group animations. Group tackles do look better, and again, you don't see quite as much of the goofy trips and limp falls as in previous years, but it's nothing revolutionary. Defensive backs now also have similar icons popping up as they gear up to defend a pass. You can either play the ball, which puts you in better position for an interception or deflection (but may also screw you if the receiver catches it anyway), or play the receiver, aiming to knock the ball from their hands as they go up for a catch. The differentiation here is good, but it doesn't completely cure the feeling that playing DB often results in bad things. I've never been good at playing corner in these games, and the new button options didn't negate that feeling. If anything, I mostly just leaned on playing receivers out of fear that I was going to give up a huge play otherwise. Based on my few forays into playing the ball, that fear is well-founded.With all of these things combined, Madden's on-the-field action is arguably the best it's been in years. Abundance of aggressive catches and occasionally wonky animations aside, the game moves with a degree of precision that hasn't existed previously. Even little things, like penalties, are presented in more realistic fashion. False starts and encroachment penalties happen about as often as they do in regular games, though occasionally those encroachment/neutral zone infractions seem to come incorrectly, and the AI almost never calls pass interference, outside of the most blatant cases. You can, of course, mess with sliders if the default settings aren't to your liking, and those sliders seem much more sensitive this year.Elsewhere, the connected franchise mode has gotten a bit of work this year. The big new feature is essentially an in-game quest system. It's a reworking of the hot and cold streaks from previous years, presenting you with specific statistical goals for each offensive and defensive drive. Holding the ball, you might be asked to achieve a certain number of rushing yards with your back, or score a receiving touchdown to close out the drive. On defense, you might need to call a certain number of blitzes, or get a sack with a specific player. Achieving them boosts the confidence level of your whole unit, and provides additional XP. It's a terrific system that is a great deal more fun to manage than the sometimes random streaks from before, but the specificity of these goals is, in some cases, a little much. There's no great reason for a particular linebacker to have to get two tackles for a loss on one drive, for example, when any player on the defensive unit getting those tackles would serve the team just as well. It's a system that I think could use a bit of reworking next year, but I hope that they keep it around, as it makes the act of playing individual franchise games a lot more interesting.Draft scouting has also seen an overhaul, one that I imagine some hardcore players won't love. Each week, you're granted a number of scouting points which you can apply to any available rookie. Those points unlock letter grades for the player's top three stats. Because you have a set number of points each week, you can only scout so many players, but that information, mixed with their eventual combine results, give you a solid picture of the players you've targeted. I've seen some players grumble about this system not giving specific enough details about individual stats, and I think that's a fair criticism. The flipside of that is that a big dummy like me, who almost never has great drafts in Madden franchise modes, finally started to get some solid results via this new system. Maybe there's a happy medium still to be found, but for my part, I'm in favor of what's been changed here.The last big new feature is Draft Champions, a mode that works somewhat in tandem with the ultra lucrative Ultimate Team mode. In Draft Champions, EA capitalizes on our culture's current obsession with fantasy drafts by essentially creating its own Hearthstone arena mode for football. You begin the mode by drafting a coach, who has his own set of offensive and defensive specialties. You then draft a team of 15 starters (the rest of the roster is filled out with low-rated mostly nobodies) from sets of three available players. Players that fit a coach's system help boost your team's overall rating more, but players not suited to those systems don't negatively impact your team.Once you've built your team, you can take on a series of offline or online matchups against other drafted teams. If you lose, your team is done, and you start over with a new draft. With each win, you earn a higher reward--usually a better pack of cards for Ultimate Team. Maybe it's because I don't often spend a lot of time in Ultimate Team--the mode has only gotten bigger this year, with more challenges, classic scenarios, and the like to play through--but Draft Champions hit a sweet spot for me. It's just involved enough to make me want to keep playing with my drafted teams, but light enough to where I don't feel like I have to invest major time into it. The rewards being tied to Ultimate Team is where I lose a bit of interest, as I don't have the time or the desire to spend dozens of hours building up a squad every single year. Again, maybe there's a better happy medium to be found here as well, but as a first time feature, Draft Champions is a welcome addition.In Madden NFL 16, EA has built upon last year's far-better-than-average game in meaningful and useful ways. It's an approachable game of football, still complex in myriad ways, but better at communicating those complexities than ever before. The new additions all come with their share of issues, but those additions nonetheless feel meaningful to the core game, like ideal fits into what is often feels like a monolithic, largely unchanging franchise. And where Madden has chosen to scale back, it ultimately feels better for it. The last two years have given me a modicum of hope that, even so many years into the era of NFL exclusivity, the Madden team can still find ways to evolve and improve the concept of video game football.