When When i first started playing Madden NFL 18, I had been amazed. For the first time in a number of years, the legendary coach, commentator, and namesake for the franchise, John Madden, lent his voice to the game. It was just the opening title screen animation, but he briefly waxes poetic-as much as anything John Madden says could be considered poetry-about the greatness of cover athlete Tom Brady, just like he was back in the broadcast booth.
Hearing his voice again brought back lots of good memories for me, because when Madden was at his best, there have been few better at conveying football towards the masses. It also brought back some rough ones too, however, because when Madden what food was in his worst, he was a small laughing stock that distracted in the games he broadcast. It's somewhat apropos then that his voice can there be at the start of the 2010 Madden entry, because in lots of ways, this is a perfect symbol for Madden NFL 18. Some things concerning the game are extremely good; some just had me shaking my head.
Easily one of the brightest spots of the game was also the most surprising. Partially thanks to the Madden team switching to the Frostbite engine, and partially because FIFA's “The Journey” mode was so well received and helped pave a path, Madden added its own story-driven mode this year called Longshot-and it's among the freshest and most enjoyable things the Madden series has ever done.
Longshot could best be described as one part Madden, one part Friday Night Lights, and perhaps two parts Telltale storytelling. You play as Devin Wade, a one time blue-chip QB prospect who stuck his cleats soon after beginning his college career and took a few years to find himself after personal tragedy left him shaken as a child. Working through the regional combine and taking advantage of a distinctive opportunity that comes his way, Wade is the very definition of a longshot, with one last chance to make it in the NFL. Alongside his best buddy and number one wide receiver, Colt Cruise, Wade's determination will be tested nearly as much as his athletic ability.
The story that Longshot tells could be placed alongside all the best football stories we've seen, from Rudy to Remember the Titans to the aforementioned Friday Night Lights. Not only do you see his story unfold, but often times you'll be asked to step in and select Devin's words or actions in various situations which will guide him down dozens of different branching paths (a la a Telltale game). Based on those choices-and how you perform on the football field-Devin could be drafted, Colt might be drafted, neither might be drafted, or both might be drafted.
Besides dialogue choices, Devin will also suit up. You'll be able to relive a number of Devin's glory days in senior high school, in addition to be put to the test in combines and game scrimmages. Your performance here has a direct impact on what makes Longshot fantastic, and that is Devin's draft grade page. Every major event you take part in can affect Devin's grade, football IQ, how his personality is perceived, and more. A great deal larger, every NFL team is watching, and you can instantly see how every one of these events affects the score directly.
Longshot could truly change what draws people to Madden, and might even appeal to those not typically thinking about a football sim. There's a couple of drawbacks as to the should well be a highly-celebrated new mode, though. It's not bad that Longshot should only take you three to five hours to conquer, and it's damn impressive that there are no loading time whatsoever when you jump in-you can play the whole thing straight through if you so choose. I just personally wished there is a better balance between those critical gameplay moments affecting your score, and also the sometimes long cutscenes that occur in-between to drive the storyline forward. Also, it was jarring the way the biggest moments of Devin's on-field life at times get reduced to quicktime events. It heightened the drama, but not at all the gameplay.
Also, even though you is deserving of your grade to be very high (I finished up with a 9.7/10 score), you won't be drafted where you should be like a player of that caliber. I believe a few more endings would've been warranted, because despite all the drama surrounding Devin, should you score that highly, one NFL team would have a flyer on you early. Considering how frequently teams take risks-like the Bucs wasting a second-round draft pick on a kicker, or even the Broncos when they took Tim Tebow of all individuals with a first-round pick-somebody should snatch up Devin should you wind up turning him into a true superstar. Otherwise, I absolutely loved this mode, and hope to have more adventures with Devin the coming year.
As good as Longshot is, there are some misses on other fronts this year in Madden. Yesteryear several years saw major gameplay overhauls, concentrating on offensive/defensive line play, the running game, and the passing game. Now that such major components of football happen to be looked at, EA Tiburon seemingly wanted to make use of this year to start focusing a little more after such broad endeavors.
The first (and worst) of these new mechanics is one thing called Target Passing. It needs to be said that Target Passing is completely optional, but after trying to utilize it several dozen times, I selected to never utilize it again, and hope it goes the way of QB Vision a decade ago-as in it never returns. Target Passing borrows a bit from some of the drills in Longshot, where you can mention a targeting reticule on the field and move it in place. By pressing the related button while holding the trigger, you can throw the ball not where the computer wants to throw it, but to in which the reticule specifically is, and the receiver will break their route to best try to catch the ball.
The idea ended up being to offer the type of precision we see on any given Sunday within an NFL game-for example, aiming for a receiver's outside shoulder to protect against a large part, in order to strive for a corner of an endzone that just your tight end can get to. What it winds up doing is adding an overly complex layer to Madden's passing game, and throws much more information at you to process within the brief amount of time you have to get rid of the ball. I'm sure there are several pro-Madden players available who'll jump for joy over this mechanic, and that i admit the idea was a sound one, making perfect sense in writing. But QB Vision seemed to be a sound idea that was poorly implemented, but this is the case once again. Target Passing's difficult to make use of, and will take far longer to figure out than it is worth for many players.
Of course, regardless of how you end up throwing the ball, you always need anyone to throw to, and thus wide receiver versus cornerback play has additionally fallen into EA Tiburon's crosshairs this season. Here, however, I discovered the brand new controls to definitely add something to the experience. Now, it's incredibly easy to jam wide receivers should you play with corners using the right joystick and simply pressing from the receiver, trying to guess correctly which way they'll attempt to run. Conversely, receivers may also make use of the sticks and shoulder buttons to roll around from potential jamming, and can easier break their routes off or make sharp cuts to get at the interior or outside from the numbers based on what the situation may demand, adding a welcome layer of realism to one of the most important battles on the football field.
This new gameplay particularly is useful within a new wrinkle in one of Madden's most popular modes, Madden Ultimate Team. Yes, the credit card collectible game that allows you to buy packs of players and create your personal fantasy team is unsurprisingly back, but with it comes down lots of changes. For example, nowadays there are special fantasy packs where you can see an entire choice of amazing players, and then select the right certainly one of that group (while forcing you to discard all of those other pack). There is also the newest MUT Squads, bringing in a major way online co-op to Madden.
MUT Squads allows for 3-on-3 online matchups to occur, with one player serving as the offensive coordinator and supplying the offense, one player doing the same for the defense, and another serving as head coach, who basically controls the timeouts (a role potentially ideal for less-experienced Madden players). MUT Squads is a little a double-edged sword for Madden, however. It is great that Madden supports larger groups online, and that buddies who have always aspired to play together now can. One player could possibly be the QB throwing to a receiver who, using the new controls to get away from receivers, is fighting to obtain open for his team.
The downside to MUT Squads is the fact that it's very challenging on the same page in Madden. Similar to actual life football, it will require a lot of time to get in sync with someone, particularly when most folks at this time are utilized to playing Madden alone, where the entire team in concert with as an extension of the player. Another disappointment is that the 3-on-3 co-op is only in MUT Squads, after i know there are lots of out there who'd probably rather just play as their favorite team using their buddies without needing to depend on the randomness of MUT to provide them with good players to become competitive.
And that's the real rub of MUT and the majority of Madden NFL 18 in general: It seems like all of the game outside of Franchise is just trying to funnel players into MUT, in which you either have to grind for the best players, or perhaps be forced to spend real world cash on microtransactions. (Even Longshot will “reward” you with MUT items if you beat it.) The microtransactions are all optional, of course, however the more times you place temptation before someone, the much more likely they're to bite.
Even Draft Champions-an inclusion we first returned in Madden NFL 16 that's been a tremendous accessory for the series-is now locked behind a level wall in MUT, and you need MUT tickets to experience against people online.
Admittedly, you only need to put around Twenty to thirty minutes of time into MUT challenges to unlock access to MUT Draft (the new reputation for Draft Champions), but the fact that probably the most popular facets of Madden has been absorbed under MUT and set behind a wall of any kind is frustrating. The worst of this is that the balance of the randomness from previous years feels lost, because not just would be the players you can select from in each round of MUT Draft random, but so are their overalls, since MUT can feature the same player with different stats each time. Frustratingly, it feels like EA Tiburon ruined Draft Champions by making it a different way to try to keep you around longer in a mode that tempts you into spending more real money.
And of all the things that aren't linked to MUT-Franchise mode-there's part of it that could be. In that mode, you can train together with your team before each game included in a scouting report against that week's opponent. Meanwhile, additionally, there are the Skills Trainer option around the main menu, that is where all of the scouting report drills are pulled from. Completing tasks in Skills Trailer rewards free MUT packs; completing those tasks in Franchise does nothing for MUT. Why the above things aren't linked makes no sense, besides the fact that Madden loves making you grind. It's the digital equivalent of two-a-days.
While talking about Franchise, there have at least been some minor improvements into it outside of the drills. The user interface was cleaned up some, particularly when it comes to scouting and drafting college players. Too, animations are superior to ever now that they're run by Frostbite. Using the hit stick and making open-field tackles hasn't looked cleaner, and you can almost feel the impact in your favorite gaming chair. There's still the sporadic rag doll glitch, however the visuals at least appear to be the most polished Madden has had inside a long time. That said, some member of they must've were built with a brain fart, because they all messed up the brand new York Giants' and Los Angeles Chargers' schedules, giving the Giants nine road games and only seven home games and the Chargers the inverse-in actual life, the Chargers are going to Metlife, the Giants aren't going to StubHub-and hopefully that is fixed immediately within an upcoming patch. They were the only two teams I saw with incorrect schedules, but the fact I even had to check this was irritating to say the least.
Unintentional errors bring me to my final point of Madden NFL 18: the internet servers. I played several online games literally just a couple hours before this review went live. Thousands of people were supposedly already on the internet and finding a game wasn't an issue. Neither, for the most part, was maintaining a connection. That said, there have been a few random disconnects from the EA servers, which could be a sign of instability-and if that's the case here in this limited pre-launch scenario, that worries me. Obviously, the sport doesn't release worldwide for an additional week despite the fact that we were told the servers ought to be all set, there is always hope this was simply a eleventh hour hiccup, rather than a portent for worse things to come. Considering how critical online play would be to Madden, it'd be surprising to see any real long-term issues, but we'll see once the servers ramp up to some real strain within the coming days.
This year, it seems Madden NFL 18 is about using the good using the bad. There's more good than bad for sure (highlighted through the new Longshot mode), but such things as putting Draft Champions into MUT and also the new Target Passing mechanics should create a large amount of folks at least a little bit wary. We aren't quite to the “annual roster update” days, but following the roll Madden has been on recently, if you're looking to consider a break, this can be the entire year to do so.
