On the field you can immediately feel like work has gone into fine-tuning the gameplay.

There’s also been a noticeable tune-up with the audio – you hear the chatter between players, big hits sound as soul-crushing as they look, and dynamic crowd noises add to the drama of a game. Madden has led the way for a long time now and small improvements to lighting and presentation leaves it feeling as authentic as ever. sport, much more than in the UK, and we see this reflected impressively well in the game.

Moving on to presentation, the product is a huge deal in U.S. Of course it’s nearly impossible to conclude if this will be a success – time will tell. A few clever souls have pointed out that this supposedly new feature is a rip off of All-Pro Football 2K8, but is that such a bad thing? Using a popular feature from a defunct game makes sense to us, especially one that is still revered now. Some fans like it, others think it over-complicates matters and abilities should only be defined by player attributes. 2K has been doing this for almost a decade, to great success, whilst PES leans on it more than FIFA. Whether you like this new addition may well depend on your general stance on role-playing elements in sports games.

There are counters to each X-factor, hopefully ensuring none of them are game-breaking, but we’ll wait and see about that.ĮA is committed to this new feature and you’re met with a database of X-factor stars on the main menu, while every loading screen cycles through players, their traits, and a line of praise from the Madden Ratings Adjuster. As an example, if you’re prone to throwing interceptions, using a quarterback with the ‘Gambler’ ability means defenders can’t intercept your passes when active. If you hit certain targets on the field, these tiers and abilities are activated, making your star players even more devastating, especially when X-factors are in use. The premise is fairly straightforward: players now fall under one of numerous archetypes, which then house superstar abilities that are ranked in tiers.

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