EA’s latest entry in the long-running Madden series features some upgrades over the previous generation game, including improved visuals, presentation, and animation. Today’s analysis is all about graphics, performance, and cross-platform comparisons, although I won’t go into the details of the sports simulation.
Performance
I’m looking at PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, as well as PS4 Pro as a representative for the previous generation consoles. All of these goals and always hit 60 fps during gameplay, although these segments are rarely that long due to the stop-start nature of the game. The only time I noticed a drop from that solid 60fps line was when the game switched to real-time replays, inaugural segments, or video wipes, as these can cause short pauses that transition in between, and the video wipes all add up. or around 30 fps. That said, since these segments represent the TV presentation style, they weren’t of any significance to the gameplay.
The only exception to that target of 60 fps are quality mode replays on Series X and PS5, which now target 30 fps instead of 60. This is also the case on PS4 Pro and Series S, which have only one mode in each. rather than Quality or Performance to choose from. Again, the impact here is minimal, as these sections are non-interactive, and other than the shifts to these segments, they hold that 30fps without a hitch and then go back to 60fps once the game resumes. Overall, each format and mode delivers a smooth and consistent level of performance.
Loading is fast on the current generation of consoles, with PS5, Series X and Series S all coming in from the menu in under three seconds. The PS4 Pro is slightly slower at about ~10 seconds and also has other changes and cuts in presentation style, video quality and character models.
Graphics
The current generation release offers upgrades in a number of key areas, the largest of which is the Field Sense animation system. Many may recognize this in other guises, such as Naughty Dog’s similar Motion Matching system used in The Last of Us Part II, or Ubisoft Motion Blending as we saw in For Honor. It has also been used in EA’s previous FIFA titles, including last-generation consoles. But here, this new motion blending technology is only available on the PS5, Series X, and Series S. This is intended to hold a large number of motion-captured animation cycles in memory and then dynamically move between many of them in real time. mixing based on a myriad of factors as they occur, such as foot position, speed, velocity and even mid-air collisions. The goal is to achieve even more realistic and convincing human movements and interaction during the games and replays.
Realistic human movement is an important aspect for sports games like this, where the human eye and brain are naturally good at detecting when things like body weight, limb position and impact feel and look unrealistic. And in that sense, the new entry is a great first step towards improving the quality of the simulation. In comparisons of the last generation and the current one, you can definitely see cleaner, more organic shifts of animation routines as players twist, turn and get tackled. Sometimes the PS4 Pro version marks keyframe jumps between two or more animation cycles when models warp to a new position or jump out of the current one. In contrast, the FieldSense system increases the accuracy of movement – this is best reflected in the reps, which can show some excellent levels of blending.
The main problem, however, is that this isn’t always the case and it doesn’t hide every blend. This means that the ones that do appear stand out more because the quality is not consistent. This is compounded by heavy clipping in many areas – both in gameplay and replays – as well as sometimes serious flaws in model quality – which are also being upgraded on the new generation systems – probably due to the extra bot-rigged models needed to run this new animation system. You can see the models look smaller and less, well, buff in some sections, as do some of the various pyrotechnics and particle systems. But they do offer an increase in the number of triangles, which can be seen in the deformation of arms and other areas as skeletal rigs move to extreme positions. This means the new consoles push more polygons per frame, while calculating a higher bone density for animation and blends, which is generally better. Just like the lighting that offers better coverage per pixel, higher shadow and shadow quality, along with more details in stadiums, grass and textures.
Finally, the physics-driven hair system can also improve model quality, as seen here on Mr Madden himself, and offers a much denser geometry of the hair instead of the flat, motionless hair fins of the PS4 Pro version, although this varies depending on the model in question. While some may argue that some visual changes aren’t necessarily an improvement, the current generation versions ultimately offer better details, shadows, materials, and post-effects than the last generation versions.
resolutions
All this means we get some different numbers in the number of resolutions. Starting with the lowest first, the Series S offers a solid 1920×1080 output, in both gameplay and real-time cinematics, which is no surprise considering FIFA games using the same engine were also 1080p. The shock may come from the PS4 Pro, which targets 3200×1800 and uses a checkerboard resolution to achieve that level, meaning the final output image is sharper than the Series S, but it has lower-quality pixels and the heavy chromatic aberration that the game reduces the sharpness of the higher resolutions.
The chromatic aberration also affects the larger consoles, both of which always target 3840×2160 in quality mode, with the noted frame rate of 30fps during iterations. This is the sharpest image you can pick and overall the game is very stable in most sections with a fairly flat lighting model and minimal specular or noisy pixels. The difference is in Performance mode, which focuses on 3200×1800 to double the real-time replays to 60fps – but this is dynamic or the checkerboard technique used here can falter meaning we can count down to 2560×1440 on both consoles . In gameplay, both modes focus on the same levels and outputs, which uses a checkerboard technique to render 3840×2160, meaning the change to quality mode only increases the replay resolutions along with an increase in bokeh depth of field, which may return to a cheaper Gaussian blur filter in dense geometry shots, along with subtle shadow and hair changes – but this may be due to the lower resolution buffers. Overall, even in side-by-side comparisons, the differences show that the increase in resolution is not as noticeable as the decrease in frames per second. Anyway, the choice present is the best – and most importantly, the gameplay of both is identical, so pick your poison.
The raises that Madden 23 offers on the current generation are good, but not great. Most players probably won’t notice the animation system improvements in moment-to-moment gameplay, much less the increase in model quality and replay frame rates. Also the improvements here are not consistent or even always better than the older models – sometimes crowds can look equally bad with fixed vertices poorly placed with no movement when it should be dust, low polygon arms that are front and center in replays and heavy crash and obvious jumps between animation cycles still crop up. I hope this provides a basis for the team to work hard on significantly expanding the move sets and mixing techniques used here for the next game in the series, along with redesigning many of the player models to better work with this new system and increasing fidelity offered. Other minor changes would also be welcome, such as updating or even interpolating the video wipes to 60fps in performance mode so they don’t look so jarring. All the boosts that Series X, Series S and PlayStation 5 players are getting are certainly welcome and visible, but I doubt that last-gen players will feel like they’re missing out on much.
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