Madden games have been around since 1988, longer than many gamers who play the series are alive. At some point, an annual release cadence can lead to a loss of quality as development teams struggle to come up with innovative additions to a game. Can Madden NFL 23 avoid that this year, or is this more of the same with a gloss coat of paint and roster update? Find out in our Madden 23 PS5 review.
Thank you Coach
John Madden was a legendary coach and sports reporter who passed away in December 2021 at the age of 85. Madden NFL 23 is thus dedicated to the late football coach. Many loading screens scribble “thanks coach” while the introduction of the menu system shows old footage of Madden coaching and winning the Superbowl. Madden NFL 23’s introductory game pits vintage Madden against more modern Madden, and it’s a surreal matchup that even the game’s commentators find strange but also pretty cool.
It then feels a bit hollow that Madden 23 is playing it safe this year. You don’t get the status John Madden achieved by playing it safe. So while this is still the best looking and playable version of Madden yet – that has usually been the case for almost every entry in the franchise – when it was the latest and greatest. Graphically things may have improved a bit from last year – some character faces have become more lifelike and current-gen consoles can switch between a high frame rate or higher fidelity graphics. Meanwhile, a lot of audio commentary is being reused and, frustratingly, the sports reporters sometimes react incorrectly to the action on the pitch. Things like saying a team has failed to convert a 4th down situation, when the UI clearly states that the chains are being moved.
Meanwhile, some strange bugs in Madden 23’s presentation will take you out of the game. Take The Yard game mode, for example, where players create their own avatars and level up by playing smaller street-style exhibition matches. In my very first game for this mode, my player always froze a few seconds after the game stopped, resulting in unintentionally hilarious replays. In addition, some animations after playing made the football move on its own and zip right back into the player’s hand, while just before that the ball was clearly on the ground and was not being held by anyone.
FieldSense is a new feature exclusive to current-gen consoles – this isn’t even coming to PCs – because for whatever reason EA chose to keep that continuation of the previous-generation console version of the game. It’s a vague term that encompasses more options as the action takes place on the pitch. For example, as a ball carrier you can juke with the right stick as usual, but you can also stomp the X button as soon as a defender grabs you in an attempt to get out of a tackle, with a higher chance of the ball coming loose. You can also hold L2 and use the left stick to perform a faster turn, although of course the opposing team has moves to counter this as well. These new options, combined with the more nuanced throwing options, feel like a more capable game is starting to develop.
What is old is new again, or so some say. This is rarely the case for games, and Madden is notorious for inheriting features from the previous year’s entry, without even a new layer of graphics. In a franchise that hasn’t missed a year of release since its inception, this is almost to be expected. Franchise mode has seen the most upgrades, with players having different desires when it comes to the team they want to play for. Previously, simply bidding a player the highest contract bid would win them for your team. Now you need to pay attention to variables such as how likely your team is to compete for the Superbowl versus the seniority of the free agent – players approaching the end of their career may choose a lower paying team if the odds are high that the lifting the Lombardi trophy is higher. Even something as mundane as the weather in the team’s city can make or break a deal. Player tags can also affect negotiations, such as an All-Star player lowering the amount a potential player will accept to be on the same team as, say, Tom Brady. Finally, salary caps roll over, just like in real life. Teams can choose to collect the remaining salary they had, to spend more the following season. This can add a strategy to get a high profile free agent later on.
Microtransactions are nothing new to sports games, and of course EA has a bunch of them available in Madden NFL 23. If you want to buy premium currency packs, they are sorted by high price first. Honestly felt like a mobile game, the way they present a $149.99 pack of tokens as the “best deal” when it’s absolutely insane to suggest it makes sense to spend that amount of money on a game which has already cost $69.99 to even play. There are probably so-called “whale” players who buy these kinds of packs, and I can understand why EA would want to offer these as easily as possible, but it seems a bit desperate.
verdict
Madden NFL 23 has some good new ideas, but is mostly more of the same. The graphics and presentation are fine, but just barely. Football sometimes seems to have a mind of its own, while commentators don’t always have a logical response to the action on the pitch. If you spend your time in franchise mode, you will probably enjoy the changes. Beyond that, though, Madden 23 feels very familiar.
Rating: 6.5/10
Advantages:
- Best version of Madden so far
- Some Sentimental Devotion to the Late John Madden
- New controls when passing are intriguing
cons:
- Not much news to watch outside of Franchise
- Strange camera and animation glitches
- Audio commentary doesn’t always match on-screen action
Madden NFL 23 review code provided by publisher. You can read MP1st’s rating and scoring policy here.
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