Summary: <p>It’s the 28th straight time a Madden football game has been released since 1988 and you know we had to try it out. We go over some of the good, some of the bad and some of the flat out annoying parts of this years rendition of the greatest football simulation past the 1985 NFL Challenge game for DOS. </p> <p>Never one to fluff a duff too immediately, let’s start with the bad.</p> <h2>The Bad</h2> <h3>The Continuous Animations can be frustrating</h3> <p>The running back has the ball, gets hit and instead of going down starts to stumble backwards. Amazingly he recovers, but now 5 yards back from where he was previously, just in time to get hit again, except this time he goes down. What had been a 7-yard gain has dwindled to a 2-yard gain. Sometimes the animations look cool, but overall I find myself yelling at players to just go down already. </p> <h3>The Opening Game That You Are Forced To Play</h3> <p>I don’t like the Rams. I’m not super into the history of the Coliseum. I don’t particularly like Jared Goff, but these are all things I’m forced to deal with before ever playing a snap of Madden. All I’m asking for is a way to skip through this. You can skip everything else in the game, why not this cut-scene-riddled two-minute drill? It has no bearing on the rest of the game, so let me pass oh great bridgekeeper. It doesn’t help that I had to play through this portion twice. </p> <h3>Rag Doll Tackles</h3> <p>This is mainly Geoff’s complaint because I think it looks funny, but the rag doll effect when a tackle is completed is a bit bizarre. Many of the players would be looking for crutches after their bones turn to Jello, but they seem to be fine immediately. Thankfully I’ve not seen anyone physically go through another opponent, so at least there’s that. </p> <h2>The Good</h2> <h3>The Game Commentary</h3> <p>Holy crap is this adjustment a good one. A totally revamped commentary system, two new commentators (Brandon Goudin and Charles Davis), and weekly updates to the dialogue. No more Phil Simms annoying me to no end. This year the good folks at EA scrapped the entire commentary system of previous years and put together a new, more dynamic system. With Goudin and Davis recording weekly, the commentary will never get stale. I even had them comment on how the same team was playing themselves when I got matched up with the same team online. Can’t say enough about this update, but here’s a bit more:</p> <div class="video-container"> </div> <h3>Punting: Backspin To Win</h3> <p>The kicking in Madden 17 has been refurbished and with a new kicking system they’ve added more control of the ball itself. Instead of forcing the ball out of bounds in the corner, you can now apply backspin to the ball and make it rest gently at the 3-yard line. New placekicking controls will also lead to a higher number of missed field goals/extra points, or that’s at least what I’ve seen so far. </p> <h3>Draft Champions</h3> <p>A new way to draft a team, three players are shown and you select one over and over fifteen rounds of the draft. The team is then good for 24 hours or 5 games, whichever comes first. After that you can draft an entirely new team. Pretty cool. </p> <h2>Ratings</h2> <p>Geoff: 4.5/5<br> John: 4/5</p> <p>Consensus: There are some buggy things to work out, but overall the improvements this year are for the better and the update to commentary is amazing. Look for those weekly updates and enjoy fresh farm-to-table phrases.</p>
