Sigh, unfortunately I really do not have many good things to say about Madden 23. The game remains largely unchanged from its previous iteration...err...previous 5-10 iterations. Every year it is EA Sports cash grab and this year is no different.
GAMEPLAY: (20/50)
I have many issues and complaints with Madden's gameplay this year, and it would be a compliment to say the core game is poor. The first thing the game throws you into is the introduction of a new passing engine/gameplay style that will allegedly allow you to throw better passes with pinpoint precision and placement. I could not grasp this at all, and nearly every pass I was throwing would be inaccurate. Luckily the option remains to use traditional "lead receiver passing", and that is what I stuck to. Despite this the passing still seems off to me. I feel like I throw way too many inaccurate passes and sometimes the ball just kind of does what it wants. Often times a slightly inaccurate or non perfect pass will be intercepted, and there were online games were both my opponent and I were throwing 4-6 INT's a game. A big contributing factor to the passing is that the pass rush this year is insane, and people will exploit blitzes online leaving you with zero time to throw the ball. Even when playing against the AI their defenders will be in the backfield as soon as you snap the ball. This also shuts down deep passing, and almost every type of pass besides dink and dunk is non existent. Really frustrating, and I will go into online gameplay a little here and there in this review, but the online gameplay is pure stinky trash. The other big new gameplay mechanic is the ability to press LT when running the ball to do a quick cutback. This component works well, and is easily the best new feature in the game.
The AI in Madden 23 is very poor. There were many instances when playing where I would throw a perfect pass and it would hit a receiver who was wide open right in the face or something else stupid would happen like him tipping it in the air and then the ball being tipped by 3-4 players before being intercepted. The difficulty balance in the game has the same issues as many years past where on ALL-PRO the game is way too easy and you can win pretty much every game as long as you know what you are doing, but then on ALL-MADDEN the AI will shutdown everything you do and they are impossible to stop on defense. I really wish Madden would go back to adaptive difficulty like they use to do in many years ago, and a similar system to what MLB the show does for difficulty. Overall this lack of middle ground or balance ruins my experiences and really deter me from playing against the AI or playing franchise. Another big issue I have with the games are the refs are non existent. On defense you can literally push receivers out of the way with no penalty calls, but if you are anywhere near the QB when they are throwing the pall they will call a roughing the passer every time. The game is really broken.
STORY/NARRATIVE: (12/40)
Now Madden 23 does not really have a story mode, so I will talk about a couple things like franchise modes in this section. I will start out by saying Franchise Mode is okay, but I haven't sunk too much time into it. The thing that sucks is it is exactly the same as last year. The same menu's scenarios and everything no changes whatsoever, but hey I guess EA is happy to get our free $70 every year.
Face of the Franchise is the main kind of sort of story mode where you create a player and upgrade him along the way and playthrough games player locked as your player. I did sink a decent amount of time in this mode to try and level up, but I eventually gave up on it. There really is no story other than a couple extremely poor cutscenes. I experienced a number of GAME BREAKING bugs in this mode, as I have had my entire career reset 3-4 times then eventually gave up. It seems like you cannot advance to the next year and the whole thing resets. I even had it bug out and constantly switch my positions. I was a linebacker, and it kept glitching out and giving me XP for a quarterback ect. Really extremely frustrating and annoying. In order to go back and get XP for LB I had to restart the whole campaign. Basically you cannot progress in this mode at all and this is a huge game breaking issue with no acknowledgement from EA. Only .001% of players have achievements associated with this mode because nobody can progress. Still not fixed weeks after launch, in fact there has only been one update for the game. I already mentioned that the online gameplay is trash, so this is about it to the game.
REPLAYABILITY/LASTING APPEAL/VALUE: (18/30)
Despite all of these issues and very poor gameplay I was still able to have some fun building my team up in Ultimate Team (even despite EA trying to get me to buy coins every 3 mins). Between that and franchise mode and online I always end up sinking anywhere from about 25-100 HRS in the game, every year this number has been declining, but when its said and done ill have about 40 HRS into this years game. With the price of these games basically $75 now, this really isn't that great but I still get suckered in every year because this is the only football game around......please 2K please do something. Or i'll even take a new NCAA FB game. With Madden they force ultimate team down your throat, and the mode is okay, it is what I enjoy the most. But meh the whole thing is just meh. Im not exactly excited to play anymore.
GRAPHICS/VISUALS/TECHNICALS: (8/20)
Graphics and visuals are okay, it looks perfectly fine but again largely unchanged from last year. Lots of janky and weird animations and of course glitches happening on the field. Now I will go into the technicals and list all of the bugs I have run into.
-Flashing lighting and textures (menus on the field everywhere)
-Menu Freezes Often/Many Crashes/Locking up entire XBOX
-Ultimate Team not giving rewards or XP (this was fixed in a patch)
-Face of Franchise game breaking glitches and resets
-Logo of teams where changing in cut scenes (I was on the panthers but all the logos where Miami Dolphins)
-Wrong position XP being granted in face of the franchise
SOUND: (4/10)
Soundtrack is terrible this year compared to years pass...it is all basically cheap generic hip hop that I am sure EA is barely paying out on. In the past there was some good licensed music.
The commentary is just as terrible as the last few years and is extremely cringe as the kids say. I play this game on mute basically. Being nice by giving it a 4.
OVERALL: (62/150)=(41/100)=4.0 RATING
4.0 POOR
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