Madden NFL 24 by developer EA Tiburon and publisher ElectronicArts—Microsoft Xbox Series X review written byNickwith a copy provided by thepublisher.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Fall is around the corner, which means the NFL is nearlyhere – and that means Madden NFL 24 has arrived. Those now are inclined to hatethe series due to its yearly release cycle are going to probably continue to doso. However, for those such as myself who enjoy this time of the year and theformula that Madden provides, it’s an entertaining game that is also probablythe most complete iteration in the series since the Xbox Series X released. See AlsoThe best games of 2024Ultima: Exodus - Retro Reflections
I’ve probably played more Madden titles than any otherseries of video games released during my lifetime. Of course, it comes outevery year and I’ve been playing since its release on the Sega Genesis decadesago. This annual cycle makes sense as EA wants to tie it into the excitement ofeach new season. It’s the nature of sports in general. It’s all very cyclical (somewould say cynical, declaring the cadence a money grab), but I don’t see this releasepattern going away. Enthusiasm for a sport is at its highest near the start ofa season. It’s a world of possibility for fans who follow their favorite teamsand hope that ‘this is their year’.
The obvious downside of this cycle is that the Maddenfranchise doesn’t get a great deal of time to innovate. It’s about tweaks andpolish, picking a few headline options to add because of the very strictrelease schedule. The good news is, Madden NFL 24 is a very solid release.There’s a bunch of newly named features such as Sapien AI and FieldSENSE thatare really just fancy ways of saying that the team has put a focus on trying tomake the gameplay as authentic as possible. It’s a tough task, given that there’stwo teams of 11 on the field shoving, sprinting, jumping and tackling oneanother on every play.
The end result is a positive one. There’s probably always goingto be some small bouts of weirdness that happens, but after playing veryheavily (a couple of dozen hours and counting), I haven’t seen any of thereally odd issues that have crept up in the past. There have been years wherethe ball or player physics were not overly realistic and there have been rarebut exceptional moments where they’ve been straight up anime-levels of unrealisticand clearly broken. I never had any ofthat here. On any given play you have linemen engaged in blocking, quarterbacksand running backs with the ball in their hands as they try to make would-betacklers miss, wide receivers trying to create separation from the secondary tomake sometimes spectacular catches, and the presentation does a good job ofnailing these aspects of the game.
Speaking of the presentation, I was pleasantly surprised bythe audio. The on-field sounds have been quite solid for some time, lending tothe authenticity of the game’s action. However, as recently as a year or twoago, I grumbled about the color commentary becoming a bit long in the tooth. Istill think that we’ve heard the same voices for long enough that it’s worthconsidering a change there, but in recent years there were a handful of strangeissues where the commentary did not align well with the action. I didn’t hearnearly as much of that in this year’s release. It’s a subtle thing, but hearingthem correctly state whether a ruling on the field was overturned, or havingthem talk about a player’s number of rushing touchdowns (when it was in fact areceiving touchdown) and more just doesn’t seem to be happening at this point.
Simply put: the on-field action is fun and it’s dressed upin a pretty presentation. Since that is where I spend most of my time with thisgame, it’s a good foundation to build off of.
It probably helps that my favorite modes have gotten some newfeatures added. Okay, there’s an argument to be made that some of them are justold features that had been pruned off of the series in years past and aregetting reintroduced, but they’re still welcome additions. By far I spend mostof my time in the Franchise mode. This has numerous RPG-like elements and theplayer and franchise progressions have been the dangling carrot on the stickfor me that I can’t help but chase. Training camp mini-games, deeper playerscouting and improved commissioner controls are the highlights here, but it’s adeep mode that I readily sunk a lot of hours into.
The Superstar mode is back, and it continues to create asort of structured story for your created player (who can be any one of severalpositions like quarterback, wide receiver and linebacker for example), but it’snot as narratively heavy as Face of the Franchise has been in the past. It’sbasically Madden’s attempt to answer what we see in NBA 2K’s career mode, andit does a pretty good job. I would make a character, see him through thecombine, get drafted and proceed to play games and go through drills to improvemy player. It’s like a more centralized version of the franchise mode, focused onthe player and not the team. You can jump online and play some more arcade-likebackyard style games (called Showdown now). Again this feels like good growthto try and emulate what we’ve seen in other sports games over the years, and it’sa lot of fun.
I will touch on the Madden Ultimate Team (MUT) briefly, asit’s a mode EA highlights a lot (which makes sense, since it’s microtransaction-heavyand generates additional income for them). It’s an interesting hybrid offantasy football and card collecting (two hobbies of mine) that has you openingpacks to better your team and complete various challenges to earn currency andplayers to help better your team. It’s a very clear progression loop that somepeople absolutely adore. I think it’s made some nice strides over the last fewyears, with a bit more variance in the activities and the way you can developyour roster, but this is just the least interesting of the modes for mepersonally. I still spent some time in it, but the random nature of the packsand cards you pull make progress feel less about my skill as a player or teambuilder.
Madden NFL 24 is never going to fully shake the onlinediscourse about it being a money grab due to the MUT and yearly release cycle,but as a diehard NFL fan? I had more fun with this year’s iteration than I havein years. The modes I enjoy most have continued to gain depth and polish, andthe overall package is incredibly well done. We’ll likely never see a Maddengame make improvements by leaps and bounds over the prior year, but incrementalimprovements to an already strong foundation are enough for me to enjoy thestart of the NFL with this title.
Score: 8 / 10
