Like any good NFL obsessive I bought Madden 15 and quickly raced home to oooh and ahhhh at all the new candy. And ooh and ahhh I did.
It took a few minutes to install on my Xbox One but before long I told Madden my favourite team was the Patriots and I was invited to attend training camp. Well, it's a good place to start. I stopped the Basic Offence trainer pretty quickly, lob versus bullet pass? I've worked out. On to Defence.
Wow! Madden for years has kept the camera rotated the same way whether you are playing O or D: the O is at the bottom of the screen heading up and the D is at the bottom of the screen going down. This is fine when you're playing O and the camera is behind the head of your QB, you can see what is going on and get a good feel for the field. But when you're playing D - well you never cared that much about individual assignments as you were not behind the head of your D. As one reviewer characterised it: playing defence was something you did until you could control the offence again. Not anymore. On D the camera swings around and can tuck in tight behind a defender. There are all new controls for defensive players that make playing D, well, like playing D. It was a lot of fun.
After the D trainer we moved on to concepts. Madden 15 is willing to take your hand and walk you through NFL playbooks, explain how to read a defence, how to pick the best play to beat the D and how to execute it. It takes you through why offence plays are drawn the way they are, and which route to throw to depending on what the defence does. Of course, you can jump straight into a game and play like normal - but I found it useful, intriguing and left wondering why they didn't do it years ago. Maybe the expectation has been that Madden gamers are ex-high school footballers? Computer games for jocks? But for a simple Aussie like me, left to figure it all out, having my own personal tutorials and coach in Madden is like a dream come true.
The graphics: amazing. Physics: amazing. Environment: amazing. The interface has had a major makeover and is, at times, intimidating. There is so much information presented with so little time to read it before you have to select a play. Couple that with extra information on my phone via the SmartGlass companion and it's almost information overload. I'll get used to it as I log countless hours, like every year.
This is a video showing the transition of Madden from its Neanderthal roots in the late-80s to next-gen simulation:
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