Madden 13 Review: Part 4

With the roster cuts, and the practice squad being set, and the Kellen Winslow release, finishing up this review of Madden 13 has been put a bit on the back burner for the past couple days. Well, at long last, here is the conclusion of my review. finally.

If you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 of my review: Graphics and Gameplay, part 2: Offline Modes, and part 3: Online Modes.

Gridiron Challenge

This mode seems oddly out of place in this year’s game. It’s an old mode managed to not get cut along side everything else. In this mode, you replace historic moments from last season and try and replicate them, like the Lion’s big comeback about Dallas last season, or the Tebow overtime drive vs the Steelers.

Most of these scenarios could have been turned into practice mode scenarios in the connected careers mode, but I’m glad they managed to stick around as their own game mode. They’re fun, and often quite challenging.

Game Face

This is one of those gimmicky features that usually annoy me in games. It serves no purpose, but it’s clear that EA spent a lot of money on it, so it marketed like it revolutionary. In reality, it’s not particularly necessary, but it is kind of cool.

It takes a bit of work to get the pictures you need that are taken just right, and to get them uploaded to the very slow gameface website and for the site’s telemetry to generate your face. Once you’re done there, it downloads into Madden very quickly, and then you can use your own face on your created player.

Its certainly not an essential feature, but it’s pretty cool and worth trying out if you buy the game.

Game Sounds

I have to add this. I just dont’ get how EA doesn’t take the time to update the on field sounds. They sounds rather generic, and I’m fairly sure they are the same ones that EA has been using since the late 1990s. They aren’t bad, but for a franchise that seems to work so hard on the presentation and those types of details, the on-field sounds could be much better.

Announcers

I never thought I’d write these words and actually mean them: ” the announcers in this sports game are actually pretty good.” I know, right? pretty unblievable, but its true.

The duo of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms do a great job of saying what needs to be said, but not talking endlessly about nothing. This is a very pleasant and unexpected deviation from the trend set by every other sports game ever made.

Presentation

The presentations values within this game simply aren’t what we’ve come to expect from the Madden franchise. The Ray Lewis intro is inspiring, but after watching it once it’s just another annoying thing you have to skip every time to want to play the game.

The game is shiny, but it’s reached a point where it’s too shiny. The menus are all graphics, which is nice to look at, but they’re so slow now. And what’s with the light blue everywhere? I get that Calvin Johnson is the cover athlete, but does everything have to be Lion’s blue? it really makes it tough to read.

Grades 

All grades are out of 10

Graphics: 9

Gameplay: 9.5

Offline careers: 7.5

Offline careers: 8.5

Sounds/Announcers: 8.5

Presentation: 7

Overall: 8.5

Conclusion

This game isn’t perfect; far from it actually. But EA deserves credit for taking a giant leap into the future with this edition of Madden. Instead of trotting out the same old thing that they’ve been giving us for almost 20 years, they gave us something completely new and fresh.

EA chose evolution over  refinement, and made a game and genuinely feels like something completely new. Fans of the franchise will have to adapt since their beloved game modes now look and feel very different, but I don’t believe that is a bad thing. EA deserves some very huge credit for delivering a fun an extremely innovative game instead of playing it safe with the same old tired stuff.

If you’re unsure if you’ll like the new connected careers, then I suggest renting the game first to help you decide if it’s worth the money.

For me, it was money very well spent.