Madden 20. The rebirth year?
The upcoming big-budget pro football video game
The Madden 20 is nearly upon us. Its release date is July 30th for the special editions while the standard edition arrives on August 2nd. EA. even mentioned early access as soon as the 24th.There are three Madden 20 editions that you can buy right now. The base version starts at $59.99. The Superstar Edition is 79,99 and the Ultimate Superstar edition is $99.99. The most expensive editions come with a range of perks and three days of early access.
Granted, it has not been a good last year for the Madden franchise. Madden 19 was not the game changing, adrenaline packed, sports epic that the fans were waiting for. There were more than a few technical difficulties that plagued the game. Players complained that the introduction of the "Real player motion" (RPM) animation system and the implementation of the Longshot story mode, were rushed and delivered little on their promises.
The "Ugly" scandal did not help either. Madden updated nearly 30 player models after NFL stars complained that they were ugly. With Christian Covington leading the pack with his famous tweet
"Guess I have to accept the fact that I'm ugly now..."
Source: Twitter
Word of mouth and reviews by long standing community members did not help, but the game scored a decent 81 on Metacritic for its XONE version with PC Gamer (US) being the harshest rating the game at 71.
Overall Madden 19 was not the success everybody had hoped for but it was a decent game with a lot of improvements over previous releases.
Out with the old in with the new
Madden 20 will not be a quantum leap but the graphics will be more polished, smoother and more up to date than the previous version. It promises to be an overall more entertaining game with less bugs and better attention to details.EA revealed most of the new Madden 20 features and it seems most of the rumored upgrades that fans have been asking for are making their way into the game.
Big change to gameplay
Game play wise it will feature a new "personalized career campaign" known as Face of the Franchise: QB1. This campaign follows the journey of a player-created college quarterback from their first games in the College Football Playoff, to being drafted into the NFL.Ten licensed college teams from the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC, will be available in this mode. You can choose Oklahoma, Clemson, Florida State, Florida, Miami, LSU, Oregon, USC, Texas, or Texas Tech as the starting point of your career as a footballer.
EA will also bring major upgrades to the create-a-player mode, you can play the Pro Bowl and there are MUT upgrades along with a new Superstar X-factor.
And there is even more:
- On Field Trainer. A modernized teaching mechanism, that introduces new in game mechanics.
- Unique Playbooks that cater to specific teams and provide more variety for strategic game planning
- New Option Plays
- MUT Missions
- New Celebrations. Over 20 added.
All of those are accompanied by quite a few other fixes and improvements aimed at addressing some legacy issues.
Passion driven
However the changes E.A. brought to the game do not tell the whole story. Changes can be a good thing but people are not going to play the game for the game play reworks. They will however play it for the story. The story of passion and excitement of gamers, that have been with the franchise for years or are just discovering Madden. The story of a game, that will have people playing and talking for hours on end. Because there is no bigger thrill than the one of an upcoming NFL season and Madden is the only AAA game to portray it. And it really shouldn’t be that hard for E.A. to come up with a game that tops Madden 19. Just make the upgrades and add that little bit of passion.Just look at the reactions after Madden released its Quarterback ratings
Source: Twitter
If that isn’t passion I don’t know what is.
In the end we will have to wait and see if Madden delivers on its promise to make you feel like an NFL superstar. And we won’t have to wait long.
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