Madden 13 Review, or: When Good Intentions Aren't Enough

I'm going to start out in defense of EA by fixing a common misconception regarding Madden 13: Franchise Mode is not gone.  It's simply been repackaged as coaching in Connected Careers. 

Madden purists claim that this new career mode strips out so many features of franchise mode that it's effectively destroyed it, and I'd argue that this is an exaggeration.  Here's what's missing, and why I'm not upset that they weren't able to fit it into the newest version of the series:

• Fantasy Draft: No more starting your team from scratch with the entire NFL as your draft pool.  It was a fun mode, but not an essential for franchise--team management is still there.  It can create parity for a large league, but that's not a realistic view of the NFL.  Teams are never perfectly balanced--sim ahead a few years, and you may find the powerhouse teams are starting to lose to new up-and-comers.
• Player Editing: This includes everything--stats, numbers, and position.  With the new focus on online leagues, I can understand why they wouldn't want anyone to have the ability to max out a player's skills.  Losing the ability to move people to new positions is unfortunate, but you can still alter the depth chart, so it's not a huge loss.
• Multiple Team Franchise: Previously, you could take on every single team in franchise mode if you really wanted to.  The focus has shifted from building teams to building your legacy as a coach, so this has taken a hit.  But from a realism standpoint, there's no reason to give you control of more than one team.  I admit that it was nice to have, but I don't think it's at all essential to the franchise experience.
• No Hiring/Team Relocation: The ability to hire coordinators or trainers that affected your team has been replaced by the ability to enhance players with XP, and team relocation never worked properly to begin with and led to announcers always calling you "the home team."  I'm glad they just got rid of it this year, rather than stick it in once again as a broken feature.
• Local Multiplayer: It's not a feature I've used, but I'll come back to this at the end of the review.

Also gone this year is the potential grading, replaced with a new experience points system that allows players to progress based on their performance rather than a static A/B/C/D letter grade.  I was thrilled when I heard about this new system--it means that a 7th-round pick can still work his way up and become a great player, whereas previous games would grade him with a C and cap him off at a 79 overall.  They also revamped scouting, allowing you to seek out players based on the traits you place the most value in, and even tweaked the way the ratings work.  Players now have a scheme trait that tells you which playstyle they'll best work with, and their overall rating can change based on your system, meaning there's a little more depth to free agency than just grabbing the highest overall player.

If you were getting bored, here's the part where I stop defending Madden 13 and get into the bad.

The new XP-based progression system sounds amazing, but in practice,  it falls flat.  Your backups are the players who would benefit most from some custom progression, but if they don't actually play, they come home with 0 XP.  You can get them some experience through weekly practices, but the practice scenarios put you up against a generic team with no music, announcers, or crowd, and aren't exciting to play.  There's no way to sim practices, and on top of that, they don't even get you that much XP.  Even if you get experience, progressing every player individually will take forever as you open each menu one at a time, and the game still progresses (or regresses) some stats every year just like it did in previous Madden games without many hints as to how or why.  I imagine most gamers will elect to let the CPU handle player progression except for a few players they're especially interested in, which defeats the purpose of the XP system altogether.

Scouting has a similar problem--the ability to check every player's individual stats is great, but it takes a lot longer than scouting ever used to.  And speaking of things that take longer: everything.  Madden 12 chose to hide the franchise menu, requiring a button push to bring it up every single time.  But once it was up, it was fairly clear--there was a section to manage your team, a section to check out details of the NFL, a section to look at your stats.  The menus in Connected Careers are all over the place, hidden behind other categories that take far too long to move between.  The news and Twitter feed was a fun addition that I really did enjoy reading through, but before long it starts to just feel like an obstacle between me and the screens I'm trying to get to.

But change is going to take some getting used to, right?  We should at least reward Madden for taking a chance and trying to move in a new direction instead of holding on to their "$60 roster update" reputation.  So what if they didn't have time to bring some features back?

Here's the thing with Madden 13.  For years, gamers have been crying out that EA just uses the Madden franchise to print money, and I don't entirely believe that.  I have to believe that there are members of the Madden team who really do care about the product their making, and that the decisions of what to change in the narrow development schedule they're given are difficult.  The narrative the Madden 13 team has been pushing this year is that they worked really hard this year to make a new product, and some cuts had to be made for that progress.

Which is why it's so baffling at how flawed Connected Careers still is.  Overall player ratings change between screens instead of accurately reflecting your team's scheme, and if you try to change your scheme, the game just changes it back for you.  They added the ability to check out your Connected Career from online via maddencareer.com, but apart from some interesting stats, the site doesn't really do much other than say "play the game to do x, y, and z."  Settings like when to progress players and whether or not to use GameFlow don't save.  Player numbers are duplicated if you pull someone out of free agency whose number is already taken.  These are basic issues at the core of new features Madden 13 promises, and they were still present at the game's release.  Even if they're fixed in patches, it gives the impression that almost nobody actually played the new mode.  If they're going to cut features that couldn't be ready in time, it stands to reason that the features that made the game should be ready.  But they're not.

Maybe this is a step in the right direction for the series, but as a game, Madden 13's new direction falls flat.  I put way more hours than I'd like to admit into Madden 12's franchise mode, and I don't see that happening in this game.  Props to the EA team for trying something new, but they don't get any points for execution.  To be even pickier, the addition of an instrumental-only soundtrack was welcome, but the music cycles through very quickly and somehow manages to get tiring even faster than some of the terrible songs of the past few games.

Of course, if you don't play for franchise mode--if you're the type who just plays head to head matches with friends, or even in Ultimate Team, I'd say to go for it.  The new game engine is nice, and despite a few hiccups, it really does play better than any previous installment.  Likewise, if you liked Superstar mode, the new Connected Careers features will probably add a lot to your experience.  But in terms of franchise, it's somewhat disappointing and if anything, I'd recommend borrowing or renting it first to see the changes for yourself before commuting any money to it.

For a final thought, I'll return to multiplayer complaint I promised I'd come back to.  Madden has been more of a single-player game for me, but I can understand why this would be upsetting (especially with Madden pushing the connectedness of the new modes, and then forcing you to use them on different consoles without sitting next to your friends).  I understand that to keep a career mode fair, you can't allow local multiplayer because it's so easy to abuse, but it's still a little depressing that Madden won't allow gamers to make that decision themselves.  Again, it's a non-factor for me, but if you want local multiplayer in any fashion other than single head-to-head matchups, take it into consideration before buying.

EA, I want to believe you're not the greedy, monopolizing, apathetic company the internet makes you out to be.  But if you keep releasing half-finished games on a yearly basis, it's going to be pretty hard to keep defending you.  Kudos on allowing a little innovation into the Madden franchise, but if you aren't going to commit to it and do it well, is it even worth doing?

MADDEN 13 OVERALL:
90 - New Engine Scheme
60 - Connected Careers Coaching Scheme
85? - Connected Careers Superstar Scheme
40? - Local Multiplayer Scheme