Madden 15 review: victory formation

That deal fundamentally altered the relationship between sports gamers and developers. The exclusive license made the annual, iterative nature of sports video gaming a primary topic of criticism. With no alternatives on the shelf, skipping a year of a series was now a grave choice for a fan, between picking up something that didn't earn the money or going without that sport for a year.

Ten years later, Madden NFL 15 validates its iterative process as a game that improves rather than repairs or attempts to reinvent itself.

Too many times over the past 10 years, Madden's response to skeptical gamers was to hastily build splashy, marketing-friendly features that either were rolled back or left unimproved in future editions. This year, Madden's best additions aren't big, ambitious game-changing modes, but smaller features that help users make more informed decisions and play more under control. It is not an enormous leap forward, but Madden NFL 15 does show the most polish, year-over-year, that I have seen in the series since 2004.

Fortunately, the polish and improvements put into Madden NFL 15's solid and enjoyable gameplay may mean the development team will have the luxury of working on other things next year. This is the most user-friendly and fun-to-play Madden to date, and that's thanks to new inclusions that help players make more informed choices, both before and during a play, in a sport distinguished by strategy.

The new play-calling menu — which doesn't make for the sexiest of sales pitches — is a solid example of this. The introduction of analytic data, to suggest plays and help you choose and even implement them, makes it the game's most valuable and even overdue improvement.

Knowledgeable, longtime players can still navigate the full playbook manually, though it does require an annoying extra button press to go back to its main directory. Most players will take suggested plays, and these will come with data explaining why they were chosen. There are three types: strategic, community and user. Community suggestions are drawn from the millions of Madden players in recent years, and what they have called in the situation facing the user. User suggestions show the player what they've called in the same situation. Strategic suggestions come from the real-world tendencies of NFL teams.

It's the strategic suggestions that are most enlightening. For example, when Madden NFL 15 suggests that I call a particular pass play because the Chiefs use a certain defensive formation in this situation, it does several things. The first is it tells me to look for that defense — and if it's a blitz, I'm being extra alert. But if it's another type of defensive formation, say against a pass, if the Chiefs do show that formation, then I have high confidence that this play is going to work. But if the Chiefs show a different formation, I'm ready to change the play to deal with it. Maybe I change to a running play at the line of scrimmage, or change a receiver's route if he has an advantage on the defender covering him. (These matchups are identifiable by a new "coaching wheel" that shows you how much faster, taller and overall better or worse one player is versus the defender on him).

The minigame practice drills you can perform as a player are a poor substitute for the practice scenarios of the previous year, which always included a full game, so players could still get playing time with a created star who was a low draft pick working his way up. Now, if you're playing as a single player in Connected Franchise, there is no incentive to create anyone other than a high draft pick who will start immediately, or to use the menu option that forces him to start regardless of his ratings.

The inability to practice as an entire team in Connected Franchise, for those playing as coaches and owners, also is a mistake, and the obligation of maintaining high confidence inevitably shortchanges developing some other part of your team that really needs it. Coaching the Chargers, I went an entire season spending zero time on my defensive backs because I had to keep propping up the offensive line and skill position players. We still won, but the benefit of high confidence is most seen when large units, like the line, have it — but you can't coach an entire positional group, only individual players.

It says a lot about the strength of the basic gameplay that Connected Franchise remains an appealing mode despite the misfired changes made to practicing and the unnecessary introduction of confidence. I would have rathered Madden make no changes to Connected Franchise than this one, but it isn't a deal-breaker.

Elsewhere, Ultimate Team remains a game unto itself, though its changes are aimed at bringing more people in by removing procedural barriers to acquiring and managing the stars on your fantasy football team. A one-button command now delivers the highest overall-rated lineup without sorting through them yourself. Overall, though, Ultimate Team's biggest boost, like Connected Franchise, comes from the gameplay serving it.

For some, the changes to career progression will seem like the same old Madden, in that we can't get any leap forward in improvement without some unnecessary change holding another mode back. For me, if the choice is between the career system in last year's Madden, without the upgrades to play-calling and defense, and this year's game with unquestionably better gameplay and a boring practice system in the career mode, there is no question which I'd take.