Brady Marino
Footballguy
Alright snitches, it's time for another roster update...er edition of Madden 16. It comes out Tuesday...
...but since I'm EA Access, I'm playing it as we speak on the XBox One.
Early impressions: The Draft Champion mode is really the highlight of this year's edition. You get a base roster of meh players, but you get to draft 15 good to great players to fill out your roster. But it's not that simple. For each pick, you get your choice of three players (usually in different positions, but sometimes not) and you have to decide which one you want. Could be the most talented guy, could be the guy you most need, could be the guy you simply play best with, or it could be the guy that plays best in your scheme. You then take your team and play in offline or online matches and earn various rewards.
There is so much flexibility and replayability with this mode because of that because of the different strategies you can take into each draft. It really is great and it makes this edition a home run, IMO.
Beyond that, the menus got a facelift and it's mostly better on the eyes and performance-wise (so far...I'm about 3 hours into it.)
Franchise mode also got an aesthetic facelift, but the mechanics are more or less the same.
Gameplay is improved because you finally have options when you are trying to catch a ball (either as a receiver or as a defender). For instance, instead of pressing Y and hope and pray your receiver will jump for the ball, the Y button is now a dedicated "aggressive" catch button that will have your receiver give max effort to try to catch the ball. There's also other button options for a conservative catch or a "run after the catch" button that puts your receiver in the best position of the three to, well, run after the catch. Of course, you can do none of the three and catch the ball the old fashioned way. But that mechanic really makes passing more fun and less of a roll of the dice, especially on deep balls.
I'm really enjoying it so far, but I've always been a sucker for the series.
...but since I'm EA Access, I'm playing it as we speak on the XBox One.
Early impressions: The Draft Champion mode is really the highlight of this year's edition. You get a base roster of meh players, but you get to draft 15 good to great players to fill out your roster. But it's not that simple. For each pick, you get your choice of three players (usually in different positions, but sometimes not) and you have to decide which one you want. Could be the most talented guy, could be the guy you most need, could be the guy you simply play best with, or it could be the guy that plays best in your scheme. You then take your team and play in offline or online matches and earn various rewards.
There is so much flexibility and replayability with this mode because of that because of the different strategies you can take into each draft. It really is great and it makes this edition a home run, IMO.
Beyond that, the menus got a facelift and it's mostly better on the eyes and performance-wise (so far...I'm about 3 hours into it.)
Franchise mode also got an aesthetic facelift, but the mechanics are more or less the same.
Gameplay is improved because you finally have options when you are trying to catch a ball (either as a receiver or as a defender). For instance, instead of pressing Y and hope and pray your receiver will jump for the ball, the Y button is now a dedicated "aggressive" catch button that will have your receiver give max effort to try to catch the ball. There's also other button options for a conservative catch or a "run after the catch" button that puts your receiver in the best position of the three to, well, run after the catch. Of course, you can do none of the three and catch the ball the old fashioned way. But that mechanic really makes passing more fun and less of a roll of the dice, especially on deep balls.
I'm really enjoying it so far, but I've always been a sucker for the series.
