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“Patience is a virtue” is a saying that I heard over and over again growing up. I always thought of it when specifically thinking of the Madden franchise and its return to the PC platform. Last year was the first year of the return to PC since Madden 08 on PC that released August 14th 2007. What a wait it was for that first installment. You can read my review of Madden 19 but suffice to say the only positive was the madden franchise had returned to PC after over ten years of waiting. This year Madden 20 returns to with its second year on Origin. Does this game improve on Madden 19 or does it take a huge sack and go backwards?
On Field Gameplay
This discussion around on field gameplay is in regards to the head to head multiplayer mode and the Face of the Franchise where you get to star as a college quarterback and attempt to work your way through the NLF season. I’ll also add that I am not a football expert and thus these experiences with on field gameplay are through the lenses of a gamer looking for a realistic representation of the sport.
After that bit of background out of the way let’s talk about the gameplay. The gameplay is awful. Let us get that out of the way first and foremost. I’ll post a couple videos but this game plays nothing like what you see on TV or even to a basic understanding of how football should work.
Part of this is the AI as I think it’s somehow worse than last year. It’s not just one thing either with regards to the AI it’s a lot of things. They all add up to extremely frustrating gameplay experience. The main culprit to the horrendous experience is the games over use of what looks to be canned animations. They are everywhere and in many cases directly affect the outcome of the play.
This is especially frustrating because it feels like it takes away the control of the game from the player and puts it in what feels like random number generator’s hands. It’s a difficult thing to put into words but the feeling you get from playing the game boils down picking a play and crossing your fingers the players do what you expect them to so you can make reliable predictions and put some points on the board. It really feels like they have removed a large amount of user skill from the game to try and even out the playing field.
This last example was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me. The stats at the end of the game are no where near being correct. It says that I threw an interception and it was for 89 yards. As you can see from the replay that is no where near what happened.
Graphics & Performance
The graphics look decent for the most part. There have been some UI changes in terms of how the game score is displayed on screen and how the menus have been redesigned. Outside of the UI changes the on field visuals are pretty much similar to those of Madden 19. In my hours of playing I was never really impressed with the visuals. I was however extremely disappointed and frustrated with them. During scenes of the stadium there was noticeable lag. There is no reason for this, not every game needs to have a full stadium as it’s unrealistic and clearly not very optimized. On top of that no matter what I tried V-Sync would not work. On top of that the screen tearing was extremely noticeable and extremely distracting. The graphics where nothing special and I would not really have noticed the difference between Madden 19 and Madden 20 if it was not for the UI changes.
The rest of the game
Madden 20 is the second iteration of the Madden franchise to return to PC and while certain issues may have been overlooked in Madden 19 because it was the first year on PC. This year however there is no excuse for the state the game is in. This is a month after release as well, the issue with V-sync hasn’t been resolved and it’s disheartening. I’m not much for MUT but from what I did see it was pretty much par for the course from previous years. Other reviews have more in depth details on the short comings of the franchise mode as they continue to put a large amount of their efforts into the MUT side of the game.
Conclusion
By the third game I had played it became quite clear this game had gone backwards in the on field experience that the rest of my time with the game was a headache educing experience. I enjoyed the Face of the Franchise as it was something more akin to other sport titles single player story option however it was limited to just one position on field, the quarterback. I sit here scratching my head wondering how this product continues to degrade year after year. I really hope that things change next year but I’ll be honest, I’m not holding my breath. PC mods may be able to make some interesting changes but I feel like the core issue, the relying on animations to deliver a TV experience, won’t be fixable with mods. The developers of Madden need to go back to the drawing board and I don’t think that will happen until the hardcore fans stop handing them money each year for an objectively worse product.
