Speaking of Richard Sherman on the cover of Madden NFL 15, it’ll be interesting to see how he fares this season against the Madden Curse. For those not in the know, the cover athlete of Madden NFL 15 usually goes on to have a pretty bad year. Since the game’s inception Coach Madden had graced the game’s cover. In 1999 athletes began appearing on the cover of NFL with him or completely replacing him. For instance, in 2000, Barry Sanders was shown in the background behind Madden and he abruptly retired before the season even began.

 

The NFL pre-season is almost over and each team is almost done finalizing their rosters for the season. With the regular season rapidly approaching EA Sports has sent us a copy of Madden NFL 15 an we have went through training camp, pre-season, and parts of the regular season. To say we were impressed would be an understatement. Madden NFL 15 isn’t the  first Madden game to be released for next gen consoles (PS4 & Xbox One). Madden 25 was released last year and we were far from impressed with it. While it was a solid PS3 and Xbox 360 title, its leap to next gen felt more like an after-thought. It just didn’t look and feel like what we were expecting from a next gen Madden game.

 

The sheer glitchiness of Madden NFL 15 is hard to ignore, you have several problems that become very apparent once you have some decent hours logged. The first notable problem of Madden NFL 15 is that your plays will vanish from time to time leaving but a black screen to select from, and along the same lines the computer will from time to time not even give you the opportunity to select a play at all. Another thing that seems to happen quite often is the ball will float through defenders or magically be brought down by a small receiver in a crowd of defenders. These are just a few of the problem with the game, but I want to keep this article short enough to be read in one sitting.

 

Madden NFL 15 Gets the Big Data Treatment. The influence of the big data revolution is apparent throughout Madden NFL 15. Statistics are displayed in an attractive dashboard view of charts and graphs, and the A.I. helps narrow the focus to the plays most likely to succeed in a given situation. Suggested plays are designed with the current down and distance in mind and are tuned to your opponent's tendencies. I was surprised to see suggestions like "this play works 63 percent of the time on 2nd and long" and "the Jaguars call Zone Blitz 72 percent of the time on 3rd and long" next to my play choices.

 

Authenticity in Madden NFL 15 is a handy thing to have in licensed titles, sometimes just feeling like the commentators are actually commenting on your game can improve the experience tenfold. While at times the commentators get repeat themselves it’s not annoying like other sports titles of the past. The knowledge shown in regards to the large collection of players has the commentators actually discussing the right guys at the right times with some handy little trivia bits popping up at times as well. The soundtrack of Madden NFL 15 is very basic, it’s not designed around top 40 artist or underground rappers, the experience is designed around making you feel like you’re there on the field and it works as well as a console game can.

 

There are a few other nuggets of Madden NFL 15 that I am sure you will love, but I don’t want to spoil anything because there are a few new additions I love and am glad were not spoiled for me. Trust me though, they are very solid additions to the franchise and I can’t wait to see how they refine them with each future installment. Okay, fine, I will share about one other. Remember how I said it was all about the “D” this year? Well this next small feature truly acknowledges that.

 

Madden NFL 15 is a great game for fans of the sport it is depicting and there’s no reason for a player who picked up last year’s version of the title to skip on the one that is now arriving in stores. The game engine is clearly improved and the defensive options are working almost too well for both the player and the Artificial Intelligence, which can create more tense matches and new challenges for fans to overcome.