Platform: Xbox 360

Developer: EA Tiburon

Publisher: EA Sports

Release Date (NA): August 27, 2013

Genre: Sports

Nerd Rating: 3 out of 10

Reviewed by: Solo Joelo

If done right, sports titles can be as immersive as RPGs. They even have some of the same elements – deep character customization including class and stats, a leveling up system, and if you know where to look, a whole bunch of secret stuff.

Madden 25 was EA’s excuse to pull out all the stops, but it feels like just another Madden title. This wouldn’t be too much of a big deal had EA not relentlessly promoted Madden 25 as a big anniversary title. But what we get is a few secret players (previous Madden titles have these as well), and well…not much else. Everything else included in the game are already established Madden staples.

One of the biggest positive changes to this game is the enhanced running game. Movements are much more fluid, and they have a new stick system where if your runner is stumbling, you can flick the right stick and he will attempt to get back up on his feet. However, this is the only enhanced aspect of gameplay compared to previous Madden titles, and it’s one of the few positives of the game as a whole. Whether you’re playing on rookie or all-madden, the same tricks work – slants, blitzes, and Adrian Peterson. You don’t even have to master the timing to master the game. They have editable “sliders” in the options so you can tweak the gameplay further to your liking, but this is such a laborious process; players should not have to heavily edit the gameplay – even if the option is available – to enjoy the game! Players should be able to pop a video game into their systems and immediately get into the action, something that Madden doesn’t allow you to do.

Speaking of options, the standard field camera is atrocious. The camera is zoomed in so far that you can barely see most of the field when you’re in action. Compared to the “legacy” camera, the “standard” camera cuts the player’s vision nearly in half. Also, if you forget to change the camera settings on the main menu, the game will sometimes allow you to change the camera mid-game or in career mode…but sometimes it won’t. Options appear and disappear at random.

The biggest issue the game has is the menu screens. The game itself boots up fairly quickly, and the actual loading screens are not the fastest, but they have interesting Madden trivia and gameplay tips scattered on them, so that is a non-issue. But when you’re shifting through the menus, be prepared for long waits and glitches. From personal experience, I’ve had to wait thirty seconds for a menu to simply shift over to the next menu. The problem is EA has decided to pack the menu screens with so much detail and useless background images that it slows everything down. It would have served EA well to cut down on some of the glitz and glamor of the menus to give the player a quicker between-game experience. It’s a big problem when the Madden game released in 1998 runs smoother and faster than the one released in 2013.

Owner mode was hyped up because you could relocate your team, which would be a big deal if that feature had not already been available in previous Madden titles. There were plenty of older Madden games where you could relocate your team, create their uniforms from scratch, name them whatever you wanted, and even move them to whatever city you wanted. Madden 25 owner mode gives you limited options when you want to move your team and limited uniform choices, but it is a nice feeling to come in as a new owner, take a struggling team, move them to a new city and start over. At least it would be, but when you’re actually playing in-game, there are many a times that the opposing team’s models will glitch out and have your uniform on.

The only reason to buy this title is for roster updates. Even then, good luck importing roster updates into career mode. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Once you get used to the timing and feel of an on-the-field game, player stats become largely irrelevant. You can also tweak the regular roster to create a custom roster, but you can’t turn the salary cap off – yet another feature the player must work around for true customization.

You never feel truly immersed in Madden 25, and while previous Madden titles have had their issues, this is the first time where the game is so frustrating that the one or two new features (or old new features, as is the case here) are swallowed up by the problems of the game. It constantly feels like you have to work around the game mechanic rather than work with it. Without competing titles (RIP NFL 2K), EA has gotten extremely lazy. Madden 25 is evidence of that.

Reviewed by Solo Joelo

Written by Nerd Bacon