Madden NFL 25

Dang. This was disappointing. Sports video games - particularly baseball and football - were a big component of my teenage video gaming years, and just as I went on a retro kick with MLB 13: The Show, I was recently overcome by the urge to purchase and play a recent Madden NFL game. This one was released two years ago; it's really Madden NFL 14, but EA got really into the idea of promoting the 25th anniversary of Madden and here we are.

I did the same thing here that I did in MLB 13: The Show; I created my fantasy team from years gone by in an attempt to finally win a championship. This process - creating my fantasy team - was arduous, hellish, and actually impossible.

I'll spare you all the details (unless someone actually asks for them) but several features in Madden 25 - namely a salary cap and a strict set of minimum roster requirements - made what should have been an hour-long process into a treacherous slog of cycling through sluggish menu screens. It took me close to five hours, and thank God I had my laptop to watch Netflix while I did it. Worst of all, I couldn't even build my entire fantasy team. Individual defensive players were just far too expensive, even after I pulled a lot of tricks I'd discovered throughout the five-hour process, and at the end of the day I had to do without the likes of Eric Berry, Brandon Flowers, Antonio Gates, and a few other big names. Oh well.

Anyway, once that process was finished, I was finally able to start my season. Except Madden NFL 25 has no season mode. It has a "connected franchise" mode in which you get to experience all the joys of being an NFL owner - like setting concession prices and threatening to move the team if no new stadium is built! This mode features a whole new slew of sluggish menus to navigate through in order to tweak your depth chart or your playbook or start playing a game.

Look, all I wanted to do was compile some 40 players or so onto one team, and then take that team and win a Super Bowl and have some fun along the way. Madden NFL 25 made the whole experience  a very trying one.

I'll cut to the chase. I did it. I went 10-6 after starting 3-4. There was a bit of a learning curve, but I ended up winning my final five games - several in comeback fashion - in order to win the NFC North and make the playoffs. (Oh yeah - I played as the Bears. Because why not?) By this point I had figured out how to play the game, at least on offense to the point where I was scoring at will, and the playoffs posed no challenge to me whatsoever. Kind of anticlimactic, really. I mean, always fun to beat Peyton Manning's Broncos, don't get me wrong. But none of this made me feel as invested as MLB 13: The Show did.

The game's default setting is to play 7-minute quarters, which is weird, since every Madden game I'd played prior to this one had a 5-minute quarter default. Here are my team's statistics, adjusted for length of game:

I had plenty more to say when I began this post. I was going to build a little narrative for my team and explain why Jay Cutler started a few games for us, and talk about who the MVPs were, and also who the unsung heroes were. I was also going to whine about three or four different aspects of Madden gameplay and complain about how broken this game still is after 25 years, and how pathetic that is.

But I don't have it in me! I just don't care enough. This game has left me feeling kind of numb toward it.

In short, I had less fun with this one than I did with Madden NFL 09 six years ago. And I had less fun with that game than I did with the PS2 titles I had back in '02, '03, and '04. And I don't think it's me! I think Madden has just slowly gotten shittier throughout the years.