Week 6: Madden NFL 19

This week, I chose to talk about the game that basically was the only game I would play. Madden introduced me to video games and the many many many problems that they can have. I loved Madden once. I believed in Madden once. But now as the years tick by, every installment never seems to disappoint me. The love I had for this game was incredible one. But now it’s a mess of micro transactions and glitches. The perpetrator here would be EA. We all know the mess that EA has gotten itself into. But being the only company that has a license with the NFL, this game is all we have. But I do want to take a moment and talk about the MDA of the game. At least they have the basics right.

Madden is a simulation of NFL football so the objectives of each are the same. Score. Score a safety, field goal or a touchdown. You can score on the ground or through the air. The first thing you must do is pick a team. Once you are in a game. You have to start the game by either receiving or kicking the ball away. From that point, you must pick from a variety of plays to gain first downs. You have four tries to get the first down. If you don’t get it, you must kick off. Then it is your opponent’s turn to do the same. You must play defense, and, like offense, you must call plays to run on defense. On defense, you can intercept the ball or cause a fumble to get the ball back to your offense or you can score yourself a touchdown.

There are many ways to achieve all this and score. On offense, once the play is picked, your players go to their positions. There, you can change the play or even change the routes of the receivers by clicking their buttons and using the d-pad to switch. There is always visual feedback when all this is done as well as audio feedback from the players. On defense, one the play is picked, the players also go to their positions and just like on offense you can change their coverage. In this case, you have different colored areas that tell you what your player is covering. On special teams, you kick or punt the ball. In both those cases you have a meter fills up twice. One for the strength and one for the direction. To get those right, you must press the button in the green area. There are many more dynamics but those are the most important.

Scoring a touchdown against an opponent is the best feeling that you can feel. You spent all this time going down the field and you finally got the ultimate score, or you can settle for a field goal and feel like you left something on the field. On offense, you can feel devastated when you throw an interception or fumble the ball or you can feel a new surge of energy if you were the defense that cause it. In a close game, you will feel anxiety, hopelessness and devastation if you lose that game but feel like nothing can stop you when you win on the last play of the game. But most important, you can have fun playing the sport that you love and that’s all that matters at the end of the game.