Madden NFL 24

Madden NFL 24 is an excellent product of the evolution of American football, which is celebrating its second decade. If you are a fan of this sport and only watched it on television, now is the perfect moment to try your hand at the game.

Madden NFL 24 is a good sports game, a playoff contender even – but you just never really get a sense this game is going to win the Super Bowl. That’s the fundamental flaw here: it’s a good effort from EA Tiburon with a lot of strong under-the-hood gameplay and presentation improvements, but the annual development cycle is preventing this series from really taking meaningful strides forward. Superstar, the reskinned Face of the Franchise, is fine for a few hours – and even Ultimate Team has improved to be more accessible overall. But cumbersome menus and a general sense of familiarity drop the ball, and prevent the release from reaching its full potential.

The promise was that Madden NFL 24 would be a game-changer in the series' history, but that's not the case. It has its positives, such as improvements in the Franchise mode and the grand return of Superstar mode, but it still carries over issues from previous years.

More of a rehashed Madden 23, Madden 24’s new additions do little to move the chains. Old hiccups return, new ones introduced, and it remains a title best suited for hardcore players.

Madden NFL 24 is yet another instalment of what has already existed in previous years with a few notable improvements.

While Madden NFL 24 is better than last year’s release, there are still some glaring shortcomings that hurt it, specifically with UI clunkiness, game mode access at times, and repetitiveness.

The improvements to the fundamental gameplay in Madden 24 continue to pay dividends with some of the most authentic football the series has ever seen. But, like an ill-timed penalty, the dreadfully slow menus and funneling toward tedious minigames wipe out any forward progress and move the series backward overall.

Madden NFL 24 makes several much-needed improvements to the on-field experience thanks to fantastic additions to animations and AI, but it still suffers from the same problems it always has once you get off the field: everything here is just done better in every other sports sim, even the other ones made by EA, and this year’s tweaks just aren’t enough to make up for the series’ continued feeling of sameness and lack of progress.

When it comes right down to it, I’m just not getting what I used to out of Madden. It doesn’t do much for me, and issues that I’ve had for several years are still there. That’s why I suggested a break at the beginning of this review. Something tells me it wouldn’t spell the end of the world. And yet, something else tells me dreaming of such a thing is wishful at best.

More than the game, a sport is a vibe, and the games representing the NBA, MLB and FIFA know it. Somewhere along the way, Madden lost it.

Madden NFL 24 feels like it needs a team talk that'll ruffle some feathers, but without it, the franchise feels like it'll be doomed to repeat the same season again, and again. It's time for EA to break the cycle, but if history is anything to go by, we could be approaching a redemption story.