Madden NFL 15: Hands-On Impressions

I had a chance to play Madden NFL 15 on the PlayStation 4 yesterday for about an hour, so this is obviously a small sample size and I expect to have more impressions through the show. While waiting for my opponent to choose his play, I would peek over at the other stations to see more and thus, I’ve seen quite a bit of gameplay. There is still time for the team to tweak some of the items mentioned below, so just remember that as you read through them. These are my impressions from the build I played, I have no idea how close it is to the finished product, nor do I know if things will change for the better or worse when it hits store shelves. I’m just telling you what I’m seeing now with this build, so take it for what it’s worth.

Animations are smoother, but sliding is still noticeable, especially in replays.

The kick meter reminds me of the swing controls in a golf game. It still doesn’t seem too difficult, but it’s good to finally see a change. The wind direction issue on kicks has been fixed.

Watched quite a few QB’s throwing on the run resulting in inaccurate passes.

Saw a few scramble with their non-mobile QB and try to get a few yards, noticed turnovers more often than not.

When seeing someone running the ball and juking close to the sidelines, I noticed quite a few ran out of bounds, instead of cutting up the field because of a drawn out animation they couldn’t break out of.

Uniform degradation looked fantastic.

Hard to hear any of the new commentary, the EA Sports booth was very LOUD.

I didn’t see a coin toss, you just select receive or kick, guess they removed it?

QB accuracy is all over the place, but that is not a bad thing. I had a few overthrows, under throws, lead the receiver too much or threw it behind him on numerous occasions, which causes all sorts of new receiver animations.

Receivers will try to tap both feet to catch a ball to stay in bounds, didn’t notice any sliding here, looked fantastic. Actually saw one on a fade to the back of the end zone and a regular sideline out pass.

I’m still trying to get used to the “cone” tackling, but you can turn it off. I just need to play with it more. Same with controlling the defensive lineman, getting a jump and hitting the right button to maneuver around the offensive lineman.

More on QB accuracy. I had my feet set, had a nice pocket and still threw a few inaccurate passes, I loved seeing that. Might be frustrating on a 3rd down play call, but that’s football, it happens. And I was Romo. :)

Saw QB’s throwing all sorts of errant passes in the games I was watching on other screens. Some had their rookie QB’s starting and they wanted to throw their controller. I was loving it. Please don’t change this EA.

Still seeing defenders drop easy interceptions, I guess that is ok for some of you, but I’d rather see the defense make you pay for stupid decisions. Yes, there are sliders for that, but I didn’t have time to test them obviously.

Love the player celebrations after touchdowns. No more cutscenes, the player(s) do them in realtime. However I still saw a few times where they didn’t do anything. For example, when Aaron Rodgers scores he usually does the discount double check or whatever you want to call it. I didn’t see him do that, in fact, I didn’t see him do the Lambeau Leap either. But it was one touchdown, on another station. Maybe he does it the next time, maybe he doesn’t, just throwing it out there.

Celebrations in general just look so much more fluid. Celebrations after sacks, first downs, and big plays in general just add to the atmosphere and polish of the game. I hate seeing the play call screen cover them up though.

Without hitting the pause button, by tapping up on the D-pad, you can change the camera angle. We had an issue getting it to work properly, but I’ll play with it some more today. It looks like some things are only seen when playing at lower difficulty settings.

I tried a few curl routes and didn’t have any issue completing them, hoping they aren’t too easy against a better defender, will play around with it.

Not enough time behind the sticks to say whether or not zones and man to man coverages are better, but they certainly feel tighter. I was in a cover 2 deep and my opponent threw a deep ball with NOBODY around, he was wide open. It could have been a fluke.

Really enjoyed the running game. Had two separate kick-out blocks, one that paved the way for long touchdown run, the other to get a first down to run out the clock for the win. When you patiently wait for blocks to setup, you will get rewarded.

Still not seeing any jostling/hand fighting between receivers and defensive backs, this really needs to happen. Add a subtle jersey pull, throw an arm out to impede progress. Have the refs throw some flags. OK, I’m done here.



My initial impressions of Madden NFL 15 after an hour are that it’s still Madden for better or worse. It plays better than last year, but don’t expect the wheel to be reinvented this year with the game. I’ll hopefully have more time to play Madden and post more impressions later in the show.