Face of the Franchise is a real sore spot for Madden 23

The story goes that John Madden refused to sign off on EA Sports’ original football sim until it put 22 players on the field. The rest, of course, is history – and the Madden NFL franchise has been striving for realism ever since. That ambition comes in the form of a few buzzwords this year, including the distinctly marketing-led FIELDSense and precision passing – but does it make a difference?There’s simply not much grace or realism with the FieldSENSE changes as players of any rating can tackle ball carriers from multiple yards away using the hit stick to dive at their legs, pulling them down with the force of Ray Lewis each time. Tackling is one of the most valuable and difficult skills in real football, and Madden 23 is okay with making it one of the easiest actions to perform.Of course, it wouldn’t make sense for Madden to not keep fine-tuning the passing attack in today’s NFL. Players have more specific control over ball placement than ever as they can now enable a target reticle that displays where a pass will go, plus the addition of power and accuracy matters.FIELDSense has less of an impact, however. EA Sports claims that branching animations make the game less predictable overall, and you can now hammer certain buttons to break through tackles or drag DTs a few extra yards. But there are still occasions where you can see the game awkwardly transitioning between motions as it calculates the outcome, and some sequences feel robotic as a result. Is it better? Yes, especially when you’re able to knock the ball out of a receiver’s hands with a last-ditch hit – but there’s still room for improvement here.Face of the Franchise is a real sore spot for Madden 23.Although it is neat that you can choose to be a linebacker or cornerback instead of the traditional roles of quarterback and runningback, the game mode is pathetically bland. Sitting through the cookie-cutter cutscenes of your players’ poorly voice-acted journey to the NFL makit. When you consider just how much is being packed into NBA 2K23 this year – including a full-length Michael Jordan campaign on top of the industry-leading Franchise mode and gigantic MyCareer suite – EA Sports’ football sim feels inescapably light. Sure, the street football Yard mode returns – but it’s buried deep into the menus, giving us the impression that the developer’s interest has waned.Besides more variety in the broadcast experience, solid commentary and a soundtrack that seems to offer up less annoyance than the last few games, Madden continues to keep taking impressive visual steps. There are new sets of body types on the field, hair looks fantastic, towels sway naturally, and little details like untucked shirts do the same. Even story-based cutscenes look less robotic along the lines of visuals and mo-cap seemingly reserved only for sports video games.Madden NFL 23 is the best gridiron game on PS5 to date, but the series is taking toe-taps forward rather than big, confident strides. There’s no doubt that both Franchise and Face of the Franchise are better this year, and we like the improvements to the run game and the addition of precision passing. But is this enough for a series that’s been accused of stagnation over the past decade? It feels like EA Sports is settling for the easy five-yard gains, rather than the deep ball down the field.Buying Madden NFL 23 Coins from a reliable store like z2u.com is the quickest way to upgrade your players and win every game. Also, we support different platforms of MUT 23 including PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S and PC. So please feel free to buy Madden NFL 23 Coins from z2u.com no matter what platform you are playing with.