Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Don't believe the hype"

I have to admit, when I first started playing, I thought it was pretty great. The new physics are very impressive. No static, repetitive animations. Everything looks fluid and realistic.

But after a little while, I started noticing problems, and they just kept piling up.

First of all, there's no franchise mode. That was one of my favorite things about Madden. I liked to create my own player, put him on my favorite team, and play several seasons. You can't do that anymore.

There's career mode now, which lets you select "coach" or "player". In coach mode, you can select your favorite team, control any player at any time, and play several seasons. BUT you can't use your created player. In "player" mode, you can use your created player, but you can only control that ONE player. So if your guy's a QB, you lose control of the game as soon as you hand off or pass the ball. And when you're on defense, you don't get to play at all. Luckily you can skip past the parts where your team's on defense, and get back to using your ONE player. You can map your own face onto your created player, though, which is tedious, but pretty cool.

I want to be able to create an awesome player, put him on my favorite team, and control all the players, just like every madden for the past several years. They took that feature out, and geared everything toward online play.

Also, remember the great soundtrack in Madden 12? It had A Tribe Called Quest, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys... some pretty good stuff. Madden 13 has, literally, one song you hear during the menus and games. And it sounds like marching band music. It gets real old real quick.

And I was excited that they had new commentators this year. I'd gotten to where I'd pretty much memorized the commentary over the past few years. But once I heard one of the commentators say the same thing about the importance of running the ball 3 times in one drive, I'd had enough, and put it on eBay.

That's one other way EA screws you with Madden 13. There's an online pass code that comes packed in with the game on a piece of paper. I used mine, to update the rosters. Each pass code can only be used once. So I had to put a disclaimer on my eBay listing, telling buyers that they'd have to pay $10 to get a new pass code from EA if they wanted to play the game online. An obvious trick by EA to keep people from selling used copies. It devalues a used copy by $10.

It seems EA only focused on physics and online play this year. Bring back franchise mode next year, EA. Please, for the love of god.

Try before you buy. Or better yet, just don't buy.

Disclaimer: I don't have any friends who play sports games. If you have a lot of friends who play Madden, or love to play online, then this would be a pretty good game.