Madden NFL 25, for all that was said and shown in a mid-spring preview event and a closed beta that followed, still feels like a game of inches, instead of a huge breakaway run or a milestone for the franchise.
I really shouldn’t feel that way, because Madden 25 genuinely shows some profound improvements for a series that already performed well between the sidelines, and drew record numbers of players in its most recent year, despite the avalanche of instant and constant criticism a title like Madden NFL draws.
So, after four days with the latest edition of EA Sports’ cornerstone franchise, I’m still trying to put my finger on why. The depth of the main modes and the refinements to the gameplay serving them should be — and they are — the biggest virtues for a video game striving to present a complex and chaotic sport that is a 365-day obsession for millions.
Madden 25 is earnest in its effort and execution here, but all of this technical brilliance goes begging for a wow-factor assist from the game taking place off the field.
The real effect of Madden 25’s ‘BoomTech’
On the field, for the most part Madden 25 plays truer than ever, and not just in big hits or player-controlled ballcarrier movement. BoomTech, the much-touted system during Madden’s hype cycle this year, does deliver greater physicality to a contact sport — and even the means of overcoming a hit to extend a play.
The moments before impact
But BoomTech, more subtly, also has defenders evaluating and re-evaluating their pursuit and tackle options on a frame-by-frame basis before contact, almost like a fighting game.
Playing Madden 25 at length, I got the feeling the real impact of BoomTech is felt more through what happens before impact — an AI defender’s play recognition and reaction time coming together to get to the ball before the block is engaged.
No more running away from the defense
On All-Pro difficulty, linebackers and defensive linemen with high awareness and play recognition ratings filled holes before I could get to them, stretched me out to the sidelines, and mowed me down from behind, even when I felt like I had the correct play called and a chance to exploit it. This kind of vigilance appears to have a knock-on effect in defenders’ block-shedding that no slider tweak will overcome. They’re either not engaging a block in the first place, or they’re in a more advantageous position to quickly rip through a lineman regardless of how long you goose his ability to hold a block.
This is not the case if you’re running with a very fast, very nimble guy like 99-rated cover star Christian McCaffrey, who can beat any defender to the edge, of course. But a straight-up power runner like Cleveland’s Nick Chubb or, especially, Derrick Henry will see a big drop in effectiveness from what you remember in Madden NFL 24, and it’s not just because of his age.
It’s frustrating to confront this at first, but in the base game, there is no more running away from the defense, except at baby-level difficulties in Ultimate Team.
Those who gaffed All-Pro and All-Madden difficulties last year with huge runs to the outside, or the pure speed of a split end immediately getting behind man coverage, will find themselves notching the overall difficulty down at first, if not also going into the difficulty sliders to put a thumb on the scale there.
Rookie Superstars: A lot less super, and a longer road to stardom
It’s not a good feeling when you do either. But if you’re running with a 68-rated rookie halfback in Superstar (where players, regardless of position come out of the Draft a lot less super, and nowhere near a star) I felt drastic measures were necessary to give my guy a fighting chance — especially when a first-round draft pick is starting regardless of his or anyone else’s overall rating.
Props to EA Sports Orlando developers for holding Superstar fans to a higher standard after years of having it all by week 4, but I felt thrown to the wolves, even if the Denver Broncos have three linemen rated 80 or better blocking for me.
Still, I’m not entirely confident that traits like Awareness, Play Recognition, and the Player Reaction slider are the real culprits here. That’s because AI-controlled zone defense is very easy to pull apart, especially with middle-distance throws. Paired with a new pre-snap option to extend a route’s distance by 1- or 5-yard increments on the fly, and I envision a lot of thrown controllers and ragequits in Madden 25’s competitive multiplayer.
AI accuracy
For the heck of it, I played a one-off game as the Miami Dolphins, who have a great secondary with Jalen Ramsey at corner and Jordan Poyer at safety — both are Superstars under Madden’s classification system since 2019. I usually play a defensive lineman because I’m terrible at pass coverage, and sponge off the AI of a great secondary (it’s how I pick players in Ultimate Team, after all).
I never got a coverage sack in a game with 10-minute quarters calling the Dolphins’ zone-heavy base defense. I had to take them out of their game plan and call man defenses and blitzes, if not adjust them to press coverage, just to get them to understand someone was running through their area of operation.
I’m already seeing forum chatter where players are compensating for this by knocking AI quarterbacks’ accuracy down. It’s true they can thread needles like never before, and catching benefits from a palpable series of contextual improvements that focus on continuing the play, where Madden had felt stiff and hidebound to securing the ball and going down at that spot.
Pass blocking changes
But pass blocking was also an area of emphasis for EA Sports Orlando developers, particularly in thwarting the meta that arises in competitive multiplayer when someone figures out an unblockable blitz and word quickly spreads. It is indeed stronger, to the point that the new option to disguise a zone blitz or other coverage before the snap didn’t seem to have much effect.
In summary, these are gameplay improvements (except for the issue with zone coverage) that will become familiar over time, and the weakest aspects can be managed with difficulty sliders or global options while we wait for the inevitable rebalance in a title update to clean up the ones that can’t.
Madden 25’s voiceless narrative leaves too much to the imagination
So what is really bothering me about Madden NFL 25?
It’s not the challenge of BoomTech or the spider-web of effects it has through each positional group. In 15 years of reviewing Madden, my standard for a successful entry is when I have a moment where I think “Man, all I want to do is play Madden for the rest of the year.”
That hasn’t happened for me yet.
I think the reason is there’s just a lack of off-the-field connective tissue in the career modes (Superstar and Franchise) to help me understand where I am in my team or my player’s journey, and allows me to reflect on the remarkable things we’ve done.
This will sound especially cruel to those who worked on Franchise, a mode relentlessly criticized as never getting the attention it deserves. It definitely did in Madden NFL 25. But a wealth of granular tasks like training camp mini-games; trading players; motivating and making promises to them; or streamlined scouting and a more realistic Draft Day experience, simply do not land if every piece of dialogue is presented as text over entirely silent cutscenes.
Don’t mistake me, the level of detail and the number of tasks a true football obsessive can take on is indeed impressive and rewarding. But that sense of satisfaction will be driven internally, if at all, by Madden 25 players, not the game itself.
Too much generic dialogue
This critique will also sound cruel to those who worked hard on Madden 25’s presentational elements, particularly in adding two more broadcast teams to differentiate a regular Sunday afternoon game from a Sunday or Monday night showcase. Even there, it was hard to get a sense that the game had any idea of what had happened before this game. There is, simply, too much generic dialogue calling the action, to the point it seems ignorant even of the context of that day’s game itself.
I don’t know if this is the commentary engine’s fault, that it’s not surfacing more dynamic lines because they’re bound to very specific outcomes. In any case, extra voices are a good first step, but they really need more to say.
A final, if highly technical, point on commentary, something is way off with the audio mixing in both Madden 25 and its College Football 25 sibling.
I have to drop the crowd noise to 60 to hear the announcers even if I select Broadcast-style volumes in the options menu. Otherwise, Mike Tirico sounds like he’s on the other side of a bathroom door at a cocktail party still trying to carry on a conversation.
All signs point to a slow burn for Madden 25
Though I haven’t had the a-ha moment yet, I’m not ruling it out altogether, certainly not after only four days with the game.
I am seeing compounding successes with my Superstar running back, they’re just coming at a slower rate than in years past. If nothing else, Madden NFL 25 is really forcing me to pay attention to what the other team is bringing to the field, rather than just clicking Ready at the matchup screen.
Madden NFL 25 has all the markers of a slow-burn game, especially with Franchise, where going through all of the tasks available to you, plus playing a full game, can easily consume more than an hour. There are ways to automate a lot of that control, and if it still turns you off, maybe Ultimate Team’s pick-up-and-play appeal is more for you. I still maintain there is tremendous play value in that mode without spending a single cent, which other sports titles would do well to emulate.
In some ways, Madden 25 feels like one of those sprawling sports management simulations in its off-the-field depth — which also means it feels about as anodyne as a spreadsheet when there’s so little to serve the emergent narrative the user is creating.
The saving grace is that there is very strong, very determinative on-field action in Madden 25 — the kind that may be difficult, but only because its newer options are forcing you outside of a comfort zone built up over past editions. Iterative development doesn’t just apply to the developers after all; a user should be prepared to learn and change, too.
Featured images via EA Sports
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