Madden NFL 24 returns in August with another promise to polish up the chaotic gameplay of 11v11 football – the main demand of John Madden himself – but also some major changes to the range of modes.
Gone is Face of the Franchise, the attempted single-player narrative mode starring a user-created player that EA Sports introduced in Madden NFL 20 and repeated since then. Instead, the old Superstar mode is back, producer Connor Dougan told Polygon.
“There’s a little bit of setup story through the timeline, but it’s really just about setting up the experience,” Dougan said. “But we now have layered skills, we now have real-time player ranking, the things you would expect in other sports games, the moment-to-moment feedback.”
It will more directly address players’ desire to play as a single, handsome performer (on all positions except offensive line or special teams), without storyline fabrications that never gained any traction among the community and often game-to-game disturbed. action they really wanted.
This also means that The Yard is also gone. That was EA Sports’ attempt to expand a created player’s presence through a more casual and arcade style of football (with associated tweaks and cosmetics) somewhat in the mode of NBA 2K’s MyPlayer suite, or the NHL series’ World of Chel.
Unfortunately, since American football really doesn’t have the kind of rec-league, pick-up participation that sports like basketball or football do, the attempt at some sort of sports-lifestyle mode for the NFL fell flat. In place Madden NFL 24 will be a mode called Superstar Showdown, which is a three-on-three arcade style game.
“It’s really about you, with two friends, getting together and playing through some fast-paced, fast-paced avatar-based gameplay experiences as you build your character,” said Dougan.
In addition to Superstar Showdown, EA Orlando is leaning back to minigames, both as a means of advancing players in both Franchise and Superstar, and simply because they’re fun in their own right. Dougan specifically mentioned Rushing Attack, a mode introduced in Madden NFL 2005‘Mini-Camp’ suite, but soon disappeared for unknown reasons.
“Anyone who remembers Madden fondly remembers him playing Rushing Attack and listening to every song they remember from the soundtrack, and that was super cool,” said Dougan.
Sports writers have got nostalgic about it; have players long asked for his returnfinally, EA Sports is listening and bringing it back, along with 25 other mini-games that will serve as both a kind of onboarding for playing American football, and a means of player and team progression in the Franchise and Superstar modes.
“Yeah, it’s used for training and XP, and to give them more variety in terms of gameplay and that Franchise core loop,” Dougan said.
This collection of mini-games will also be available as a standalone experience, alongside the Madden NFL Skills Trainer mode, which also teaches players the game (and offers rewards in Ultimate Team mode for their completion).
Otherwise, the greatest effort of Madden NFL 24‘s developers seem to play in all modes. The trailer released on Wednesday showcases more dynamic tackles and open-ended playmaking; Dougan said developers also focused on blocking runs, specifically blocking runs at the end of a game, to provide a more authentic and enjoyable experience in that part of the game.
“We’ve added dynamic double teaming and chip blocks,” Dougan said — basically we mean more advanced blocking behavior where the players do more than just hit an assigned man on the other side. “In addition, we also revised our aiming system in the open field; we also developed a new system for pre-snap targeting, which is really there to make it more dynamic and stop exploits.”
More or less, Dougan is talking about offensive lines and barrel blocks behaving more realistically, which is a constantly repeated promise in the Madden franchise. “In Maddens’ past, you may have seen your offensive lineman change his mind, or the receiver not make the block you would expect,” Dougan said. “That’s why we had to review that system.”
Madden NFL 24 will launch on August 18 and all features and improvements described above will be available for PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. Versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will launch the same day.