It’s that time of year again. Companies – EA in particular – are preparing to drop a deluge of new sports games for their yearly franchises, and as always, Madden NFL 24 will be one of the first ones out of the gate. Due out in mid-August, the football sim is promising a number of improvements with its on-field action, modes, and more, and ahead of its launch, here, we’re going to speak about a few of those details.
VERSION PARITY
Let’s get the basics out of the way first. Up until this point, Madden has been one of several annual sports franchises that made certain features and gameplay improvements exclusive to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, with PC versions being on equal footing with last-gen consoles instead. With Madden NFL 24, however, EA Sports is finally ensuring parity across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, which means those on PC will finally get access to the improvements and refinements the series has accumulated over the past couple of years.
FIELDSENSE
FieldSENSE is the name that EA Sports has given to several gameplay systems that collectively push the on-field action towards greater authenticity, and Madden NFL 24 is promising a few iterative upgrades on that front. For instance, catch tackles will now provide more control and tackle variety on defense on top of having new and more fluid tackle interactions and animations. Meanwhile, catching AI has also been improved, and comes with new throw animations and more authentic defensive reactions.
REVAMPED CATCHING
On top of the aforementioned changes, Madden NFL 24’s catching system also boasts hundreds of new animations, many of which, according to the developers, are designed around maintaining players’ speed and momentum and leading to fewer dropped catches. Dive catches are also back and will allow much greater flexibility and an added range of options in certain situations.
TACKLING AND BLOCKING
Madden NFL 24 is also promising to bring improvements to its tackling with what’s been dubbed the New Defender Advantage formula, which now chooses tackles based on players’ ratings, size, speed, and momentum in much moe dynamic fashion. Blocking has also seemingly seen big changes, and will now be much more physical and versatile. The stand-up tackles system from last year’s game has also been expanded upon, and now allows blockers to join in on a gang tackle and push the pile forward.
SAPIEN TECHNOLOGY
Madden NFL 24 also features overhauled SAPIEN technology, which is essentially the series’ name for the skeleton created by the developers to base the bodies of players on. In this year’s game, EA Sports has built a new skeleton and improved its animations, as a result of which the movements of players should look and feel more authentic.
AI IMPROVEMENTS
EA tends to make a bunch of small AI improvements to new instalments every year, and that will be the case in Madden NFL 24 as well. Your teammates will now be much more responsive to your plays, according to the developers, and improvements will be made to areas such as quarterback awareness and behaviour, defensive back awareness and pass coverage, blocking AI and open field targeting, ball carrier AI and pathfinding, and more.
PLAYBOOKS
On the more tactical side of things, this year’s game is also making a number of additions to its Playbooks in order to provide players with greater flexibility and a wider range of options that will specifically leverage some of the bigger on-field gameplay improvements. That will entail over 700 new formations that will contain over 500 new plays from across all 32 NFL teams.
POST-PLAY IMPROVEMENTS
Coming to the presentation aspect of games beyond the moment-to-moment on-field action, Madden NFL 24 also claims to have an overhauled post-play engine that is adding thousands of new animations for players. Between the whistles, players will now react much more realistically to whatever situation they’re in.
SUPERSTAR MODES
We’ve spent plenty of time speaking about the actual gameplay improvements that Madden NFL 24 is promising, but what can we expect from how modes will be improving? Starting with the returning Supersta moder, players will have a couple of options here. There’s Superstar: The League, which lets you create your avatar and play through your entire career, starting at the lowest rings and building your way up. Superstar: The League will also feature new minigames and live player trading this year. Meanwhile, Superstar: Showdown will let you use your avatar to play with or against your friends in 3v3 matches. Showdown will not be available on PS4 and Xbox One.
FRANCHISE MODE
Franchise tends to be the meat and potatoes of Madden games, and this year’s release is promising a number of improvements on this front (though most of these will not be available on PS4 or Xbox One). Some of these improvements include new cities, logos, and uniforms for the team relocation feature, greater control over restructuring contracts and making counter offers, 50 new unique draft generators, new trade logic tuning, and more.
FRANCHISE – TRAINING CAMP
One of the biggest changes in this year’s Franchise mode is the addition of Training Camp, which is finally making its return to the series. At the beginning of each season, players will be able to run players in their teams through varied training drills, which will essentially be minigames. At launch, the game will feature nearly a dozen minigames covering all positions.
FRANCHISE – NEW LEAGUE CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS
Franchise mode’s customization options have always been appreciated by Madden fans, and this year’s game is adding even more tools to mess about with. Players can now toggle reordering of the depth chart on or off, the strength of draft classes can now be set across five varying levels, cooldowns and play call limits can now be applied to offense and defense independently, players can now choose a Snake draft for the Fantasy Draft order, and much more.
ULTIMATE TEAM
While Madden NFL 24 is touting several improvements with the Franchise mode, in addition to bringing Superstar back, where Ultimate Team is concerned, it doesn’t things are going to be too different. Ultimate Team will receive new seasons of content throughout the year, according to EA, while Field Pass challenges will also unlock Ultimate Team rewards.
CROSS-PLAY
Madden NFL 24 is also going to be the first game in the franchise to feature cross-platform multiplayer support (which seems to be something of a trend for new instalments in EA’s sports franchises this year). It does come with a bit of a caveat though, since cross-play will be supported across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, which means PS4 and Xbox One players will get left out.
PC REQUIREMENTS
Madden NFL 24’s minimum and recommended system requirements on PC have also been revealed, and as you’d expect, they aren’t terribly demanding. On minimum settings, you’ll need either an Intel Core i5 6700k or an AMD Ryzen 5 1600, along with either a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or a Radeon RX 570, and 10 GB of RAM. Meanwhile, on recommended settings, you’ll need either an Intel Core i7 8700 or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, along with either a GeForce GTX 1660 or a Radeon RX 5600 XT, and 12 GB of RAM. On either setting, yo’ll also need about 50 GB of free storage space.