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Double fumbles, Kaepernicking and Manningfaces in Madden 15
We're just one day away from the launch of Madden NFL 15. Normally that means you'd have some splashy launch trailer or crazy commercial starring comedians to watch. Not today! Welcome to the modern era of video games, where your "select" buttons now read "share," and your launch trailers are now GIFs of 400-pound running backs leaping over other people. Trust us, it's better this way. Check out the double-fumble-safety that happened to us in the video after the break, as well as our gallery of totally-moving pictures of the game below. Our captions also explain some of the improvements in this year's Madden, including "overhauled" controls on defense and the football strategy drills in the Skills Trainer mode. [Image: EA Sports]
Madden 15 ranks the NFL's top ten rookies
EA Sports kicked off its annual player ratings reveal yesterday with a list of the top 13 rookies in the Madden NFL 15. The first-year athletes are led by Houston Texans' outside linebacker and first overall draft choice Jadeveon Clowney, whose 83 overall rating comprises stats like 88 speed, 95 hit power and 94 power moves. The developers at EA Tiburon will issue regular player ratings updates for Madden 15 over the next few weeks, the culmination of months of work by Madden's "Ratings Czar," Donny Moore. Head past the break for the full list of Madden 15's top 13 rookies and their overall ratings. The game will launch August 26 for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PS3, and features an "overhauled" defense and aims to encourage players to learn football strategy within the game. [Image: EA Sports]
Madden 15 cover vote starts, rookies packed into Ultimate Team
EA Sports kicked off its cover athlete vote for Madden NFL 15 during the first round of the NFL Draft last night, and is slated to end after four rounds of voting on June 6. The vote features just 16 candidates this year instead of the standard 32, which is an even more rapid decrease from Madden 25's two brackets of 64 football players. The first round's eight match-ups can be found after the break. The developers at EA Tiburon also celebrated the first round of the NFL Draft by inserting each of the first round's 32 draftees into Madden Ultimate Team card packs in Madden 25, starting today. It makes for a fine opportunity to check out the digital versions of each recruit without having to wait to play as them in Madden 15, which is due to arrive August 26 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Just don't trust Madden to predict which rookies will be picked by teams in the draft, it won't go well.
Madden misses Drafting 101 with 6% of NFL picks
Our grand experiment with Madden NFL 25 this week, in which we simulated the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft using Electronic Arts' popular football game, ended as the NFL finished round one last night. In all, EA's Madden 25 only managed to place two athletes on their correct teams: Cornerback Justin Gilbert with the Cleveland Browns [#8] and defensive tackle Aaron Donald with the St. Louis Rams [#13], making for a lackluster success rate of six percent. Good job, good effort, Madden! The game did manage to place players of correct relative positions with five teams in the first round, as Minnesota drafted a quarterback, San Francisco took a defensive back and Pittsburgh selected a linebacker last night as well. Yet EA's Madden 25 wasn't able to account for the eight trades that took place last night, in which Cleveland traded back from the fourth pick to the eighth spot, which is where they chose Gilbert, later selecting quarterback Johnny Manziel [#22].
Madden 25 vs. Reality: Predicting the 2014 NFL Draft
The NFL Draft is a special event in sports culture where college football players wear fancy suits, find out which team they get to start their professional careers with and (hopefully) have the chance to hug NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in front of an auditorium filled with people. The months between the final piece of confetti falling at the Super Bowl in February to the first overall selection being announced is riddled with speculation from draft analysts, mostly in the form of "mock drafts." EA's Madden NFL series has its own franchise-building career mode, which includes a pretty nifty drafting system. We decided to put it through its paces to create our own mock draft to predict the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft, which begins tomorrow at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on the NFL Network. There are a few caveats to our experiment, which might be expected to those familiar with Electronic Arts' popular brand of football. Madden NFL 25 allows players to import a draft class from NCAA Football 14 for use in Connected Franchise mode, but given that NCAA 14 doesn't feature real-life athletes, we improvised by using custom Madden and NCAA rosters from the Operation Sports forums and Madden 25's in-game roster-sharing section. We ran this experiment four times using versions of the draft class mostly in line with what the experts are expecting to happen tomorrow, with players like Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel and South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney hovering near the top of the pecking order every time, then compiled the results to create Madden's own mock draft. With all of that out of the way, let the drafting begin. With the first pick in the Joystiq Madden NFL Mock Draft, the Houston Texans select...
