Madden 15 review

At the E3 conference every year, the Madden franchise shows the next installment in its series. This year was no exception. At the conference, EA presented “Madden 15” for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4.
The Madden series are American football simulation games which allow players to control National Football League teams and play matches. The games also include other modes, including season modes, create-a-player mode and the ever-popular “Madden Ultimate Team” mode, which allows players to create their own teams by getting player cards inside the game. “Madden 15” looks to have these game modes as well.
Being a fan of the series, this was easily one of my most anticipated games of E3. The graphics for the game look amazing. Every year, one of the main focuses that EA tries to improve on for Madden is the graphics. This year, the graphics are really strong and show a definite improvement over the previous installment in the series, “Madden 25”. One of the first images for the game showed San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick with all of his tattoos in stunning high quality. The picture was a bit of a teaser since not not all players have their  tattoos displayed in the game,  due to copyright issues. Kaepernick, however, got permission from his tattoo artist for the artwork to be shown. Overall, the graphics are one of the strongest features of this game.
Another one of the features is new defensive camera angles. Some angles  put the camera behind the player you are controlling, others are similar to the offensive angles, but flipped to show from the defensive perspective. There are other cameras that show other angles, including coach’s view and broadcast view (which is the view that would be shown on video cameras).
One of the selling points of the game is the new “tackle cone”. The tackle cone, very different from the controversial “vision cone” from previous Madden titles, displays a cone highlighting an area of the field. This helps  the defender to see when the ball carrier is at the perfect place to be tackled for the most effective and powerful hit. From the cone, players can either use a “hit stick” tackle, a dive tackle, a conservative tackle or a very conservative tackle.
While I am a fan of the series, I am not completely sold on the new features. The graphics are good, but the new angles could become confusing, and I think I would find myself only using one angle for the whole game instead of using them all. Plus, the tackle cone seems like it could either work perfectly or be very flawed, based on the ball carrier or defender.
I will probably still buy the game, though. I am a big fan of the series, and the graphics only make the game modes I will be playing the most even better. While there are some aspects that are fairly unpredictable at first glance, I think they are still worth a shot. “Madden 15” looks to be a strong continuation of the Madden franchise that I am looking forward to.  It will be released on August 26.