Madden 13

The tree leaves change colors, stores stock pumpkin pies en masse, San Francisco finally starts getting its belated summer, and another Madden game releases; such are the harbingers of fall. It gets harder and harder to remember a time when there wasn’t an annual Madden as the years go by. Some present-day fans might not even remember when John Madden’s goofy mug adorned each box.

I skipped out on buying last year’s iteration. With unfulfilled promises of a move towards a physics-based system, it was merely more of the same and I was content getting in a few games on occasional visits with sports fan compatriots that picked it up. While football is quite possibly my favorite sport, my enthusiasm for the series waned under the weight of better sports games, like MLB: The Show, the resurgent NBA 2k, and EA’s own NHL franchise. It was going to take a dramatic, notable change to get me back into Madden; surprisingly, Madden 13 mostly delivers, thanks to a newly implemented physics engine.

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