Madden 18: Early Expert Reviews of Top Modes Ahead of Official Release Date

The floodgates have opened when it comes to reviews of Madden 18 ahead of its release on Friday. 

If the endless reviews going live were a wave, it'd be quite the positive one indeed. 

At a glance, EA Sports has upheld its end of the bargain after building major hype for the latest offering in its annual installment. Gameplay upgrades alongside new modes outright have reviewers singing praises for the steps Madden keeps taking on a yearly basis. 

Below, let's see what some of the notable expert reviews have to say about the biggest talking points surrounding Madden 18—the new modes and features. 

MUT Squads 

As usual, Ultimate Team stands as one of the biggest exclamation points about the new Madden release after its fast climb to standing as one of the game's most popular modes.

It makes a return this year, boasting the usual card-collecting frenzy, challenges, auctions and more—with one major caveat.  

Co-op is back. EA Sports has weaved in a new feature called MUT Squads, which allows three friends to team up for online play, combining cards and picking roles before heading onto the virtual field online. 

As Owen S. Good writes in Polygon's review, it's nice to finally have co-op back in Madden, and the option to switch between any player on the field makes for some interesting scenarios. 

"It's a nice idea to take over an offensive guard and imagine pulling out like Jerry Kramer to de-cleat some poor bastard on the wrong end of a power sweep; there just aren't enough instances where it’s really fun to take that role," wrote Good, referencing the Pro Football Hall of Famer who starred for the Green Bay Packers. 

Fans don't need to be overly sold on the idea of co-op returning to Madden as it is one of the most oft-requested features on an annual basis.  

From the sounds of Good's review and a handful of others, EA Sports has implemented co-op back into the game well, with the on-field portions leaving it up to each player's coordination as to how effective and how much enjoyment they can get out of the mode.  

Target Passing  

EA Sports isn't a stranger to taking risks for the sake of trying to give more control to the players and innovating (remember the quarterback vision cone?). 

This year? The development team has attempted to come up with a way to permit players more precision on tough throws such as back-shoulder darts and toe-tapping sideline catches. 

Target passing, on paper, is simple: Players pull a trigger after the snap, then use a joystick to control where a highlighted cone goes on the field. Said cone signifies exactly where the passer will place the ball. 

Game Informer's Matthew Kato was a fan of the feature when used in its intended role: "These are features that most people won't use, but they have value. I didn't use target passing much because keeping track of the extra cursor isn't easy, but I was elated when I threw a pinpoint bomb to the sideline."

Indeed, keeping track of this new cone down the field makes it tougher to see defenders closing in on the quarterback for the sack. But as a situational tool that can be pulled up at any point during gameplay, it makes those tough passes much easier once a player masters how to use it. 

While target passing falls behind other new features this year when it comes to hype, it'll be interesting to see how the competitive scene latches on and uses it—ripping control of the accuracy away from the game at key moments could change the outcome of a game. 

Longshot 

Madden 18 wasn't going to have a hard time generating hype once fans found out EA Sports wanted to give them a fully fledged story mode of their own.  

Fans have badgered EA Sports about this for years while seeing the solid offerings in games like the NBA 2K series. The developers have responded in kind, offering up their own take on what a story mode should look like, equipped with award-winning actors, a full story arc and solid gameplay that also doubles as a way to advance the story.  

Longshot's main character is Devin Wade, a former starter at Texas who left the team and now wants to return to football three years later. Players have more control than they'd expect—with choices and the raw emotion of the story a major selling point for GameSpot's Alex Newhouse, who wrote:

"Longshot is unexpectedly deep—it's a fully fledged, Telltale-style adventure game with multiple endings, broken up by short moments of playing football. It presents you with decisions that affect both the people around you and the scouts' perception of you. As with Telltale games, there's an illusion of greater choice that isn't necessarily there, but Longshot succeeds because it makes minor choices feel important." 

With Longshot, Madden 18 dives into the personal side of football and uses the mode to teach players about the game as it goes. Players not only see the high and low points of Wade's journey; they're tasked with sitting next to him in the film room and helping him perform well in drills.   

As Newhouse notes, the emotional moments of Longshot are unexpectedly raw. It's a mode all Madden fans should want to experience firsthand, if not because of what it offers, then because of the possibilities it hints at in future releases. 

Not that Madden fans should look too far ahead—as the general vibe of reviews seems to suggest, Madden 18 is one of the best offerings to date because it was willing to march so boldly in new directions. 

Information courtesy of EASports.com unless otherwise specified.