[canes21]

This game has me torn and feeling crazy. One night I will play and it is the best football video game I've touched. The next night I will play and the game is so frustrating I turn it off. I can play 4 beautiful quarters of realistic football where every call matters and the gameplay looks great.

Then I can play 4 quarters of linemen never getting blocked, post routes destroying cover 3 and cover 4, the underneath routes never being covered, etc. etc.

I just don't get it. It can play the greatest game of football and the worst... how?

Also, to add to this. I love losing in sports games as much as I love winning. I want my season to be a challenge and a dogfight. If I go 10-6, I want that to really matter and be because I fielded a good team. If I am playing with a bad team, I want to struggle and fight for a 6-10 season.

With that being said, I also hate losing for no real reason. I love MLB The Show and nearing the end of my second season of playing every game. I've lost over 100 games easily. I can sit here and go back and point out why I lost every single one. I made a bad pitch, I missed a hanging breaking ball, an error by my questionable CF, etc. That's fine and is what makes it an amazing game. Every game can be rewound and you can pinpoint exactly why every result was the way it was.

Now with Madden, you can't do that every game and that is what leads to the frustration. I can play one game and it's beautiful and I know why I won/lost. Then I can play another game and I can do nothing but sit there and feel cheated or that I got an advantage. It's cool if a play gets beat here and there when it was the right playcall. It isn't cool when a 2 man rush gets a sack in .2 seconds 2 plays in a row and 5 times in one quarter. It is okay if I call cover 3 and my safety makes an error and gets beat deep. It isn't cool when my safety is getting beat every single time when he literally only has one man to cover the entire play and is faster and better overall.

That's this year's game in a nutshell for me. I love it at times, I hate it at times. I do think at it's peak, it is the best football game I have ever played. I also believe that at times it can play the ever so ugly Maddenball that I absolutely despise. Why is the game so inconsistent at times? I have no clue, but it is frustrating and keeping me from buying this game despite how good it can be at times. I want a football game where I can look back and understand why a play was beat. Have a spectacular play here and there the is against the odds and I won't care one bit. I will care when my cover 4 gets beat 6 times in one game by a streak while the other 2 WR's and TE run routes no longer than 10 yards.