Madden NFL 20

While this year's version of football manages to score in some key moments, it occasionally fumbles the ball in surprising ways. Madden NFL 20 targets the majority of its attention this year on the athletes that dominate the action on the field – the superstars of the league. 50 athletes have specific traits, like the ability to break tackles or disrupt passes. As you play games and use these stars to excel at their position, they'll get into "the zone," which gives them a boost to their stats and on-field performance. Of course, this isn't permanent – they can be countered by certain plays from the opposing team, like sacking the quarterback or gaining a certain number of yards on offense. The system captures those moments where a pro athlete just starts to dominate a game, turning their performance into a personal highlight reel. The one hiccup here is that it can be exploited by both gamers and the computer alike, and if one or two players on the same team are in the zone at the same time, they can be almost unbeatable. Otherwise, it adds tension and a rush to the on-field action from down to down.

This year's Ultimate Team also packs more challenges and missions than before. What's nice about this year's tweaks is the fact that you can select a set of challenges and play from start to finish without having to ever move out to a menu screen. That's great if you want to fly through skill tests and boost your squad. It's also nice to see that the new Mission set up gives you more options to pin down exactly what kind of players or items you want, and directs you in how to get them. But if there was a downside to this year's game, it would have to be the disappointing Face of the Franchise mode, which is a replacement for the Longshot story from the past few years. Here, you play a largely forgotten college quarterback that tries to win a National Championship, then triest to make his mark on the league. Along the way, you'll make choices that can define your player's stats and gives dynamic challenges in each week's game. But apart from the initial sequences with the college game and the draft, there's really no story here at all, making it feel like a bland introduction to the franchise mode. Characters introduced here rarely come back and have any impact on your game, apart from giving additional experience for your quarterback. Even your choices are reduced to very tame text options in the locker room. Hopefully this is either eliminated in next year's game, or the mode comes back with a fully fleshed out story. If you overlook the weakness of the career mode, though, you'll find that Madden NFL 20 is a solid chapter to the football franchise.