Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Every year my brother and I look forward to the newest version of Madden (usually with the hopes that whatever bugged us from the previous version would finally be gone). Every year we start a franchise, usually picking one on the lower end of the totem pole (being Rams fans, this made picking a team pretty easy year in and year out). And then we'd play for several years, drafting our own little custom team, taking them from the gutter to the Super Bowl, usually on the back of a sturdy RB because our passing game is terrible. This in mind, Madden 13 looked promising. The presentation was far sleeker, determined to mimic the actual games, using the licensed music, etc. We were particularly excited about all the improvements to the franchise mode (now re-skinned and renamed as coach career). The physics engine in particular felt far more realistic and enjoyable, and for once, when we played the demo, we were able to throw passes without the magical defenders instantaneously knowing (our guess is radar, or eyes growing out of their shoulder pads). So we bought the game, loaded it up, downloaded the most current tuning data, and then started the illustrious career of Mr. Mad Genius. Mr. Genius was a strategic coach taking over for the Rams, with high hopes of grinding out yet another Super Bowl with a bruising running game. We're ready to go, team picked, coach created, and cuts made to the rosters for the preseason deadline. To our delight, there's a bunch of scenarios you can practice. You can only play one from a large list, with the higher difficulties (or more time consuming ones) giving more exp. Sweet! We're rpg addicts. We like exp. So we start one up...and notice it's just my brother playing. Is it because it's just practice? We tell ourselves it is just because it's practice. Surely EA couldn't be this dumb. They just couldn't be. Could they? Yes. Yes they can. We loaded up a preseason game, and my second player controller is missing. We checked online to confirm, still thinking we missed something. But no. You cannot co-op a Franchise in any way, shape, or form, not even in offline mode. The entire reason we have bought a Madden game years on end is now *gone*. I have no desire to play now, and neither does my brother. We're both so stunned. I'm going to hold out for a month or so that maybe EA will patch it in, but if not, I'll be selling my copy. *edit* Offline-coop was finally added in a patch, though by the time we got back together, the NFL season had been going for awhile, and our excitement just wasn't the same. Plus, we did play it a bit more, and it felt like a lot of the annoyances we had, things originally thought to be fixed, we right back to the forefront (Hi magical interceptions!) Still disappointed, but will bump the star rating up to 2-star for at least addressing this blatantly obvious failure.