However, when an EA employee started talking about the possibilities of accessibility in the franchise, I can't say I wasn't at least curious to see what would come out of that venture.
With the NFL Beginner's Guide in front of me, kindly thrown my way by a helpful Twitter follower", I was prepared to take the very scary leap of faith and plunge into the depths of this new genre.
Anyone else who buys the game after reading this review, please make sure you have the latest updates as well.
The patch isn't really all about the game itself, the instructions provided on this Reddit post by the employee in question, officially sanctioned by EA as far as I'm aware, explain a number of aspects of setting up the game to your liking, as well as how to play using the new features.
Now with that out of the way, how does Madden fair for someone completely unfamiliar with both the sport and the game franchise?
However, now that I had arrived at the main menu, I followed these instructions, under the title "Section Turning on Vision Assists" to the letter and, as far as I can tell (given that I set everything up with no sighted assistance whatsoever), it was successfull and easy to work through as long as you're willing to be patient.
Even though I sort of had an idea of how everything would work in terms of the game, the actual gameplay didn't really give me enough to work with, even with the accessibility cues. There weren't enough UI cues to indicate what phase we were in or what I was supposed to be doing, likely relying on familiarity with the sport and understanding of the commentary for coherence.
Regardless, without knowing how, I managed to win my first game as the Seattle Seahawks (after picking that team from the favourite team selection), though the game didn't look like it would be a win for me at the beginning. Having things like overtime happen in my first game was, to be honest, exciting as much as it was daunting.
I was hoping to at least record the game for posterity, but currently as far as I can find, the replay menu hasn't been mapped out yet. It's a shame that EA, as far as I understand, have said they're can't allow Microsoft's Speech Synthesis API to be supported without an update to the main engine the game runs on which they can't currently devote the resources to. Something to that effect, anyway.
However, I'm greatful for all the work that's been put in so far, and will update this review as and when I understand the game and the sport more clearly.