It all happened on one glorious looking play. The pocket collapsed from Bridgewater's left side, and with nobody open, he rolled to his right. He has Rudolph open with a little room to spare on the sideline, but the entire defense is swinging back around. Bridgewater fires it, and what normally would have been an easy throw and catch became a fight for the ball. Rudolph moved inward, laying flat-out for the football, but an opposing defender swooped in and knocked it to the ground before the ball could even reach Rudolph's finger-tips.

This play isn't something that's unusual in the realm of NFL football, but it's definitely not something you see every day in Madden. The gameplay has the potential - though it doesn't always reach this potential - to be smooth and realistic looking. Animations aren't nearly as choppy and have a better natural flow to them. CPU controlled players have minds of their own and don't feel so robotic. Is the AI perfect? Of course not. The very next play the opposing defense ran some kind of mass blitz on a third and long. Why? Who knows. The biggest difference this year is that Madden at least has the capacity to look and play well. Unfortunately, it's still not as often as any of us would like it to be.

Starting with the run game, it's easy to be impressed merely by watching the new tackling system. It isn't the gang-tackling of old (seeing seven to eight players pile up is a rarity), but rather a dynamic system in which can actually prevent extra yardage from the ball carrier's side. On the CPU side, the runners hit holes with real tact. Though, it's hard to say what kind of role ratings will play here with a small sample size of running backs, but it seemed to be the case that Todd Gurley ran more vertically and that Lamar Miller danced a little more from side to side. It's a small sample, yes, but it's what we have for now.

On the human side of things, running is definitely more difficult. Just about every cheese play in the book (including the horrible shotgun from last year) has been balanced. For the time being, there doesn't appear to be a play that can get you 5-7 yards every time. A theme to this year's game seemed to be that Tiburon has no intention of players having to use house rules to restrict their games. The CPU, even on moderate difficulty levels, provides more of a challenge than before.

So there's the good news. The bad news is that, for the most part, QB play is still not close to where it needs to be. QB's regularly rifle throws right where they need to be, which the only exception being passes upwards of 30 yards. The only time incompletions happen are on knock-downs and interceptions. Though, the new catch animations provide some really cool looking drops, which is always nice. The drops seem to handle ball physics better (the football seems to sort of tumble out of player's hands instead of just shooting right in another direction), so it's a bit mystifying that these physics remained hidden elsewhere. The left-stick, which is used to guide the ball in specific directions, is actually pretty sensitive. If sliders can provide the same effect, it's possible - but not likely - that there could be some throws that actually hit the ground before hitting anything else.

Special teams are still a bore, but that's more acceptable in Madden than it was with NCAA. Kicks still don't come close to being blocked, kick returns often turn into which CPU AI you can fool the most, and kicking in general is too easy. The developers at Tiburon wouldn't come out and say it, but in-game variance doesn't seem to be something they really want to commit to with competitive play still being a large chunk of their focus. Ultimately, simulation gamers are going to be out of luck until they provide specific in-game options/sliders that pertain to variant action (i.e. bad snaps).

There were a few other things I noticed -- and liked -- about Madden 16:

• The pocket collapses from the edge more than it used to.
• The CPU will throw the ball away instead of taking a sack.
• The CPU made a few last minute drives against me. Though they didn't always succeed, the play-calling was much better than it used to be.
• Players on the sidelines and fans in the stadium look a lot better, and there's a bunch of new fan models in the game.
• It was hard to hear the game for the most part, but in-game sounds seem to have been improved.
• Paying close attention to the offensive line and player ratings, there's a noticeable difference in who you're running or passing behind.
• This has been mentioned in the quick-look piece, but the game has finally reached a visual level of matching other sports titles.

• Penalties actually happen, including one or two defensive holding/interferences per game.

In general, it's easy to come away impressed with Madden 16. You can see the potential shining through in about every other play, it's just frustrating to see something silly on the next play that brings you back down to earth. There have been a lot of improvements and Tiburon deserves credit for taking responsibility for the legacy issues and knocking almost all of them out. Still, it won't be until Madden can provide a consistently realistic experience that it will be able to sit among the most elite of sport's video games.