Watch me play the 49ers in 'Madden NFL 16' (poorly)

On Thursday, Madden NFL 16 was made available on EA Access for Xbox One owners, which meant I was allowed to show it off to folks. I did a random livestream of the game, picked the San Francisco 49ers and played a game with 11-minute quarters.

I took on the Oakland Raiders, and things did not go quite as planned, though I can hardly suggest that Vernon Davis dropping passes that hit him right in the hands (they have yet to add a "throw it at his stomach" button, which Davis would surely prefer) is in any way an inaccurate representation of things as they are in real life. I found that the 49ers are not great in Madden, the offensive line especially, and also that Davis has the same catch rating as Vance McDonald and a lower catch rating than fullback Bruce Miller.

That's absolutely rough. Well, a few people were watching at this point and I was excited to see that, so I went ahead and played another game. That game also didn't go quite as planned, but I did manage to come away with the victory. I tried to show off a lot more of the game than just playing -- I tried a diverse set of plays at times and I hope I showed the game off well enough.

I do have a lot of thoughts about the game. I think the new interactions between wide receivers and defensive backs is somewhat misleading, as half the time it simply resulted in my defender waving his arms like an idiot and falling down when I held the "Y" button for "aggressive" play. I also think the offensive line play and run blocking might be the worst it's been in many years, but this is only after a few games of play and I want to give it more time.

Don't get me wrong -- I like what I've played overall so far. It's a Madden game, though, which means nothing is perfect.

Today, I plan on doing some more livestreaming again, so follow me on the Twitter if you want to see that, as I'll Tweet out a link when I go live. Until then, I've embedded the full video below -- beware, it's over two hours long and the first four-five minutes is just me setting up the stream and everything, so keep that in mind. Make sure you jump ahead if the video hasn't already done that.

Oh and one more thing -- the stupid menu music from Madden auto-triggered copyright claims on both Twitch AND YouTube, so portions of the video may be edited and you may see terrible ads before the video. Sorry if that's the case.

I also set up a Storify with all of my Tweets during my livestream, a lot of commentary from Tre9er, who has returned to Twitter, and a few other folks who were Tweeting at me during the stream. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but people might find it interesting to read some of the thoughts and reactions, so you can find that here.