Madden NFL 21 was released on Aug. 25, and gamers are not thrilled about this year's rendition of EA Sports' prolific football franchise.

In fact, customers are so dissatisfied with the latest Madden, the game has earned one of the lowest Metacritic user scores in the history of the aggregator.

Early buzz for the latest Madden was bad before its official release, and reviews have been below-average across the board.

IGN gave Madden NFL 21 a subpar three-star rating—down a star from last year's game.

“The list of persistent issues, neglected features, and new annoyances is growing quite long,” IGN's review wrote. “So even though the underlying moment-to-moment football gameplay has continued to make progress with its fine-tuning refinements, just about everything else is underwhelming — including technical performance.”

As someone who admittedly played far too many hours of the Madden 21 this past weekend, I can personally attest to its mediocrity. The gameplay isn't drastically better or worse than in previous versions, but the title menus and screen transitions are astoundingly glitchy, and the graphics, overlays, and other visuals seem generally unfinished and/or rushed to release.

On the positive side, the new game mode, “The Yard“—featuring current pros in a loose, backyard setting—is pretty sweet. Beyond that, however, Madden's minor tweaks don't compensate for its other shortcomings, especially relative to the franchise's usual standard.

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