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.
— VGF Gamers (@VGFGamers) August 31, 2020
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.
Madden 21’s glitches are here and they are just as infuriating as the ones in the past pic.twitter.com/kOFoIrTPQC
— Going Deep (@goingdeep) August 30, 2020
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.
As one gaming analyst pointed out, it's possible the game-makers' progress was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
EA Sports just renewed its exclusive licensing deal to be the lone producer of NFL video games, but the latest version leaves one to think that some market competition could be a good thing for the folks at Electronic Arts.
This problem has persisted for years. As great as Madden 08 was, you can pick up Madden 07 and not notice much of difference.
Speaking of not seeing much of a difference, this side-by-side comparison of Superbowl celebrations between Madden 17-20 is very sad. #nfldropea pic.twitter.com/nbP5minXnr
— Nomar Mendoza (@TheNomarMendoza) August 30, 2020
If, like me, you're still planning on picking up a copy of Madden NFL 21, cover star Lamar Jackson is, predictably, unfair.