I know that this community does not need any convincing to not buy a Madden game; this isn't a community for sports gamers and Madden is largely disliked even amongst sports gamers. But, for about 10-12 years I've done nearly all of the OT's for the annual Madden games. I stopped doing them a few years ago because I felt like the games were not delivering value for $60, I couldn't hype the games in good conscience. This year not only can I not hype the game, but I'm actively warning people not to buy it.
Do not buy Madden '21 for $60. Do not buy it for $40. If you have to play a Madden game, play Madden '20 and wait until the game is steeply discounted or free.
Madden '21 is easily the worst Madden game since the 2006/2007 season that launched on the Xbox 360. Casual/non-sports gamers always joked, "$60 for a roster update," but usually that belied the truth... The games did get changes from year to year but usually those changes only really appealed to the most ardent fans, people who cared about how various defensive schemes played or how player locomotion would change in a given year... There's be tweaks to, say, scouting in franchise mode or some other improvements in the depth of the game. In the heyday of Madden and NCAA Football franchises there'd be significant changes every year, and because they were built on an already solid game the changes would be worth the pricetag of $50 or $60 each year. To casual players it might have seemed like just a roster update for $50, but to fans of the franchise the changes were meaningful year to year and the games showed passion from the developers.
Madden 21, this year, is worse than a roster update. The rosters are already out of date for what you can get for free from community for Madden '20 (players who have opted out of this season are still in their respective starting spots for instance, something that community rosters have accounted for). The Franchise mode -- what was once the bread and butter of sports videogames (and a mode that Madden really put on the map with Madden '99, following the success of Dynasty mode in NCAA Football 98) -- is completely unchanged from Madden '20. 100% identical, from the menus, to the goals, to the team goals, to *everything.* Franchise mode in Madden games has been long ignored, it's been a serious gripe by the MAdden enthusiast community, but usually they'd still put in a handful of small changes, or change the presentation or something. Well, Madden '21s franchise is identical to Madden '20, zero meaningful or even noticeable improvements. (and before someone says "Well player regression has been tweaked a little...." Give it 3 or 4 weeks and I'm sure we'll find plenty of regression or retirement bugs like every year, and a patch will come out that will probably nullify this supposed change. It's not clear to me that the tiny, tiny tweak to veteran player regression was intentional or not for a mode that has been otherwise copy and pasted from Madden '20)
Face of the Franchise, the single player story mode that they've thrown together the last few years is back, and if you played last years you've basically already played it. There's a lame sports story, your player plays through high school and college and makes the NFL, and then it transitions into, basically, franchise mode where you control your guy. I haven't played through the whole thing and I won't because the game is unimproved.
Is the gameplay improved? I don't think so. Early takes on Madden '21 from people who got previews was that they balanced out the gameplay and it was really solid. But..... it seems no different to me. The same plays work in the same way in the same situations. The CPU playcalling is still fucking stupid. I heard clock management was improved but it still seems the same, I've had the clock run out on the CPU without them kicking a field goal or going for a score in the redzone before the half. Playcalling still seems arbitrary and CPU playcalling is still, seemingly, based on the play that you pick to the point that it's utterly predictable because -- in effect -- you're picking the CPU's play based on the play that you chose. The playbooks are still incredibly lazy. Yes, the Patriots have the same playbook that they've had since, like 2009 when they were a stretch-the-field team. They still feature a ton of tight end post routes in their playbook despite that the Patriots don't have an NFL tight end on their roster. This is something that I noticed year after year with the Patriots, that their play calling, playbook, scheme, is the same as it was since like, Brady was 31 years old, and so I'm sure every other team is the exact same... Like I bet they have Miami running a bunch of wishbone passing plays, because that was a gimmick 5 or 6 years ago. In my time with the game I've noticed some improvements to CPU AI... maybe... or maybe it's just a coincidence? The responsiveness of QBs seems different, same with the responsiveness on cuts and stick moves with RBs, but it's not clear to me whether that's just an improvement on the players I'm controlling or whether they've actually tuned that. Other changes like moving D-line moves to the stick rather than buttons, .. eh. They used to be on the stick 5+ years ago, then they moved to face buttons, now they're back on the stick. I get that it's "changed" but I don't think it's necessarily "improved." I just figure in 5 years they'll move it back to the face buttons and call it like, "IMPACT CONTROL PASS RUSHING" or something, and it'll basically be the same pass rushing result as Madden 2009.
If you play MUT -- the microtransactions card collecting game -- it's the same as it always has been. Grind your way to the top of wait 2 months and spend $20 and get the best team in the game. THis year it's worse because there are a ton of stability bugs which lock up menus and make it very slow to get from screen to screen.
There is a new mode this year called "The Yard." It was a big announcement that they had a 6 on 6 online-based competitive mode that's supposed to be more arcadey. Uhm. It's okay, I guess? It doesn't follow traditional NFL rules. Each team gets 3 possessions. The field is 60 yards long and you play as the same player on offense and defense. There are no kicks, no punts, and you can get up to 3 points for an "extra point." You also get points for interceptions. The rules are weird and don't entirely make sense to me, and things like pick 6's or fumble returns for a TD count as an offensive possession, which is odd to me. There are weird rule differences in one game from another, like in some you can't scramble as a QB (the play is called dead), in others you can. You can't blitz until a timer counts down and lets you blitz. You can also pass the ball multiple times as long as it's behind the line of scrimmage which is a cool gimmick to be honest, and can set up some fun plays where you throw a screen and then hit a guy on a post pattern in the same play. It's an arcadey version of football for the most part, but not like NFL blitz. THe actual player movement is still typical Madden. Tackles, catches, and so on, are still all normal Madden, it's that the rules are different. This mode is clearly where EA is taking Madden and will feature a lot of player customization and microtransactions. It seems entirely made for that.
I'd like to share more about The Yard, but the mode is literally unplayable for me. Not like "I don't like it" unplayable or "it's got some bugs" unplayable, literally unplayable. After finishing the early round of challenges, the mode no longer spawns players on the field for the challenge I'm on, the first "real" challenge of the mode after the tutorials. The game loads and only 2 players spawn, and so every play is just a dead ball at the line of scrimmage, I can't move beyond this challenge. I'm not alone in this, it's plaguing almost all players. But there are more and more bugs in every single mode.
The field for the Washington Football Team doesn't spawn, there's no field markings, just a large green field with no down markers. Lighting in COwboys stadium gets completely fucked up, like max brightness times 10,000% so you can't see anything. Players disappearing on the field. Toooons of crashes. The game has crashed back to the Dashboard for me like at least 5 times. And I've probably only launched the game 7 or 8 times. It crashes like 80% of times that I load the game. Sometimes the menu buttons stop working (which is indicative that a crash is coming for me). Like, I go to "Play Now" and select "Exhibition" and the sound that I picked the mode plays but ..... nothing happens. And then no menu buttons work. And then I might be able to launch "The Yard," but then it crashes immediately. If EA Servers disconnect (something that happens routinely) the game crashes.
Many of these bugs are likely because of COVID. I get it it. I've been working from home as a software engineer for ~6 months now as well. A lot of my work has been disrupted. We're not just "working from home," we're "working during a pandemic from home," and I've had to take care of a toddler as well as slip my work in from time to time. I get it. It's hard to work during a pandemic. But the game should not be released in this state. Will there probably be a "Day 1 patch?" Sure. Every Madden game has gotten a day 1 patch for the last 5 years, but usually those patches are fixing bugs and issues with gameplay or franchise mode, this year, there's so many bugs just around the stability of keeping the software running.
Sports game blogger PastaPadre catalogued a lot of these problems in some twitter threads:
(the video above is a routine bug in 'The Yard' where no players spawn, so the ball gets snapped and then immediately thrown into the dirt for an incomplete pass. In my version, the opposing players never spawned so the ball can't be snapped when I'm on defense)
Apparently after removing "Redskins" from the Washington field, they also removed all of the ... yard markers, endzones, and any other identifying characteristics of the field:
Also the Redskins weren't the only renamed team, also the Seattle Seahacks.
(FYI, I believe this is just a bug on the player presentation cutaway, not the whole game...... but.... still)
Here is a video review from That Franchise Guy. He goes into some more depth about the "#FixMaddenfranchise" hashtag, as well as how EA has the exclusive simulation license for Madden but is not making a simulation game and has not improved the core mode of simulation sports games. He also says the gameplay is improved, but, in my opinion, for $60 every year, it's not improved enough. I'd really have to play, 10, 20, or 50 games to really understand the depth of the improvements, but in my ~6 hours playing it, as far as I can tell it's basically the same gameplay as last year... and the year before.... and the year before that. And I'm not going to spend $60 or more to figure out what tiny changes they made improving the gameplay.
Do not buy this game. It's fucked up. Even if the game were functioning right, there's almost zero improvements from last year. I get that COVID makes it difficult to work, but to release this game for at least $60 is a scam. And, of course, because it's a sports game in 2020, $60 is the lowest MSRP. There is also an $80 and $100 version of the game that gives you shit in the Microtransaction modes, as well as an earlier release date, which means you'll be getting to play the game before any stability patches drop... Meaning you get to pay $20 or $40 more for an unplayable, broken game.
Do not buy Madden '21 for $60. Do not buy it for $40. If you have to play a Madden game, play Madden '20 and wait until the game is steeply discounted or free.
Madden '21 is easily the worst Madden game since the 2006/2007 season that launched on the Xbox 360. Casual/non-sports gamers always joked, "$60 for a roster update," but usually that belied the truth... The games did get changes from year to year but usually those changes only really appealed to the most ardent fans, people who cared about how various defensive schemes played or how player locomotion would change in a given year... There's be tweaks to, say, scouting in franchise mode or some other improvements in the depth of the game. In the heyday of Madden and NCAA Football franchises there'd be significant changes every year, and because they were built on an already solid game the changes would be worth the pricetag of $50 or $60 each year. To casual players it might have seemed like just a roster update for $50, but to fans of the franchise the changes were meaningful year to year and the games showed passion from the developers.
Madden 21, this year, is worse than a roster update. The rosters are already out of date for what you can get for free from community for Madden '20 (players who have opted out of this season are still in their respective starting spots for instance, something that community rosters have accounted for). The Franchise mode -- what was once the bread and butter of sports videogames (and a mode that Madden really put on the map with Madden '99, following the success of Dynasty mode in NCAA Football 98) -- is completely unchanged from Madden '20. 100% identical, from the menus, to the goals, to the team goals, to *everything.* Franchise mode in Madden games has been long ignored, it's been a serious gripe by the MAdden enthusiast community, but usually they'd still put in a handful of small changes, or change the presentation or something. Well, Madden '21s franchise is identical to Madden '20, zero meaningful or even noticeable improvements. (and before someone says "Well player regression has been tweaked a little...." Give it 3 or 4 weeks and I'm sure we'll find plenty of regression or retirement bugs like every year, and a patch will come out that will probably nullify this supposed change. It's not clear to me that the tiny, tiny tweak to veteran player regression was intentional or not for a mode that has been otherwise copy and pasted from Madden '20)
Face of the Franchise, the single player story mode that they've thrown together the last few years is back, and if you played last years you've basically already played it. There's a lame sports story, your player plays through high school and college and makes the NFL, and then it transitions into, basically, franchise mode where you control your guy. I haven't played through the whole thing and I won't because the game is unimproved.
Is the gameplay improved? I don't think so. Early takes on Madden '21 from people who got previews was that they balanced out the gameplay and it was really solid. But..... it seems no different to me. The same plays work in the same way in the same situations. The CPU playcalling is still fucking stupid. I heard clock management was improved but it still seems the same, I've had the clock run out on the CPU without them kicking a field goal or going for a score in the redzone before the half. Playcalling still seems arbitrary and CPU playcalling is still, seemingly, based on the play that you pick to the point that it's utterly predictable because -- in effect -- you're picking the CPU's play based on the play that you chose. The playbooks are still incredibly lazy. Yes, the Patriots have the same playbook that they've had since, like 2009 when they were a stretch-the-field team. They still feature a ton of tight end post routes in their playbook despite that the Patriots don't have an NFL tight end on their roster. This is something that I noticed year after year with the Patriots, that their play calling, playbook, scheme, is the same as it was since like, Brady was 31 years old, and so I'm sure every other team is the exact same... Like I bet they have Miami running a bunch of wishbone passing plays, because that was a gimmick 5 or 6 years ago. In my time with the game I've noticed some improvements to CPU AI... maybe... or maybe it's just a coincidence? The responsiveness of QBs seems different, same with the responsiveness on cuts and stick moves with RBs, but it's not clear to me whether that's just an improvement on the players I'm controlling or whether they've actually tuned that. Other changes like moving D-line moves to the stick rather than buttons, .. eh. They used to be on the stick 5+ years ago, then they moved to face buttons, now they're back on the stick. I get that it's "changed" but I don't think it's necessarily "improved." I just figure in 5 years they'll move it back to the face buttons and call it like, "IMPACT CONTROL PASS RUSHING" or something, and it'll basically be the same pass rushing result as Madden 2009.
If you play MUT -- the microtransactions card collecting game -- it's the same as it always has been. Grind your way to the top of wait 2 months and spend $20 and get the best team in the game. THis year it's worse because there are a ton of stability bugs which lock up menus and make it very slow to get from screen to screen.
There is a new mode this year called "The Yard." It was a big announcement that they had a 6 on 6 online-based competitive mode that's supposed to be more arcadey. Uhm. It's okay, I guess? It doesn't follow traditional NFL rules. Each team gets 3 possessions. The field is 60 yards long and you play as the same player on offense and defense. There are no kicks, no punts, and you can get up to 3 points for an "extra point." You also get points for interceptions. The rules are weird and don't entirely make sense to me, and things like pick 6's or fumble returns for a TD count as an offensive possession, which is odd to me. There are weird rule differences in one game from another, like in some you can't scramble as a QB (the play is called dead), in others you can. You can't blitz until a timer counts down and lets you blitz. You can also pass the ball multiple times as long as it's behind the line of scrimmage which is a cool gimmick to be honest, and can set up some fun plays where you throw a screen and then hit a guy on a post pattern in the same play. It's an arcadey version of football for the most part, but not like NFL blitz. THe actual player movement is still typical Madden. Tackles, catches, and so on, are still all normal Madden, it's that the rules are different. This mode is clearly where EA is taking Madden and will feature a lot of player customization and microtransactions. It seems entirely made for that.
I'd like to share more about The Yard, but the mode is literally unplayable for me. Not like "I don't like it" unplayable or "it's got some bugs" unplayable, literally unplayable. After finishing the early round of challenges, the mode no longer spawns players on the field for the challenge I'm on, the first "real" challenge of the mode after the tutorials. The game loads and only 2 players spawn, and so every play is just a dead ball at the line of scrimmage, I can't move beyond this challenge. I'm not alone in this, it's plaguing almost all players. But there are more and more bugs in every single mode.
The field for the Washington Football Team doesn't spawn, there's no field markings, just a large green field with no down markers. Lighting in COwboys stadium gets completely fucked up, like max brightness times 10,000% so you can't see anything. Players disappearing on the field. Toooons of crashes. The game has crashed back to the Dashboard for me like at least 5 times. And I've probably only launched the game 7 or 8 times. It crashes like 80% of times that I load the game. Sometimes the menu buttons stop working (which is indicative that a crash is coming for me). Like, I go to "Play Now" and select "Exhibition" and the sound that I picked the mode plays but ..... nothing happens. And then no menu buttons work. And then I might be able to launch "The Yard," but then it crashes immediately. If EA Servers disconnect (something that happens routinely) the game crashes.
Many of these bugs are likely because of COVID. I get it it. I've been working from home as a software engineer for ~6 months now as well. A lot of my work has been disrupted. We're not just "working from home," we're "working during a pandemic from home," and I've had to take care of a toddler as well as slip my work in from time to time. I get it. It's hard to work during a pandemic. But the game should not be released in this state. Will there probably be a "Day 1 patch?" Sure. Every Madden game has gotten a day 1 patch for the last 5 years, but usually those patches are fixing bugs and issues with gameplay or franchise mode, this year, there's so many bugs just around the stability of keeping the software running.
Sports game blogger PastaPadre catalogued a lot of these problems in some twitter threads:
(the video above is a routine bug in 'The Yard' where no players spawn, so the ball gets snapped and then immediately thrown into the dirt for an incomplete pass. In my version, the opposing players never spawned so the ball can't be snapped when I'm on defense)
Apparently after removing "Redskins" from the Washington field, they also removed all of the ... yard markers, endzones, and any other identifying characteristics of the field:
Also the Redskins weren't the only renamed team, also the Seattle Seahacks.
(FYI, I believe this is just a bug on the player presentation cutaway, not the whole game...... but.... still)
Here is a video review from That Franchise Guy. He goes into some more depth about the "#FixMaddenfranchise" hashtag, as well as how EA has the exclusive simulation license for Madden but is not making a simulation game and has not improved the core mode of simulation sports games. He also says the gameplay is improved, but, in my opinion, for $60 every year, it's not improved enough. I'd really have to play, 10, 20, or 50 games to really understand the depth of the improvements, but in my ~6 hours playing it, as far as I can tell it's basically the same gameplay as last year... and the year before.... and the year before that. And I'm not going to spend $60 or more to figure out what tiny changes they made improving the gameplay.
Do not buy this game. It's fucked up. Even if the game were functioning right, there's almost zero improvements from last year. I get that COVID makes it difficult to work, but to release this game for at least $60 is a scam. And, of course, because it's a sports game in 2020, $60 is the lowest MSRP. There is also an $80 and $100 version of the game that gives you shit in the Microtransaction modes, as well as an earlier release date, which means you'll be getting to play the game before any stability patches drop... Meaning you get to pay $20 or $40 more for an unplayable, broken game.
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