Every year a new Madden NFL game comes out, and every year the marginal improvements and new additions feel like just enough to keep the series moving forward. This year, however, things feel a bit different in Madden NFL 21. Despite the introduction of the surprisingly fun and unique The Yard mode, the list of persistent issues, neglected features, and new annoyances is growing quite long. 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.
It’s easy to be dismissive of annual sports games by saying they look and play the same every year because, to some degree, that’s true. Changes have been noticeable but minor ever since the series moved to the Frostbite engine in 2017, so everything has stayed relatively consistent, for better and for worse. As usual, when you’re playing a game from the typical zoomed-out camera perspective, Madden 21 looks fantastic. Stadiums are true-to-life, character models are extremely detailed, animations look smooth and responsive, and overall it’s got a sharp design that feels cutting-edge and primed to make the free upgrade to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this year. Once you get up close, though, player faces are often stiff and awkward and the fans in the bleachers still look like low-poly cardboard cutouts. EA has repeatedly missed opportunities to graphically polish these areas that could really use it.Similarly, the NFL pageantry around each game is still lacking. The pre-game highlight reel is full of players awkwardly celebrating even though the game hasn’t started yet and it’s missing the vast majority of stat blocks and recap cutaways you typically see during the actual NFL broadcasts Madden strives to simulate. On a related note, the half-time show is basically non-existent, especially in Franchise mode where its absence is especially conspicuous. A narrator will summarize a handful of games from around the league, it’ll show a couple slow-motion highlights from your game, and then it’s right back into the second-half kickoff. Where’s the actual contextual commentary on what happened and how each side could improve? Where’s the broadcast booth or analyst desk with commentators and interviews? Or at least something to fill that void? It all feels unfinished, which is disappointing considering how much this aspect has been lacking for several years and it was done better in much older games like ESPN NFL 2K5 or even in Madden NFL 10. Instead, it’s the same old song and dance.
It’s also been notably buggier than normal. Even after the first patch, playing on PlayStation 4 Pro, performance issues have made things incredibly frustrating across the board. During kicks I experienced framerate drops so extreme that it often resulted in missed field goals and terrible kickoffs through no fault of my own. During the Face of the Franchise campaign mode, Madden NFL 21 would hang up at loading screens after games, requiring me to quit out to the PS4 dashboard and start it back up multiple times. (Thankfully, my progress saved.) Classic Franchise mode often stuck at the player upgrade screen as well, also forcing me to reboot. Visual glitches have been minimal, but the performance hiccups made it extremely difficult to settle into a flow. I’ve also seen other miscellaneous issues like my opponent randomly mirroring my entire team or textures tearing across the screen.[poilib element="poll" parameters="id=7b17150a-4cae-46d9-a2fe-6e33ed1c59ee"]
When things are running smoothly on the field, moment-to-moment gameplay feels a tiny bit faster than last year, with more precise animations for things like jukes and spins. As a ball carrier, using the right ‘Skill Stick’ feels more dynamic and fluid for pulling off evasive moves and overall blocking seems more realistic. Runners plant their feet well and make decisive cuts, so it all adds up to really satisfying goal line moments on both offense and defense. Last year it was far too easy to run over anyone and everyone if you knew what you were doing, but this year running lanes are narrower and require following blockers more precisely. This is also the first entry in recent memory that lets me throw the ball away relatively easily without taking a cheap sack.