Madden NFL 21, the 2020 edition of EA’s annual American football video game series, has been getting raked over the coals on Metacritic. In just three days, the PlayStation 4 version of the game has gotten an average user review score of 0.4, beating outother “greats” likeWarcraft 3: Reforged.
Anyone taking a look at the PlayStation 4 version ofMadden NFL 21on Metacritic will see that, at the time of writing, 1,676 users have lambasted the game’s user rating. Meanwhile, 15 critics have given the game an above-average rating of 64. Over on the Metacritic pages for the PC and Xbox One versions, the game’s user ranking is also abysmal at 1.4 for PC and 0.6 for Xbox One. As for user reviews on Steam, the users there have been more lenient withMadden 21, giving it an average rating of “Mixed” from 230 user reviews.
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Diving into the user reviews reveals some common complaints among the players. Some users complain about poor AI, major technical issues, and bugs, such as blank fields with no sidelines or hash marks. Others remark the Face of the Franchise mode, a story-based single-player mode which has players following an amateur player on his journey into the pro leagues, has bad acting and a badly-written story. There are also users who complain about the game’s heavy focus on trying to sell microtransactions. All of these complaints and more have led to players calling for theNFL to drop EA.
When it comes to giant annual franchises that focus on sports, innovation can be pretty difficult. The game is based on a major sport with clearly-defined rules, which means it hard to experiment with the core gameplay. Because of this, making sure the core gameplay is in tip-top form is vital to keeping fans happy and avoiding stagnation. Ina chaotic yearwith many people starved for some “real” American Football, you’d think the fans would be more tolerant ofMadden21’sflaws, but that’s not the case.
Problems with the franchisewere visible inMadden 20, but it doesn’t seem like EA has fixed those issues. People online have been voicing their frustration with EA and their handling of theMaddenNFLseries for a while now. Some of them have been pointing out how similar the game feels and looks compared to previous entries in EA’sMadden NFLgames. Unless any new contenders arrive,Madden 21could wind up being this year’sWWE 2K20.
Madden NFL 21is available on PC via Steam and Origin, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One
