A staple in every sports fan’s repertoire, Electronic Arts’ Madden franchise has entertained the masses for many decades. That is until the year 2020: just when things seemed like they could not get any worse, EA released Madden 21.

EA has the sole rights to make a simulation football game with NFL licensing. Instead of using that for good, they have become lazy, pumping out the same copy-pasted garbage game every year. Advertised as a SIMULATION game, it is too dependent on animations and gimmicks, rather than physics-based outcomes, to even be mentioned in that category. It’s not uncommon at all to be cheated out of a big play because due to an unnecessary animation, a receiver drops a ball that they would have caught in their sleep in real life. Cutscenes are reused and inserted way out of context. Patrick Mahomes could throw for six hundred yards and seven touchdowns, and the opposing cornerbacks will still pose with him after the game as if they are on the same team. Even the player graphics in the menus are reused with photoshop jobs that look like they were done in less than ten seconds while the artist was blindfolded.

With in-game mechanics barely changing, the EA way is to not change the game modes either. Franchise mode, a mainstay of Madden games in which the player gets a user controlled team and can make decisions from management to every on field play, was not changed at all. Considered broken, what with its questionable trades and simulation outcomes, Madden 21 players got the hashtag “FixMaddenFranchise” to be the number one trending topic on Twitter. 

From broken mechanics to reused aspects from the previous games, Madden 21 is a disappointment. While still fun at times, it’s not something that EA should be very proud of at all.