This new mode is a blast to play, simplifying the rules of football and racketing up the craziness to 11. The Yard is meant to emulate old-school backyard football, with two teams of six going head to head in small arenas. The newest mode that Madden NFL 21 is pushing the hardest is The Yard. Upgrading your team and seeing your overall team rank increase is a ton of fun, as is collecting new players, auctioning old players off, and completing all of the unique challenges the mode presents.
As players complete games and challenges, they will unlock currency to buy card packs that contain random players of different skill levels. Ultimate Team is half football games and challenges and half collectible card game. Sure, you can jump into games back and forth in exhibition mode, but there are a plethora of other ways to play.įor instance, perhaps the most popular mode in Madden year after year is the Ultimate Team mode. Perhaps surprisingly, to new players, Madden NFL 21 is more than just simple football. All button prompts and plays feel responsive, and whether or not a play is successful is completely up to the skill of the player. No matter what difficulty you choose to play on, Madden NFL 21 just feels undeniably good to play. If you happen to not know anything about football or simply don’t play that many video games, turning the difficulty down will ensure that you can still feel like an NFL superstar.
Difficulty can be changed at any time in the settings, ranging from easy, arcady action to realistic, ultra-difficult simulation. The folks over at EA Sports have perfected the football formula and have ensured that players of all skill levels can enjoy this title. Madden NFL 21 is at its best when you’re in a game. This isn’t anything I haven’t seen in video games before, but I would have just expected a little bit better from this title. Players would frequently walk through each other, reach through each other, or clip into walls between plays. Outside of the character models themselves, I ran into constant visual glitches during gameplay. Something just feels off about their faces, and the same can be said about some of the other players. Most of the characters (especially player-created characters) have a terrible “uncanny valley” look to them. The ones that look bad, however, completely ripped me out of the experience. Most players and environments look fine, good even. Now, this isn’t to say that the whole game looks terrible. Oddly enough, however, there are certain aspects of Madden NFL 21 that make me stop and think, “why does this big-budget game look this bad?”
The game itself pulls in millions of dollars each year between game sales and microtransactions, so clearly, there are funds to invest in this department.
#Madden nfl 21 stadia series#
With the Madden NFL series being one of the best selling games year after year in the United States, I was surprised this was even an issue. Something else that felt off about Madden NFL 21 were the graphics. Making the journey from high school to college to the NFL was admittedly fun when actually playing games, but the story bits between the gameplay simply brought everything to a drag. Either way, I couldn’t seem to put it down. Furthermore, all of the main characters are jerks, even when you attempt to make your player a good person.įace of the Franchise was an experience, but not necessarily a good one. All of the characters feel like generic, unbelievable caricatures and, for the most part, are all unlikeable. The story has competition, betrayal, drama, celebrity cameos… and it’s terrible. This premise sounds simple enough in concept, but the game tries to force in an over-the-top melodramatic storyline involving one of the players’ rivals from high school. It tells the story of an NFL Hall of Famer, created by the player, and their journey through high school, college, and finally, the NFL. Madden NFL 21’s single-player mode, Face of the Franchise, is certainly something. As someone who doesn’t really like to play games online with other people, having single-player offerings can make or break an experience for me. One of my favorite things about Madden NFL 21 is the fact that it has a story mode.