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We've lost our way.Įverything in Madden 21 is coated in a conspicuous games-as-a-service veneer.īut hey, the football is still fun.
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There is no interiority, no nuance, and no real connective theme at one point I run into a digital Snoop Dogg who is wearing a golden EA medallion around his neck.
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Longshot should've been a jumping off point, but instead they've completely lost their way. It is amazing how bad EA has gotten at telling football stories in such a short amount of time. I threw five touchdowns in the semi-finals and my coach still told me I'd be lucky to be a third round pick. The narrative never gets off the rails it sets out for itself. You're the new star on the block, who used to play hockey, and now you're about to supplant the golden boy starter from his perch! That golden boy happens to have an entirely undefined congenital heart condition, and you both are joined at the hip through toils at the state championship level, the College Football National Championship, and beyond without a single moment of meaningful character development or resonant moral complexity. You create a fresh new quarterback, and quickly find yourself mired in an absurdly bland high school football drama. Why would I want to play with running backs with a 75 overall rating, when I could switch over to any of the other modes and run around the field as Saquon Barkley? Whenever I watch yet another video of a teenager opening $1,000 worth of packs my eyes roll into the back of my head. The barrier of entry to actually competing in Ultimate Team is so wide, that I simply cannot muster the time or energy to commit. I traded him in for a small bounty of points that, eventually, will allow me to increase the speed of a wide receiver by a fraction of a percent. I booted up the mode, completed the first challenge, and was immediately rewarded with a Blake Bortles card, who is most famous for being the worst starting quarterback for a playoff team in recent memory. The same can be said for Madden Ultimate Team, the infernal card-collecting closed economy that asks players to assemble a top-tier team through either a boatload of microtransactions or an absurd amount of grinding. There are times where I wonder if perhaps there is a way to offer a sports management experience that is a little less stuffy than the deep recesses of EA's spreadsheet morass, but then again, negotiating contracts with veteran linebackers is supposed to be a little bit boring. I've never been the type to go deep into the nuts and bolts of Madden's more sim-y qualities, but it's nice to know that the option remains on the table for the world's armchair GMs. Take control of an ailing franchise-the New York Jets, the Detroit Lions, whatever-and attempt to whip them into respectability with cornerback drills and intensive scouting reports. After four decades, EA has learned a strange lesson: People love Madden the most when it aims higher than just football.įranchise mode is back as a near-perfect facsimile of its past incarnations. After scoring, you elect to either attempt a one point conversion, two point conversion, or three point conversion, each of which require you to gain exponential amounts of yardage. The pigskin slings to the running back, then to a screening receiver, and then back to the quarterback, blowing the staid rules of the game wide open. In my second game, I learned that I could flip the ball to anyone who wasn't running downfield. The Yard is also probably more fun than the rest of Madden's offerings. The Yard is played in a six-on-six format, and is governed by backyard rules the same players compete on both offense and defense, each team gets three offensive drives, and potential blitzers need to do the classic "one-Mississippi two-Mississippi" count before busting through the line of scrimmage. The lore, I guess, is that a bunch of NFL millionaires grew tired of playing for paychecks in front of a nation of fans, and instead have taken their grievances to the vacant lot next door. The premier new game mode in Madden 2020 is called The Yard, which as a lifetime football fan, immediately brought to mind the halcyon days of NFL Street.