The annual Madden NFL game release is breaking records… Not the good kind. Apparently, the game received a bunch of angry fan reviews on Metacritic shooting down its score and placing it among the lowest-rated games in recent years. Currently, the average user review score for Madden NFL 21 is nearing an absolute zero. At the time of writing, it has over 2000 reviews with an average score of 0.3. Seems like EA Sports messed up big time.
If you read the reviews, you can see why people hate it so much. Apparently, it’s yet another EA Sports misstep featuring plenty of technical issues as well as a bad single-player campaign mode called the Yard and a heavy focus on microtransactions. However, the main takeaway from all of the reviews is lack of innovation. While technical issues can be solved and microtransactions can be tweaked a bit to avoid annoying people so much, some avid fans of Madden NFL games had enough getting more of the same every year.
Some gamers even called to boycott the new title in hopes to encourage change and give someone else a chance to handle American Football (khem… 2K Sports perhaps?). According to fans, EA Sports did nothing to their beloved franchise over the past couple of years, milking the existing formula, and selling the same game with slight re-skins and updated rosters.
Even the most annoying bugs and features from Madden NFL 20 is in the new game too… And that’s a bit scary, for everyone who likes to play annual sports game franchises. FIFA 21 and NHL 21 is just around the corner and Madden NFL 21 could signify how well EA Sports managed to develop their annual franchises during the lockdown. Spoiler alert – not well. We can only hope that this won’t happen to FIFA and NHL series.
