The biggest disappointment with Madden NFL 21 though is the Franchise mode. Besides a couple of tweaks to how things like offseason drafts and Mut 21 coins transactions are handled, it’s literally identical to last year’s Madden. Plus, the version we get on Stadia isn’t even the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S version of the sport, it is the PlayStation 4 / Xbox One variant. This means the new playcalling features, improved visuals, compact animations, and’Next-Gen Stats’ integration features are all absent.
Voice acting is poor across the board, character animations are rigid in cutscenes, and as things begin to get interesting it less or more ends and dumps you into a merry-go-round of scripted moments during your career. The new mode, The Yard, tries to be an arcade-style pick-up-and-play experience, but is so watered down it fails to deliver.
The reality of Madden is that if you are craving an NFL football experience then you don’t really have any other options. Purchasing the sport on Stadia could reveal EA there’s interest in more of the sports titles coming into the platform, which is a general good thing, it is just too bad Madden could not have a better entrance to serve as its debut.
For a more comprehensive analysis of the game itself, check out our Madden NFL 21 review over on Windows Central. Now let’s dive to the differences on Stadia.
Providentially, the Stadia version of Madden NFL 21 plays great and looks fantastic. As is the norm now with all the Stadia version of AAA games, it performs superbly and doesn’t have any noticeable issues with lag or latency in case your connection is great enough. Anytime you play Madden online kicking does suffer from minor latency problems, but that is the case across all versions of the game — not only Stadia. This year it is worse than usual so that you should absolutely expect to miss a couple of field goals and extra points. They must have changed the net code for how kicking is managed or something because even on cheap Madden nfl 21 coins PS4 and PS5 I had been having problems hitting kicks just right and those issues persist in the Stadia version.
