Madden NFL 21 Xbox Series X|S made the NFL upgrade to next gen, and featured take this whole review experience with a grin of salt, as I am a causal football fan, and don't know the ins and out of the game to tell you if this game is good for football fans, but as a somewhat fans who just likes to play Madden every now and again, I enjoyed this game. This is maybe the best time I've had on Madden since Madden NFL 16. The game added some new modes that I did not play, Superstar KO, and the Yard, and kept some modes I don't play with Ultimate team, so I'll be basically reviewing my experience with Franchise and Face of the Franchise Mode. This game is reviewed on the Xbox Series X via EA Play on Gamepass, just a sidenote I skipped Madden NFL 21(I took to long to play with it while it was still on Gamepass) so there might be stuff from that game that I called new.
Lets us begin with Face of The Franchise mode, in terms of story modes goes, this was a nice attempt. They didn't go the Long Shot route this time around, but instead decided to let you make your own player, and try to build from there. After you create your (very limited but much improved from past games) player, you pick your high school, it was pretty cool to see that you could have it be your real life High School, you get to pick the name of the school and the team name and it will even show the sign of the school, little things like that are always a plus in my book. Anyways the game screen says, play as a QB, WR, or RB, and when I started I didn't get no options, so I thought I missed something but you basically have to be a QB in the start, but you later on have the option to be a WR or a RB. The story of the game is okay, it kinda doesn't make sense at times, because the story is set in stone without branching options, so regardless on how you perform in the game, the story will move on the same, and regardless of you answer while be it in the moment you'll see a different out come, in the long run it won't matter. The only answers that matters are the ones you get in interviews and press conferences, PC are not voice acted.
Here's a quick spoiler free version of the story, your in high school and you never played organized Football, you're more of a Hockey player, but the coach sees something in you and gives a shot a back up QB. Something goes wrong with starting QB and now you get your time to shy, you that QB now become the Heartbreak Kids but have an rocky relationship off the field from High School to College, but Tommy just wants to get to the NFL badly, and that's the end goal for you as well. You enter the draft to get picked or you can pick a team, I chose random because I feel that's always the best option, and ended up on the Denver Broncos, after being drafted, the story is continuing, in the perspective that your player is still telling his story but the cut screen aspect is finished. Once in the league you can now unlock personality traits and do optional practice goals. My biggest beef with the mode was the fact that you had to play defense in some games, which I felt was kinda dumb since your players isn't out there, plus it just made games so much longer, but I'm glad this wasn't for all games. You have an option to switch to classic once in the league, I didn't click this but I'm guessing this is just Franchise mode using the player, which is never fun, but you can play all games, whereas this one only lets you play the big games, and as a little story behind it. I liked the experience of a "My Player" journey to the NFL and hope they build on this model to make it better, feels like a foundation that can build to be better, and I just hope its not a rinse and repeat model. One small thing once you get to the league, you get this new weird voice for some reason.
Moving on to the Franchise mode, they changed the layout, but other then that its pretty much the same mode again, no changes you just playing games. As the casually I am, I don't know what else to expect as this is the only experience I've had with a NFL franchise mode and I too want a updated experience, but for what it was I had fun playing the season. They did add this thing where you would get messages tho, like a player on your team will message you asking to be used more, or asking to mentor someone or a coach will message you about how to handle a superstar player on the opposing team. I played one game of the Yard, I thought it would be like NFL Street but it wasn't, it was really stiff and weird and not for me, same with Superstar KO.
Gameplay, I enjoyed it, I played on arcade and and did offensive only, as I still can't play defense since Madden NFL 17 plus the game just takes too long, and I didn't want to play The Moments, even though its the fastest way to play, I'd sometimes get way to many defensive plays and I didn't wanna deal with that. So I had fun playing one side and the run game was fun, it felt smooth at least to me for once. When used the RS and went left or right mans juked, when I went up on the RS he trucked and dead leg when I went down, pressing A for stiff arms and B to spin and X to slides, Y to hurdle was the only one that really wasn't working. But I was just glad to have a run game again. Lastly the new menu during gameplay was great for a novice like me, the way they arranged in it a horizontal way instead of that verticals way, gave them more room to play with and organize the menu better. I usually always did "Play Type" but with the more space, more stuff was explained to me and I was picking plays in many different ways. They had a player tab which allowed you to run plays a player of you choice and each play had the main targets picture next to it, this stuff helped a novice like myself who doesn't understand these routes and slants and stuff other wise.
Overall, its the most fun I had in a Madden in about 4 years, but it got old fast, it does get to the point where it does feel like its just the same thing over and over, due to the lack of love in Franchise Mode, but FOTC does try to give you a different outlook and goals to aim for. The presentation on these games are always good, like they always put in a lot of work there, you got some celebration feature now, if they worked as hard on everything else, this stuff would be more then just solid.
Overall-8.3
Gameplay-8.5
Graphic-9
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