To its credit, Madden NFL 21 arguably has the best core gameplay the Madden nfl 21 coins series has ever had. AI for defenders is powerful without feeling as it cheats the system and the CPU can put up a serious battle on All-Pro and All-Madden difficulties. They added more options for pass-rushing so you don't feel unworthy as a defensive lineman this year and all the Superstar skills do a good job of earning high-impact players feel actually impactful.
By way of instance, following Ezekiel Elliott rushes for more than 10-yards three occasions in a match, he becomes a lot more challenging to bring back on the first hit from the line of scrimmage. That emulates the sense of momentum running backs experience for a match wears on where the defense will slow down and get tired, opening up space for RBs to possess larger profits in the second half. It turns into a bit of a chess match for each team to attempt to'activate' their Superstar players to give them an edge in different scenarios.
The largest disappointment with Madden NFL 21 however is that the Franchise mode. Besides a few tweaks to how things such as offseason drafts and trades are managed, it is literally identical to last year's Madden. Plus, the version we get on Stadia isn't even the PlayStation 5 or Xbox collection X|S version of the game, it's the PlayStation 4 / / Xbox One variant. In other words, the new playcalling features, improved visuals, streamlined animations, and'Next-Gen Stats' integration features are all absent.
Voice acting is bad across the board, character animations are rigid in cutscenes, and as things start to get interesting it less or more ends and dumps you into a merry-go-round of scripted moments throughout your career. The new manner, The Yard, attempts to become an arcade-style pick-up-and-play encounter, but is so watered down it fails to provide.
The reality of Madden is that if you're craving an NFL football experience then you do not actually have any other choices. Purchasing the game on Stadia could show EA there's interest in more of the sports titles coming to the stage, which is an overall good thing, it is just too poor Madden couldn't have a better entry to serve as its introduction.
For a more in-depth analysis of the game itself, check out our Madden NFL 21 review over on Windows Central. Now let's dive to the gaps on Stadia.
As is the standard now with all the Stadia version of AAA games, it performs wonderfully and doesn't have any noticeable issues with lag or latency if your connection is good enough. Anytime you play Madden online kicking does suffer with minor latency issues, but that is true across all versions of the game -- not just Stadia. This year it's worse than usual so you ought to absolutely expect to miss a couple of field objectives and extra points. They need to have changed the cheap Mut 21 coins net code for how kicking is handled or something because even on PS4 and PS5 I was having issues hitting kicks just straight and those problems persist in the Stadia version.