Madden, if it is anything, is constant. Every year, without fail, it is there. And for a good many people, it is the only game they buy and play every year. For a long time I played Madden yearly but the last two generations, I’ve fallen off a bit. Still, Madden ends up in my library every year because my son plays it with his friends.
I’ve not put serious time into Madden since three iterations ago when they introduced their new narrative career mode. This year sees an overhaul of that mode with it being called Face of the Franchise. Face of the Franchise takes the narrative adventure stylings of previous years and mixes it completely with their create a player Be A Pro mode.
In Face of the Franchise, you create a player and then take him on a career journey to the Hall of Fame. It starts with you in high school and follows you to college where you will battle it out with a rival for playing time and draft placement in the NFL. This is all pretty standard stuff but where it gets weird is how the game forces the narrative on you. You are tasked with winning and performing well and then you do it but your coach inexplicably decides to go with your rival. It’s inconsistent in how it rewards the player and because of the forced narrative it often seems broken.
This continues throughout the narrative, which is honestly pretty long. While you don’t have to play every game in a season, you will have to play a solid handful each year of your career and the forced storylines just show up in weird spots. For instance, after coming off a season where I was named the Best QB in the league and won the NFL MVP award, my coach decided to have an open competition for the quarterback position. This just doesn’t happen. But in Madden NFL 21’s Face of the Franchise mode it happens constantly.
Another weird piece was that my player entered the draft early, so we can figure he was about 20 years old in his rookie season. Face of the Franchise runs for roughly a decade so my guy is 29 or 30 years old and getting ready for retirement. Aside from a career ending injury, we generally don’t see Hall of Fame players retire at 30. And in an era where Drew Brees and Tom Brady are still playing, and playing at top 10 QB levels, at 40+ years old, this mode just seems off.
Anyway, weird and broken narrative aside, the actual gameplay of Madden NFL 21 is solid. It’s not anything that is going to knock one’s socks off and it honestly doesn’t feel that much different from the last time I played it seriously but how much can you improve football if it’s already been pretty much perfected. This goes for any sports game. I’m not saying there aren’t things that can be worked on (AI can always be improved) but the core gameplay is pretty much where it needs to be.
Aside from Face of the Franchise, which is where I spent most of my 30 hours with the game, there is the usual Madden Ultimate Team and Franchise modes. They are what you’d expect I guess. I know people bitch about Franchise but it seems about as feature rich as it was three years ago and that is enough for me. I was able to take over the Jacksonville Jaguars, simulate 10 years of the team and then promptly move them to London renaming them the Black Knights so I had fun with that.
The other new mode that is introduced is The Yard. It’s similar to the casual “street” modes from FIFA (Volta) and NHL (Threes/World of CHEL). I was excited when it was announced, thinking it would be closer to NFL Street but ultimately it’s just crappy street football that I don’t really want to play much of because the actual football is better.
Look, Madden NFL 21 isn’t great but it’s perfectly serviceable if you are itching for some NFL simulation action. I’ll probably check in again at Madden NFL 25.
Note: The next gen versions make some nice UI updates and provide some cool realtime presentation items but it’s basically the same game.
3*
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