A few weeks ago, ”Madden NFL 26” was released for the ninth generation of consoles, making it the 21st consecutive Madden title with exclusive rights to the NFL license. This 2004 agreement grants Electronic Arts sole permission to produce simulation football video games bearing the NFL branding. As a result, EA faces no competition from other companies and has no incentive to create an authentic NFL experience. They instead rely on Ultimate Team to generate billions of dollars by encouraging players to gamble money on virtual card packs.

EA usually gets away with its greediness as neither critics nor consumers hold it accountable, but the tide has been turning. Contrary to the high number of copies sold, public reception recently soured and has been consistently negative for years. Surprisingly, EA did more than update the rosters in “Madden NFL 26” and now the question becomes: is Madden finally worthy of a purchase?

I personally haven’t bought recent Maddens because they’ve been disappointing, unfinished and lacking key features. This isn’t a review of “Madden NFL 26,” this is me asking you not to forget about EA’s decade-long disrespect towards its playerbase by creating such terrible video games. Just because they make more improvements than normal doesn’t mean we should immediately forgive them. Even if they’re entering a renaissance over at EA Tiburon, it’s going to take more than one attempt to erase years of greed and lies.

The new additions aren’t enough

“Madden NFL 26” advertises a game that’s “built from Sundays” using years of real-world data to make the experience more immersive. Based on the gridiron notes and deep dives, it looks promising. They claim to have added community-requested features to presentation, superstar mode and franchise, even stating, “…this is the biggest Franchise Mode update we’ve made in over a decade.” While this looks good on paper, what matters is execution. The game has been out for a short time, and it’s abundantly clear that EA underdelivered again.

Let’s start with some positives because there are some genuinely good additions this year, one of them being the overhauled presentation. They added new broadcast packages for Thursday, Sunday and Monday night games, each with unique scorebugs, graphics, bumpers, music and commentary teams. This was on my wishlist ever since ESPN branding was in “NCAA Football” and while this isn’t that, it’s much better than before. They also revamped the halftime show alongside new team-specific stadium entrances.

These are welcome changes to the game, but what about franchise mode? This year, an array of coach abilities, playsheets for gameplanning and weekly recap shows hosted by Scott Hanson make up the biggest features. Cutscenes are now narrated by Rich Eisen and depth chart positions finally reflect modern football terminology. Superstar mode got some much-needed updates, the main one being that poor play on the field results in getting benched.

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives end because EA can never fully commit to something. The halftime and wrap-up shows are cool, but they use the same rotation of scenarios for different teams and don’t show the box scores for the rest of the games that week. Segments late in the season show the playoff picture, but besides that, there’s nothing for free agent signings, injuries, weekly/yearly awards, scouting, or the draft. To make things worse, only eight teams have those special entrances, and they’re only available during primetime matchups.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad this stuff is in the game. Getting these things in is half the battle; the other part is implementing the best version of the idea. I’m only concerned because EA has added plenty of features in the past, only to forget about or remove them later. In fact, they did this exact thing to a feature this year.

Owner mode was an option in franchise mode that allowed users to control every aspect of their team, including ticket and concession prices, facility upgrades and relocation. Previously, you could select a player, coach or owner, each of whom offered various levels of responsibility, but now you can only control a coach. This is inexcusable. Madden isn’t at a point where stuff should be removed; it’s so bare-bones that it needs all the features it can get. Even if it wasn’t getting much attention, just because EA stopped updating it doesn’t mean players stopped playing it.

Bugs, glitches and logic issues

There’s some enjoyment to be had playing “Madden NFL 26,” however, any sliver of happiness is immediately wiped away once you load up a game and remember that it’s full of bugs, glitches and logic issues.

This section could just be listing the same bugs from last year’s game, and the one before that, and the one before that. Take one look at the r/Madden page on Reddit and you’ll be sure to find glitches, new and old. Some get fixed, but the majority must be so baked into the code because they’re never resolved. Despite knowing their game is bugged, EA still sells it. They even encourage pre-orders by giving players early access so they can be the first to see the new glitches. It’s been proven that patches can’t save the game as there’s simply too much to correct.

It doesn’t help that the CPU logic is still busted in gameplay and simulation. Blocking has been the thorn in Madden’s side for at least 15 years, and they still haven’t gotten it right. Linemen continue to miss defensive players, allowing them a clean path to the quarterback. Defensive players take the worst possible pursuit angles to the ball carrier. Defenders make inhuman plays on the ball because their interception animation defies physics. CPU opponents don’t have any time awareness and will run out the clock instead of kicking a game-winning field goal. Simulated stats in franchise mode were said to be better, but you can find cases of that being untrue. Why is a game developed by a billion-dollar company so unpolished? It’s unbelievable how this is allowed to be sold to customers.

It’s time for a rebuild

Ian Cummings, former EA employee and creative director on “Madden NFL 10” and “Madden NFL 11,” recently did an interview with YouTube personality SoftDrinkTV and explained the core gameplay difference between modern titles and older ones like “Madden NFL 05.” In those games, the user wasn’t controlling a player model; they were controlling a circle. This circle had physics that allowed for realistic momentum and movement, with the model’s animations playing on top.

Around the 47-minute mark, Cummings states, “The core of this that people should know, the animation is not moving the player. The underlying physics engine is moving the player.” If you’ve ever played Madden from this generation, you can understand what he’s saying here. I’ve played “Madden NFL 08” on the PlayStation 2 and if I compare it to “Madden NFL 18,” for example, the former is much weightier than the latter.

Speaking on the current games a minute later, he says, “The whole core down at the bottom is that the animation moves the player, not the cylinder, not the circle underneath. And so that animation has movement baked into it… but what happens then is that there’s no really good underlying physics model underneath to maintain momentum as well as it did back then.” In a nutshell, the Madden devs aren’t making a physics-based game anymore; their game is dictated by animations strung together and tuned to make them look as good as possible.

When asked about whether it’s possible to change this, Cummings brings up “NFL Blitz” and responds, “This is an engine that Tiburon owns of… characters moving at the rate that the game wants, not the rate that the animation wants… So it can be done.”

The bottom line is that Madden will never be a good football simulation until it changes its gameplay philosophy. Animations should not overrule physics; this is why the newer games feel worse to play. In a perfect world, EA hits the reset button and takes two or three years to develop a new game tailored for physics-based football. The only issue is that it would slow down revenue, and the executives won’t like that.

Conclusion

The football gaming community has been burned by Electronic Arts for years now, so much so that we need to vote with our wallets because it’s the only way to persuade these giant corporations.

I’m glad Madden is better than last year, but that’s not a high bar to cross. I don’t think EA deserves praise for finally showing effort after tarnishing the legacy of the series. One year of half-baked additions isn’t enough to forgive them. I need to see a few years of consistent and competent improvements before I think about purchasing a new Madden title.

The only silver lining is that the team actually made improvements while comfortably holding the license, but I have a feeling it’s not going to last. Unless there are massive internal changes, I don’t see any reason they’d put in more work than they have to. They’re the only game on the market, so they don’t have to try; they’ll probably rest on their laurels until the next round of negotiations, like always. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to stop so fans can have a good football game again, but if the NFL isn’t willing to drop EA, then we have a long road ahead of us.

I don’t recommend Madden now, and probably won’t for a long time.

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