As is the norm now with all the Stadia version

The biggest disappointment with Madden NFL 21 though is that the Franchise mode. Other than a few tweaks to the way that things like offseason drafts and Madden nfl 22 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 even Xbox Series X|S edition of the game, it's the PlayStation 4 / Xbox One variant. This means the new playcalling attributes, enhanced visuals, streamlined animations, and'Next-Gen Stats' integration features are all absent.

The narrative mode this season, Face of the Franchise: Rise to Fame, is awful. Voice acting is poor across the board, character animations are stiff in cutscenes, and as things begin to get interesting it less or more ends and frees you into a merry-go-round of scripted moments during your career. The new manner, The Yard, attempts to be an arcade-style pick-up-and-play encounter, but is so watered down it fails to provide.

The fact of Madden is that if you are craving an NFL football experience then you don't really have any other choices. Purchasing the sport on Stadia could reveal EA there's interest in more of the sports titles coming to the platform, which is a general great thing, it is just too poor Madden could not have a better entrance to serve as its introduction.

To get a more comprehensive analysis of the sport itself, check out our Madden NFL 21 review over on Windows Central. Now let's dive into the differences on Stadia.

As is the norm now with all the Stadia version of AAA games, it performs wonderfully 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 with minor latency problems, but that is true across all versions of this game -- not just Stadia. This season it's worse than usual so that you ought to absolutely expect to overlook a few field goals and extra points. They need to have changed the internet code for how kicking is handled or something because even on PS4 and PS5 I was having problems hitting kicks just right and those problems persist at the Stadia variant.

As per a SpeedTest I've got a 599Mbps download speed, 12Mbps upload speed, and 14ms of ping on Comcast XFINITY as I write this. Google recommends at least 10Mbps download rate for 720p streaming, 20Mbps download speed for cheap Madden 22 coins 1080p streaming, and at 35Mbps download rate for 4K streaming.