Madden NFL 26 is developed by EA Tiburon and published by Electronic Arts—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.
Death, taxes and a new NFL season. All inevitabilities, and along with the new football season, we get a new iteration of Madden as well. The series has had its up and its downs, but it feels like the team at EA Tiburon has taken feedback to heart and provided a very enjoyable experience with Madden NFL 26.
I am an old hand at the Madden series by now, dating back to playing it on the SEGA Genesis back in 1990, I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs throughout the years. As recently as a few years ago, the series was struggling through a bit of a rough stretch. The last couple of years however, have been really good and Madden NFL 25 showed the series was trending in the right direction. Part of me wonders if there’s been some benefit from the return of the College Football series the last two years.
Probably the biggest push I’ve seen in both the College and Madden football games can be summarized in one word: authenticity. Player models, ball physics and stadiums look better than ever. With three different commentator teams that can show up to provide color for the games themselves, halftime stats and weekly highlights, the series has never been closer having a gameday broadcast feel. I’ve always enjoyed the halftime shows and weekly recaps that earlier NFL 2K and Madden games had in years past, and when they fail to appear in the modern games now, their omission feels glaring to me.
One quick quality of life item to mention that Madden has and College Football is lacking however: the ability to skip these things if you want to. College Football 26 doesn’t allow you to skip the intro and halftime shows, while Madden does. In fact, the color commentator can be a bit cheeky about it, remarking something akin to, “Never mind with the halftime show, we’re getting right back into the action.”
The on-field gameplay continues to evolve for the better. When you have twenty-two players crashing around the field with one another, there’s bound to be a few oddball animations that take place. That being said, the majority of the time those player interactions feel pretty good. I particularly enjoy how linemen can steer one another when they lock up together. It doesn’t happen every time, but it feels better than years past when they engage and seem to be relatively rooted in place. The football physics are better than ever as well. This is most evident when it is bouncing around. Long gone are the days the ball just sort of rides on a line to the receiver or defensive players’ hands, where it just sort of Velcros into place. The ball can wobble especially if the quarterback is hit on release or there’s gnarly weather, which also got a nice visual upgrade with improved rain and snow effects. It can go end-over-end, it can be kicked around on a fumble – all events that make the game feel more real.
Speaking of overall presentation - this soundtrack is fantastic. The song selections can often be hit or miss but other than a couple of oddball titles that don't really seem to fit the football vibe? Someone at EA cooked with this year's selection - especially a handful of the rock songs this year.
There’s a trio of primary modes outside of the ‘quick’ or ‘head-to-head’ modes. The first and my least favorite is the Madden Ultimate Team (MUT). This is a combination of fantasy football and card collection. It feels a bit money-grubby personally, and the mode just isn’t all that interesting to me. A lot of the content gets hidden behind a pass paywall, and the game unfortunately shoves this mode down your throat as it is the default when you fire things up most of the time. I know it prints money for EA, and it has certainly improved over the last few years or so, but it feels very pay-to-win and just isn’t engaging for me personally.
There’s the career / create a player mode. I enjoy this, as it has some strong roleplay elements to it. You can create a character from scratch or import it from College Football 26 and plug them into one of five positions: quarterback, wide receiver, running back, cornerback, linebacker. You can make decisions that can influence coach approval, fan engagement and relationships with other players on your team, all while trying to put together a glorious Hall of Fame career.
There were a few awkward fumblings to be had here, though the mode itself is pretty enjoyable. For one, because this mode ties into the competitive online mode, your player name, city, etc are subject to EA’s profanity filter. Right off of the bat, one of my characters triggered it. Why? I have no idea since it was for the first name Nick. When I changed it to Nicholas I was able to advance, but there were numerous others complaining that names like Mike and Michael as well as some home cities were running afoul of this overly aggressive filter. Also, you can only have a single exported character from college football at a time, so I went into that game to export my QB, import him into Madden, then had to go back into college football to export my RB and overwrite my QB, so I could then import him into Madden. You can have up to one player at each of the five positions.
From there, it’s a pretty fun process going through the combine, interviewing with coaches and then landing with your new team. You can choose to land with the team of your choice or go through the draft and wait for a team to actually pick your character. I did one of each just to try both scenarios. I will say that there is probably room to expand on this process (team visits post-combine or pro day events) and I wish there were a few more positions available. Defensive linemen and tight ends would be fun, but what is here is engaging and provides a nice bit of connective tissue between College Football 26 and Madden NFL 26.
Lastly, we have the Franchise Mode, and this has long been the meat of the Madden experience for me. My buddies and I would create a new franchise mode every year when Madden released, and in between going to classes we would play our week’s game with our chosen teams and go through several seasons together. This can still be done, and the online implementation is pretty seamless for letting people come together and play. The foundation is largely the same – choose a team, create a coach, play your games, handle player development and offseason decisions such as the draft and free agency.
All of this is pretty standard fare for a franchise mode, but there’s some additional depth this year, making this the best franchise mode Madden has had in years. Coaches have more traits and options – DNA if you will. Some coaches will air it out versus using a heavier rushing attack. My own team, the Detroit Lions, have a head coach in Dan Campbell who is notorious for going for it on fourth down, and that certainly happens with his teams more than most in the game. It’s subtle, but it does make teams start to feel unique from one another.
Between weeks, the coaches are more involved as well. There’s new playbook and trait items that you can activate that provide boosts to your team on gameday, and they add an extra element of progression to your coach development. I will say that some of the playbooks seem somewhat ‘broken’ when it comes to development. Most are completely logical in their goals. You might see one that says: Get two interceptions in a game twice to promote this playbook. That makes total sense. But there’s some that also say that you need to allow over 100 years in a game to promote the playbook. If you allow over 300 years in a game, you get penalized on your defensive playbook. That seems odd to me – like that first bit should read / be: don’t allow 100 yards in a game to promote this playbook. My take: it’s a cool new feature with some issues to iron out still.
Player motivations, improved drafting, more options for player development and more make this a very robust mode offering. Still, I am going to take a moment to get on my soap box about one of the things that disappointed me in College Football 26. EA is trying to pitch these two games together. A sort of football ecosystem that go hand-in-hand together, but the premise feels half-baked. While the create-a-player mode does a fine job of bridging the two football titles, the lack of connectivity between College Football’s Dynasty mode and Madden’s Franchise mode is a major missed opportunity.
A bit of context: back before College Football as a series stopped being made, the rosters were put together with faux player names, and these players could graduate from the college game and be drafted into Madden. My buddies and I would play several seasons of college, save our draft classes, then when Madden would come out, use those draft classes to feed our pro teams. It was a lot of fun and kept the collegiate game relevant to us even after Madden came out. There’s also some potential there to maybe have your coach graduate from the college ranks and join the pro ones that has never really been done previously.
Now however, this is not an option. I have my suspicions as to why. Some of it could be the structure of College Football, where they more or less simulate a draft and tell you where in the draft your players went, and use that towards improving your college coach. The primary reason though, I suspect, is because of what it costs College Football to have real-life likenesses of athletes and coaches in the game. I don’t know the contractual logistics, but my guess is EA would have to pay more to have these real-life college athletes show up in both titles, but I share a pretty strong sentiment I have seen posted online by others that basically says: randomize our rosters. We’d rather have made-up players graduate into Madden than real players who simply play for a couple of years and ‘vanish’ out of the game due to graduation.
Franchise mode has received some excellent improvements, but if EA is truly looking to build a symbiotic ecosystem between these two games, there’s more work to be done. If they can sort out the particulars though, I think the two games only stand to benefit. Another thing I wouldn’t mind seeing come back is a feature of older football games (I think it was college) where you could save specific images and videos to sort of ‘show off’ in your own personal hub. Given the way Madden seems to be leaning into the improved broadcast feel of things and also community competitive play, this could be a fun way for people in leagues together to show off some of their favorite moments. I’d have a picture of Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Lions doing his headstand celebration for sure.
Last year I enjoyed College Football 25 more than Madden NFL 25, while playing both heavily and still having fun with both. I think that this year’s release of Madden NFL 26 closes that gap, as I have been enjoying both equally. The authenticity of gameday football bleeds through in both titles. Franchise mode is my favorite mode in Madden, and the new features found in Madden NFL 26 make Franchise more entertaining than ever. NFL fans are going to want to give this year’s version of Madden a go while we anxiously await the start of a new season.
Score: 8 / 10
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