Madden NFL 26 Review – Feels Like the Playoffs

College Football 26 seemed poised to gain my greater favor among the two football siblings. I prefer the marching band soundtrack, find the pageantry to be more lively, and the sheer amount of teams and stadiums just appeal to me more. But alas, even after some initial pain points with the load times and menus, I’ve been thoroughly surprised. Madden 26 adds just the right amount of primetime pizazz to its gameday presentation and enough iteration to make it stand out from College Football 26, which is impressive considering my initial bias. But as usual, familiar lingering woes plague this year’s Madden. Let’s dig in and explore.

My first moments with the new Madden weren’t exactly ideal. After the 60 gigs of data were finished installing, I booted up the game and went through an unnecessary Ultimate Team Pass tutorial, something some will never use or fiddle with. My favorite team and difficulty sliders from Madden 25 carried over, so there was little to fiddle with in the settings, which I appreciate. But for new players, there’s a hefty range of sliders to tailor the experience to any skill level imaginable. Everything from the type of playbooks, evenly matched teams, four different passing types, and much more are adjustable.

As I finished setting the music playlist to my football experience, I found myself watching the menu movie, which showcases real footage of last season’s star players. To my dismay, this menu movie cannot be customized whatsoever, nor can it be turned off for a less distracting visual banner. I thought I was being a tad nitpicky when all of a sudden my game hard crashed. Okay, let’s try that again and hope my PS5 data isn’t corrupted.

"The menu movie cannot be customized whatsoever, nor can it be turned off for a less distracting visual banner."

I wanted to actually play the game, so decided to just do some offensive practice after loading it up again. Lo and behold, upon returning to the menu, I’m greeted with another dreaded hard crash. These were the only two crashes I’ve had throughout my time and they both occurred early on while watching the menu movie; weird. Anyway, why the fine folks at EA decided to torment Giants fans with the barrage of Eagles footage playing on loop is beyond me. You’re practically forced to select your favorite team in the game, so why not grace the menus with that team’s visuals instead of a stock movie on loop? Worse yet, some sub-menus are opaque to the point where you can see the movie playing through it, leading to visual confusion.

Anyway, on to the first game mode I checked out: Dynasty. Lots of bells and whistles got added to this year’s coach-centric Dynasty mode. But my main issues from last year remain mostly the same, albeit in different guises. Chief among the Dynasty disappointments are the clunky user interface and menuing. At the core of Dynasty is the vast level of control offered to players shaping their team. This micromanagement involves a LOT of menuing, which leads to laborious load times.

I’ll describe one egregious case example. You’re taken through not one, not two, but three separate loading screens when upgrading players with skill points, four if you count the load into the Player Upgrade menu itself. There is a helpful option to upgrade all players at once, but that takes control away from the player, automating the process. Manually allocating skill points shouldn’t take me through three loading screens per player. It’s simply inexcusable in a 2025 video game. Thankfully, browsing rosters doesn’t feel as sluggish as before, but man, upgrading players and coaches is downright awful.

Position battles are an admittedly smaller disappointment. I had a 2nd string HalfBack request he be the starter. Fair enough, just prove you’ve got what it takes through the three pre-season and you’ve got your spot. Well, he was doing great except for his single-game injury during the pre-season finale. He was automatically cut from starting position consideration due to this brief injury. As the head coach, I can still make him starter through the depth chart. But then what’s the point of position battles in Franchise? It’s even worse in Superstar mode where you are the player in question fighting for starting position. A bit of an oversight to not take single-game injuries into consideration of position battles.

Load time and position battle woes aside, the overhauled coach abilities and playsheets RPG-ify Franchise to a satisfying degree. Each ability has multiple tiers that get unlocked as you complete goals relating to the ability. You can really min/max your team through these abilities. For example, stacking up your highest tiered defensive abilities and playsheets will greatly raise your chances of turnovers and 3rd down stoppages. It’s fun to switch up abilities based on the team you’re playing against as it adds a good amount of strategy, making the player feel more in-control of weekly battles than ever.

"It’s fun to switch up abilities based on the team you’re playing against"

Madden 26 starts putting a smile on my face once I’m out on the field playing regular season games. You can tell there’s been substantial effort to bring the extravagant broadcast presentation to life this year. Teams now have their own pre-game rituals. In the case of my Patriots, I didn’t particularly love seeing Gronk out there striking the bell every single home game (interesting retirement gig), but the added pageantry and addition of mascots is noteworthy. Some teams even have little chants that play as you exit the matchup menu into the game. What’s more, Thursday and Sundays feature different presentations and commentators to match their real life broadcast counterparts.

The improved halftime show feels more substantial too, with updated scores and clips from games played that day. And I’m particularly thankful for the weekly recap show, which kind of fulfills the same purpose albeit in a more thorough manner. These weekly recaps keep me from looking at the sterile league standings and match menus every week.

We’ll get to the on-field gameplay soon, but it’s worth visiting Superstar mode briefly. The big difference from last year’s iteration is the new chapter structure. You’re still doing the same things, like getting drafted, fighting for starting position, and trying to get into the playoffs, but now it’s all guided through chapter objectives. Many early objectives require you to accumulate influence with a range of staff, fans, and even doctors. This is done through the Sphere of Influence map, which indicates how much experience points are needed to increase your influence level with staff. This is all much better telegraphed than last year’s more basic chemistry system.

"The big difference from last year’s iteration is the new chapter structure."

While not termed ‘storylines’ this time around, off-the-field player moments are largely the same as last year, but better presented. Scenes talking with your agent or coordinator look more natural and feature a greater number of backgrounds, though they still lack voice acting. While these changes are small, they are welcome and help make Superstar mode more appealing.

It was through my opening season as a receiving halfback where I first felt the subtle improvements in gameplay over last year. Everything just feels more well put together. Running feels intuitive and those sudden flatline tackles out of nowhere don’t’ happen as much, meaning the hit and hurt boxes have been improved. There’s clearly more complex animations and physics models going on here under the hood, but without being a total transformation. Like I said, it’s a subtle improvement. I also noticed that receivers don’t quite drop the pass as often when morale is low or they’re rattled, though it still happens more often than is reasonable. It’s noticeable how varied and organic EA managed to make touchdown dives, arm arcs when throwing, and of course tackles. There’s been some wild spin dives and flip hurdles that I’ve never seen in a football game before.

Finally, there’s Ultimate Team, EA’s ongoing live service model. Menus are still a slog to get through in this mode, with every sub-menu taking a three to five second load to initiate. This is largely the same Ultimate Team mode players have been used to for some time now with little in the way of innovation or additions.

"It’s noticeable how varied and organic EA managed to make touchdown dives, arm arcs when throwing, and of course tackles."

All in all, Madden NFL 26 is a competent football sim that can be tailored to any kind of experience you want, whether that be coaching a franchise, competing online in leagues, or just enjoying short exhibition games here and there. There’s not a vast number of improvements and overhauls, which follows the trend of sports games iterating rather than innovating. But the added presentation gloss, smoothed out gameplay animations, and wealth of options make this a worthy successor to last year’s game.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.