It’s that time of year again, every sports game is releasing their latest installment that promises to evolve and innovate on last year’s experience. With tickets available for a not very reasonable price to see the Vikings play in London, I figured why not just jump into Madden NFL 26 instead and enjoy the experience from home. That’s certainly what the idea was with this year’s game, I just can’t promise that everything went to plan right from the get go.

So let’s start with the very first experience, you turn the game on and see Philadelphia Eagles star Saquon Barkley flying through the air. Right, positive start, there’s our cover star. Then you’re asked your favourite team, I scroll through all the options, find the Vikings, and then the experience truly starts. I’ve always known these games are bad for microtransactions, but within 60 seconds of Madden NFL 26 on, I’m being encouraged to buy a battle pass. Not even just “any” battle pass, it only applies to the specific team you pick AND it’s the only one you can choose for that season. Oh, I don’t mean like “the 25-26 football season,” no, this is split up into individual seasons, to really make sure you keep getting battle passes.

The one time you’re semi-safe from microtransactions is in the create a player mode.

Listen, I understand it’s all cosmetic, you don’t need to buy the battle pass for pretty much any game, that’s the point. Being immediately sold something on a £70/$70 game is intense though. That leads onto problem number two though, the packs. See, immediately after trying to convince you to buy the battle pass, you’re funnelled straight into Ultimate Team, where you need to open packs and collect players to build your team to play online.

To say this mode is pay to win is a massive understatement, because even if you can build yourself a good team, there are spotlight players and special cards to pull that will outplay even the best “regular” player. How do we get packs then? Well there are challenges you can do, that will give you a handful, you can buy them of course, or you can get some in the battle pass. Everything leads back to money in this game, but with the fact that a fortune must be being raked in from all these transactions, then this must be the best version of Madden NFL to ever release right?

Well, no. Obviously. Immediately after starting, the issues were glaringly obvious. One of the funniest ones to me was the fact that in the “create a player” mode, you get to choose a position to play specifically, which means if you have a route to run you get points for doing things correctly. The game will even show you where your route to run is, or at least it’ll try to. Majority of the time when you play away, your route turns into a mess of squiggles, which turns out if a home field advantage bonus. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the game explained somewhere that this was a thing that happened? Then, when you don’t run your route the way the game tells you, suddenly you’re a bad player and you lose rating, which means you’re less likely to play. Basically, if you want to use this very strange feature in the game, explain what it is instead of just making players assume.

Just run your route idiot, it’s easy!

Weird visuals aside, there’s definitely a lot of animation issues, and gameplay issues like players deciding for absolutely no reason to just run out of play. It feels like you’re constantly playing on hard mode, but not because the opponents are hard, instead it’s because your team is constantly trying to sabotage you. All of this to the backdrop of a pretty mediocre soundtrack.

What happened to the days of being able to turn songs on and off from the soundtrack? I know there are licenses paid and all that, but as someone not into the majority of rap, just let me listen to the handful of rock and metal songs that are on offer. With that as well, why are we primarily listening to old songs? Limp Bizkit, Megadeth, Wolfmother, Flo Rida, and so many more have much more recent songs than what’s available, why not showcase new songs and new talent? I promise no one is buying this game at $70 because you have “Rollin’” by Limp Bizkit in it.

The microtransactions are so aggressive even knees need to be bought from packs, it seems.

So what’s the takeaway from this? While the actual players look good, there’s a lot of visual issues. The music choices are eclectic, but primarily not up my alley and I have no control over that. There’s a very predatory approach to microtransactions and being able to be even a little competitive in ultimate team. Overall, with the $70 price tag and the amount of extra money that seems expected of you to spend to be able to really enjoy the game against other players, it would be cheaper for you to get a season ticket and just go to the games yourself.

Madden NFL 26 is available now on Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X

Reviewed on Xbox Series X

A copy of Madden NFL 26 was provided by the publisher.