Madden NFL 27

Is Madden NFL 27 a game changer or a frustrating mess? Bugs hamper a potentially great experience. It is still fun, but lacks polish.

While Madden NFL 27 impresses with presentation and fun career modes, its lack of core innovation keep it just short of greatness.

Madden NFL is back for another year, and while there are some notable improvements this time around, the same old problems still linger.

Madden NFL 27 continues the series' recent uptick, but there are still some notable issues on the field.

Madden NFL 27 adds a lot of new features this year, but long load times and frequent bugs dampen the love of the game.

One step forward, one step back; that's the Madden NFL 27 way. There's clearly a lot of work that went into this year's version of Madden, especially compared to how lazy Madden NFL 26 felt. For the most part, it works out quite well, and I appreciate a lot of the new features. Unfortunately, they often fall short of what I'd expect. I don't know what it says about the current state of the franchise that I'm impressed with a game that's, ultimately, average at best. Maybe I'm just an NFL psycho who lives for seven hours of commercial-free football every day. Maybe that's why I'll keep playing ...