Madden 27 Beta Gameplay Review/Thoughts
Disclaimer : Played strictly MUT in order to have even speed across essentially every position, there were no abilities.
- Zone Coverage is still excruciatingly bad. The marketing used was “Smart Zones” and “Looking for work”, my zones are still unemployed.
- If Madden 27 is going to be a “Defensive Game” like everyone says it is, it will be because of blitzing. O Line was really struggling to pick up certain blitzes, blocking 6 is going to be relevant again.
- Cross Man being back is amazing, paired with good blitzing being able to take away initial snap throws has a lot of potential.
- The only pure zone coverage improvement I saw was zones generally have more sense of urgency getting to their spot, felt this big time with curl flats from OLBs on the LOS.
- Match and MCV felt better because of the new jostle mechanic, small pass lead is still a thing.
- Every WR was prime Larry Fitzgerald, if the ball hit just 1 hand, caught. I’ve never seen a game with less KOs and more aggressive catches then the Madden 27 beta, this all being with catch timing turned off
- Defense actually was catching INTs………the problem was getting the defender to actually animate for the interception. Whether my underneath defenders were playing volleyball/handball or my secondary being the most passive, non aggressive ballhawks, catching an INT in a situation where the QB put the ball up for grabs felt like a miracle.
- Speedboosting is still a thing, will be back in MUT around October/November. Playing a game without Speedboosting was really refreshing.
- QB throw power has been heavily heavily nerfed. DO NOT CHANGE THIS DO NOT CHANGE THIS DO NOT CHANGE THIS. Fix the routes stopping early, QB underthrow & lowball glitch but do not touch the throw power, that is the only chance the defense has.
- Stamina had to have been bugged for the defense, my entire defense would be red if my opponent no huddled for a few plays
- Shading and or zone drops would not cancel match and more specifically, vert hooks. This was a problem in the beginning of M26 with vert hooks until the first major patch fixed this.
- When I did shade underneath and then stemmed a flat back 20/25 yards, sometimes they would still play as a stock underneath hard flat.
- Route committing is still broken, convinced it makes your MCV worse when you predict the correct commit.
- RPOs are slightly nerfed, not because the coverage doesn’t get dumbed out, but because QBs hand the ball off faster forcing you to make a quicker decision
- Highballs x 1 handed catches are still OP
- Tackling felt good
- QB spinning and juking behind the LOS is still a thing
- Downfield WR blocking is way way too good, my DBs are grown ass men and not every WR is Mike Evans. The amount of times a WR had ahold of a DB for 5 seconds was alarming.
- Oh sheds were really bad in MUT with no abilities, heard they were crazy in regs
- Stemmed curls, still really really good
- Zigs, returns, outs, and in routes (all short routes) got NUKED and run extremely slow.
- Ran the ball 2 times all weekend and we got pancakes because the entire defense was red/tired so I can’t speak on the run game at all.
- Overall game speed felt more like Madden 25 than Madden 26 (Betas usually play a bit slower than the actual game).
- Switch Stick combined with my defenders feeling like they were stuck in mud was really really bad. Everytime you switch to a player they almost take a false step and then it takes them a second or two to get to a reasonable speed. Even using an 89 speed Isaiah Simmons at safety felt extremely slow (Compared to my DBs with 85/86 speed).