OS Weekly Wrap Up, Getting You Caught Up on Sports Gaming News (Jan 24 - Jan 30, 2021)

If you watched our Madden 21 next-gen stadiums tour, now we have one for FIFA 21 on next-gen consoles. Prince takes us through many of the grounds that were touched up and renovated on the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

This is not a new problem for the NBA 2K series, but it’s highlighted across multiple platforms now this year with NBA 2K21. The NBA 2K21 stamina issue quite frankly sucks for sim-style players. Running five-man units is perfectly viable still online, and the stamina issue goes beyond just the online modes. The “Gatorade” icon is more an aesthetic than a warning of danger ahead. Brian takes us through the issue and ways he would remedy it right now.

The Madden Curse is legendary, but it has not hit as hard the last two seasons. Lamar Jackson maybe didn’t get to the Super Bowl this year, but it was hardly a terrible campaign. Last year, Patrick Mahomes won the Super Bowl while on the cover, and look there, he’s back in the Super Bowl again this season. Still, there was a run there where the evilness of the Madden Curse was undeniable. We even took it upon ourselves in the past to go through an alternate timeline of Madden covers to see how things could have gone with different athletes on the cover. But the question is, who dealt with the worst Madden Curse ever?

The reveal of the character creator in eSports Boxing Club popped up a couple days ago, and now Prince is here with first impressions of the eSports Boxing Club create-a-boxer feature.

Kudos to EA for getting the season opening NHL 21 roster update out fairly quickly this year. The season opening roster update added players who weren’t previously in the NHL, including Kirill Kaprizov, Alexander Romanov, and Ilya Sorokin. Furthermore, rookies such as K’Andre Miller and Tim Stüetzle have been added to their NHL clubs. Additionally, players who were playing college hockey in the NCAA, such as Ian Mitchell of the Chicago Blackhawks, have been added as well. Having said that, these roster updates are far from perfect and they still feature a number of glaring mistakes in them. These are mistakes that could be remedied by a roster share feature or a more elegant way to combine created rosters with the official EA updates, but alas.

In part two, I tackle the Scotia North and MassMutual East divisions. Here is part one, where I discuss the theme of this deep dive and the way I’m looking at it overall.

So as of today, Madden NFL 21 is free for everyone on every platform until January 31. If you go to the digital store of your platform of choice, Madden should be there for download. This includes current-gen consoles, next-gen consoles, PC, and now even Google Stadia — which means you can also now play Madden on your phone. Now, we have not played the Google Stadia version as of yet, but we assume that version will be the current-gen/PC version. With that being said, we thought we would make a Madden 21 guide of sorts that fills you in on how to maximize your time during this free preview.

There has been a resurgence of motorcycle racing games lately, and that resurgence is mostly due to the Italian-based developer, Milestone. One of its tentpole titles is Monster Energy Supercross, and the fourth iteration of that game is set to drop on March 11 for both PC and console. The folks at Milestone were kind enough to send me a preview copy of the newest version of the game, Monster Energy Supercross 4, and this allowed me to spend some time with the game. MESX 4 is still in development, but it’s almost finished and is at a stage that can still showcase many of the new enhancements and improvements.