Every year EA faces the challenge of improving on a formula fans love while finding new ways for them to enjoy it. Not all years are successful in this endeavor, but Madden NFL 22 takes solid steps in the right direction throughout almost every mode. It doesn't completely remake the wheel, but the marginal improvements make for an enjoyable game and promising potential for things to come.
There are no new modes introduced in this year's iteration, like The Yard was in Madden 21, and instead, the focus is on making each mode offer more depth. The biggest changes are the developments EA announced for Franchise, but each mode has been refreshed and expanded over their previous iterations. The noticeable low point continues to be Face of the Franchise, and the new Dynamic Gameday features only being on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S will make for two very different experiences, unfortunately. Aside from these two negatives, however, the rest of Madden 22 is largely a welcome step in the right direction.
It's worth noting that some aspects of Madden 22 are impossible to gauge at launch. The new Next Gen Stats AI integration is already an improvement on last year's game, but the full effect of this feature won't be known until the real NFL season progresses and the system updates to reflect real-world player tendencies, so a retrospective after the real-life season has gotten underway may be useful for fans eager to test out this feature's implementation. Even without that, the game is already an enjoyable improvement both of on-field play experiences and the added depth to the various modes.
Madden 22 Franchise Improvements Are The Highlight
From the moment EA first previewed Madden 22, the biggest focus was bringing a better experience to one of the most popular modes, Franchise. The lack of new scouting features at launch is a major setback, as the week-to-week features within Franchise are essential, but scouting new players to draft each season is the lifeblood of continuing a long franchise. EA has stated that it aims to have the new scouting system live sometime in September, but scouting/drafting remains the low point of Franchise until then.
Fortunately, the other improvements drastically help the Franchise experience as a whole. The new coaching system, which features a head coach and offensive and defensive coordinators, is more intuitive. The ability to make coaching changes throughout the season is a big improvement; if a Giants fan is mad at Joe Judge, they can load up Franchise mode and fire him on day one or mid-season. The new coaching skill trees and gameday planning are noticeable improvements also, with coaching experience customization available to fit a specific playstyle - an improvement Madden has long needed, and one that pairs very well with the weekly strategy and goals system.
No longer do players simply pick if they want to run Cover 3 instead of Cover 2 like in Madden 21, and instead, they can strategize how they want to approach each game. They can then pick goals for each coach that fit the strategy, such as focusing on an inside run strategy and setting an offensive coordinator goal of rushing for 150+ yards. If a player was focusing on deep passing and jumps out to an early lead, they can swap to an inside run focus for clock management in the second half, or if they planned to defend against short routes but keep getting burned deep, they can adjust their strategy to take away the long ball. It's still not an intricate system, but it's a welcome improvement.
Madden 22 Dynamic Gameday Enhancements
The biggest on-field changes in Madden 22 are exclusive to current-gen consoles. Even PC players are left out surprisingly, which is a real disappointment considering they're some of the better changes in recent years. The most essential is the Next Gen Star Driven AI system which pulls from the NFL Next Gen Stats database to make in-game players function more like their real-world selves. It sounds subtle at first, but not having to defend against Josh Allen throwing flats and curls twenty passes in a row does a lot to improve the down-to-down experience. This system was first introduced with Madden 21 to some mild enhancements, but Madden 22 is set to utilize it even more heavily as it updates throughout the real NFL season.
The other most impactful change is the Dynamic Gameday features, which give each stadium a moderately more realistic feel. The crowds and stadiums still aren't incredibly varied, but simple, immersive effects like the Lambo Leap and the Bucs firing the cannons are a step in the right direction. The stadium Momentum Factors in Madden 22 give every game, regardless of the mode, a better feel. Not all stadiums are equal, though, as having the 12s in Seattle make passing routes hard to read is far more challenging than punts across midfield in Dallas getting deflected by the jumbotron.
Where these new stadium effects shine the best, though, is intense Head-to-Head matchups where both players are battling in the momentum tug-of-war to control the stadium. No matter how tough a home-field advantage can be, every crowd can be silenced if the visiting squad starts pouring it on. This simple aspect of real-life sports adds a ton of fun to the head-to-head experience and is hopefully only the start of more realism to come.
Madden 22: More Subtle Changes and Shortcomings
While Franchise and Dynamic Gameday are the biggest changes for Madden 22, they aren't the only ones. Ultimate Team is back in a big way with even more challenges and exclusive players cards. The adjustments, in general, are as mild as they were with Madden 21, with the only major functional changes being new stat integrations and the new Strategy Cards. This system will allow players to pick two offensive and two defensive Strategy Cards to apply to their team, which will boost three specific stats for players. The right Strategy Cards could see several team members go up a point in their overall rating, which can mean a lot in competitive scenarios.
MUT games in Madden 22 on current-gen systems will also feature unique variations of the new Dynamic Gameday along with other modes like The Yard, which is also being expanded with new fields and challenges. The quasi-homage to NFL Street saw a major breakout in Madden 21 with its first appearance and returns for Madden 22. It's even featured in the Road to the Draft storyline within Face of the Franchise, which is once again a low point of the game. While certainly an improvement over the laughable story in Madden 21 and featuring some better tutorial elements for new players (along with the addition of the LB position as an option), the overall experience is still considerably duller and inferior to other modes within Madden.
At time of writing, certain glitches were occurring in-game, such as people in the crowd not rendering correctly or certain fields in The Yard causing cleats to look like stretch rubber bands, but none of them were game-breaking. The biggest frustrations are arguably still the dull commentary system that sometimes doesn't even reflect what's happening on-field and is incredibly repetitive. The new visual and gameday presentations are improvements, but it still feels underwhelming compared to Madden games of old or 2K, unfortunately.
As a whole, Madden 22 takes several solid steps in the right direction with very few stumbles backward. The straddling of console generations and lack of certain updates at launch make the game feel like it's only halfway to its full potential, but it still makes for an enjoyable entry for new players and current fans.
Madden NFL 22 releases today, August 20, 2021, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Google Stadia. Screen Rant was provided with a PS5 code for the purpose of this review.