Madden NFL 22 has some good parts to it, mainly the usual suspects, but falls flat with Face of the Franchise. I know Face of the Franchise is a key part of Madden’s success and what fans look forward to as a main piece of the Madden pie each year, but honestly, it has so many glitches in it that at times it is unplayable. Could these be fixed, and this year’s title saved? Most definitely, but as it stands at launch, the game has issues that need rectifying.
The crowd is growing restless with this series, and it has every right to do so. The Madden series has been the ‘go to’ NFL game since EA acquired the sole rights from the National Football League back in 2004. Has it treated it well? It has now and then, even producing one of the best in the mid-2010s. As of recently, it has stumbled a bit in its development. Last year, many fans were upset with the series for not bringing something new to the table, rather settling on the same old formula that kept its blueprint afloat. This time around in Madden NFL 22, EA Tiburon has refined it all, tried to do something new with Face of the Franchise, and tried to improve modes introduced last year, especially its unique/weird mode called The Yard.
Did it work? Let’s talk.
What worked in the game
Franchise and Ultimate Team were probably the best parts about this year’s release. These are the old reliable modes that showcase not only fans’ obsession over their team’s success (Franchise) but also a fan’s ability to put together the ultimate team and make it win. These modes also showcase the intricate details that go into the innards of this series and what improvements are made to make it an accurate football simulation.
Starting with Franchise, it was nice to see the Cleveland Browns properly represented in this game. It was good to see how well the running/passing/defense balanced out at the end of the day. It was also impressive to see how much backend thought was put into the coaching process and how you, as the player, can change how a game is played. Choosing goals and also focusing on particular aspects of the offense and defense scheming was fun as hell, and a welcomed addition to the Franchise mode. It seemed like EA Tiburon hit its stride with the planning and coaching. Also impressive were the controls during this year’s Madden experience, which seemed on-point and simplified, as was the case in previous years. In short, it felt good playing in Franchise and how much control the game gave you over decision-making. It also felt good that I got to live out my fantasy of drubbing the Pittsburgh Steelers 105-0. True story. Outside of control, controls and fun gameplay, it was also wonderful to see some visual and atmosphere improvements that came along with this particular mode. The PlayStation 5 had a good time with some ray tracing on the helmets, great lighting schemes with stadiums, which looked spectacular, and some decent contact animation that showed off the love devs had for the Franchise mode and getting the experience within that mode right. If EA would cut the price of this game to $20 each year and only include Franchise and Ultimate Team, then I would have zero complaints because these are the two modes people come to play anyway. They’re done well every year, sans the year with the QB Cone.
Ultimate Team followed the same suit as Franchise. While I’m not too crazy about the time it takes to open a pack and place players either on my team or sell their card, it’s still rather addictive to build your own team and go through hoops to make them better. From challenges to entire seasons, there’s a lot to still love about Ultimate Team, though I realize that some folks have higher expectations of this mode than I do. The ability to play the mode with/against friends and to compete at a high level makes this mode so much fun. I once taught a football player at the University of Kentucky that enjoyed the hell out of this mode solely. He dropped so much money on it to be the best that it gave me a full perspective on what type of people adore this mode and why. It’s actually quite good, especially with its different types of gameplay.
These two modes are the strongest modes in the game and the ones that will certainly make you want to play it, or at least give you a good reason.
Something different was offered
The Yard is a strange game mode that was brought to Madden NFL 21. I give EA Tiburon a huge hug for going outside the boundaries last year with this mode and creating something that is incredibly unique, baffling, and at the same time oddly entertaining. If you didn’t play it last year, the game mode is essentially a 6-on-6 format that is akin to backyard football where you must do things like counting down before you can go after the QB. Included in that count down is that as a QB you have a certain amount of time to throw the ball before the play is ruled dead. The game is set to default at 6 points per successful drive with 1-3 points worth of conversions. There is no kicking whatsoever and you must make it 20 yards to get a first down in the game. It’s quick, intense, and…God help me…incredibly weird to play.
Is it fun? I think it’s fun, but only in short stints. This clearly wasn’t meant to be the main feature, as the style is a bit thin in terms of depth. It feels like a cool afterthought that Tiburon had but didn’t fully develop. It also feels like it’s made for someone who doesn’t want to commit a lot of time to playing a full NFL season, which is just fine when you want to get your football kicks.
EA Tiburon honestly did a good job with this mode, as it does change the perspective on what should be included in a Madden NFL game. It’s a neat idea, but I just feel like there is more to it they haven’t quite developed. If it were soup, it would need more salt to liven the taste, but not make it a new meal.
I’m sure Madden NFL 23 will have that salt sprinkled in The Yard.
What needs improvement
Gosh, Face of the Franchise is a disaster that started off great but blew up quickly. You’ll know this by its maiden name Career Mode. Face of the Franchise takes a college player through the ropes of being drafted by the NFL. One of the coolest features in it is that you get to play out a college game with a real college team (Florida for the win). You get to make some goofy decisions through dialogue and go through the awkward NFL questioning process to determine who is going to draft you. Beyond this, I don’t know how well the rest of the mode goes. Why don’t I know? Because I spent nearly two hours playing it, saved it, had it lock up on me, and now my save mode is perpetually in ‘crash your system’ state. This is after the day one update. Out of pure principle, I cannot go back and restart that mode. Why you ask? If I had bought this game instead of reviewing it, I would be out $60 with a broken game, which isn’t at all right. This mode was entertaining, but the brokenness of my experience just absolutely leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth about the state of this series and why this game would be released as is instead of rid of game-breaking glitches.
Don’t get me wrong whatsoever, I have enjoyed this series over the years, but this year just seems particularly broken. The above glitch is the icing on the cake, but my Madden NFL 22 experience has been riddled with glitches that have caused my game to quit, weird things to happen like text laying over other text (still doing it here and there), and bugs that have crashed my game completely.
I don’t think I have ever experienced this type of imperfection in a Madden NFL release. I know EA Tiburon cares about its product. I know they put a lot of love and effort into this game. You don’t work on something year-in and year-out without loving what you do. This year’s Madden NFL just needed a couple of more months in the developer oven to finish baking. An October release in a pandemic year wouldn’t have caught anyone off guard except accountants.
Anyway, the game is glitchy. It works well in Franchise mode but struggles heavily in Face of the Franchise, a mode that was premium for this release. One day when I feel up to restarting my FotF mode, I’ll give it another shot, but as it is right now after launch and after an update, it’s quite unstable. I was enjoying it until it stopped working.
Bright side
If you can endure the glitches that come and go, and sometimes stay, then you might appreciate what the current generation delivery has to offer. EA Tiburon did a good job of implementing the adaptive triggers and brutal haptic feedback attributes for the PS5 experience during gameplay. They also put the speaker in the controller to good use, which is more than commendable. It amplifies the atmosphere of stadiums (which look gorgeous), while also emphasizing the brutal hits you can make on other players. Kudos to them for enhancing the experience when the tools were offered to do so.
As for the crowd and on-field graphics, they are a mixed bag. Again, the crowd’s atmosphere is so good, but the crowd models, while plentiful and visually cool to see a stadium filled, are very last generation. The models are awkwardly put together with weird body modeling going on with most of the fans. I usually don’t gripe about such things, but the graphics had a year to be built and they should have looked current generation. I have seen football fans in stadiums and their bodies don’t move or look like what is in Madden NFL 22.
The on-field player models are quite good, though. The players look great and closer to their real-life counterparts. The field, stadium, lighting, and ray tracing are amazingly done as well. The contact animation is good for the most part, with all-new animations for impact and for completing plays shining through, though occasionally there is some bad graphical cutting/clipping. The overall package delivered here is good, but that crowd animation needs some help.
Including the two announcers, who did a bang-up job of putting some fun emotion into this game, with only occasional mistakes, the presentation package is solid.
Conclusion
Madden NFL 22 has some good parts to it, mainly the usual suspects, but falls flat with Face of the Franchise. I know Face of the Franchise is a key part of Madden’s success and what fans look forward to as a main piece of the Madden pie each year, but honestly, it has so many glitches in it that at times it is unplayable. Could these be fixed, and this year’s title saved? Most definitely, but as it stands at launch, the game has issues that need rectifying.
