Madden NFL 22

While some elements of this year's' game have received attention that make them very engaging, stale elements and a ton of technical issues are serious penalties for this title. The most notable adjustment to Madden NFL 22 is the inclusion of the Momentum meter. It's always been said that one big play can affect the course of a game, sucking the energy out of a team and giving their opponents new life. The Momentum meter tracks those key sacks, those big runs, those massive first downs and acrobatic catches, and boosts your team accordingly. On top of that, while each squad has seemingly random effects it can trigger as momentum builds for their side, the home team also gets a bonus advantage that can use if things are going their way. It might seem like it's more arcade-focused than before, but you'll be surprised at just how much you care about keeping momentum on your side because it can completely demoralize your opponent. On top of this, the franchise mode, which felt like it's been ignored for a while, has finally gotten a solid boost in the form of skill trees for the staff of your team, so coaches can enhance their skills, thereby boosting the play of the athletes they interact with. This lets you tailor your team and coordinators to fit the kind of play style you want, as well as the kind of offensive or defensive focus you want your team to have. This carries over to the weekly offensive and defensive strategies that you can focus on, giving boosts to your team as you call plays that focus on things like gaining yards on the ground or focusing on denying first downs with smothering zone play. Even better, coaches may ask some players to take on tasks for the team, like mentoring rookies as they play each week, potentially enhancing their stats and strengthening squads. While franchise could go a lot farther in handling the day to day tasks for your organization, this is a good first step for where this mode is heading.

But while on the field play and Franchise has been tweaked, there's a lot of stale gameplay that is disappointing. Face of the Franchise not only feels like an afterthought, the plot and the scenarios feel stiff and uninteresting. Your player, along with his agent and brand manager don't really come across as having a personality or story that you care about, and it's a shallow way to highlight the elements that are handled in a stronger way in the franchise mode. Even worse, the fact that everything initially revolves around Nike, its campus, and your trainer happens to be one of their exercise pros makes this mode come across as more of an extended commercial for their products rather than a mode in its own right. Superstar KO and The Yard return as well, but much of this is tied to driving rep and cred to a skinned avatar, and while that lets you customize this character, it's somewhat meaningless when it comes to the field. But the largest issue has to be some of the technical problems. Whether it's players being stuck in an animation or weird visual glitches that surround referees and other characters during pre-game scenes, there are a number of technical issues that still plague this game. The worst problems were freezes and data loss for some game modes, such as playing Face of the Franchise or online Franchise modes. As a result, some of these glitches forced full restarts of these seasons. It's hard to get a full head of steam with your friends or with a squad, only to lose progress because the game crashes or still pops up some visual problems that have occurred for the past few years. These issues aren't enough to put Madden NFL 22 on the IR list, but it does hamper its run on the way to its digital Super Bowl.