Madden 22's new features aren't really 'new' and they're extremely underwhelming

The new Madden cover dropped today and it will be Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes gracing it this year. That comes as a shock to absolutely no one after EA teased the reveal with a photo of two goats. Also not a shock: The underwhelming new features that were revealed along with the cover on Thursday.

Now, it is early in the process and maybe EA has more in store for customers, but it sounds like Madden 22 will be a lot like past versions of the game save for some cosmetic upgrades that have been recycled from the last truly great football video game the company produced, NCAA Football 14.

The big back-of-the-box feature coming to the game this year is an enhanced gameday experience meant to create a real home-field advantage in the game. Game Informer has more details on what to expect:

“Crowd noise can make it tough for opposing quarterbacks to hear the playcall, and new characteristics for each stadium grant special bonuses to the home team and apply various gameplay modifiers based on the location. For example, in the thin air of Denver, throws and kicks will fly further for both teams, while the visiting team will struggle to catch their breath, taking a hit to short-term stamina. Other examples include the Windy City of Chicago making it tougher for kicks to fly straight, Vikings players getting a red zone boost as the “Skol” chant rings through the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. And the notorious 12th Man of Seattle rattles visiting players, making it so their pre-snap play art is squiggly.”

These new gameplay modifiers — they got wind y’all! — aren’t really all that new and some of the ones that are new to the Madden series, like Seattle’s crowd making pre-snap art “squiggly” is a thing we got in college football games three generations ago.

Game Informer’s Brian Shea brought that up to Madden produce Clint Oldenburg and he didn’t really push back against the notion that EA is recycling old features…

“Gameday Momentum, it really has its origins in what we had in NCAA for sure, but it’s modernized and one of the key pieces of feedback we got way back when we made an NCAA game was it was a little too ambiguous and there wasn’t a lot of different objectives to know when you unlocked certain things … So that’s what we really attacked with Gameday Momentum, is giving you the proper feedback to know exactly what you need to do and what you’re going to unlock and when you’re going to unlock it. It’s a modernized version of that blast from the past, if I may put it that way.”

I’m not saying these features aren’t a good addition to the game. But the fact that they are headlining the big announcement is more than concerning for those of us who just want to play an accurate simulation of professional football.

One thing that will excite those of us looking for a more true-to-life experience is the announcement of an upgraded franchise mode. But the details that we got Thursday sound like more rehashed ideas that won’t actually improve the experience. For instance, EA finally put assistant coaches back in the game.

Via Game Informer:

“The new Franchise Staff feature lets you build, grow, and customize four coaching staff positions using RPG-style skill trees. Using experience earned through play, you can develop your head coach, player personnel, offensive coordinator, and defensive coordinator with more than 60 different talents.”

If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably played NCAA 14, which had the same feature nearly a decade ago…

A screenshot from NCAA Football 14

EA says that teams’ strategies will mimic what we see in real life but it wasn’t made clear if assistant coaches will have any effect on that. Apparently, if you play against the Ravens, you’ll see a heavy dosage of run plays but it’s not clear if Greg Roman being replaced by a more pass-heavy offensive coordinator will change how Baltimore plays. Or if a change in the personnel department will affect how teams manage their rosters. Will trading with the Raiders feel similar to trading with the Patriots or will there be a stark difference?

I’m just going to assume staff changes won’t have much of an effect on those things because that would be a pretty cool feature worth advertising and we heard nothing about it.

There wasn’t really a whole lot revealed about any gameplay improvements, which is another red flag. The novelty of these more cosmetic features will wear off after a couple of games and won’t be able to mask a poor on-field product.

Admittedly, I’ve been pretty harsh in this blog but I will say that I had a lot of fun with the PS5 version of Madden 21. In terms of gameplay experience, it was the best version of the game I’ve ever played — even if wasn’t a massive leap forward. I was hoping it was a jumping-off point and another year of development on the next-gen consoles would only improve the gameplay — especially the more strategic aspects of it — but the lack of info on that front erased most of my optimism.

It is very possible that I’m being a reactionary idiot and there will be significant gameplay and franchise mode updates that will be revealed later in the promotional cycle. In fact, I would be ecstatic if that were the case and I typed up all this up for no good reason. I just want a good football game, man.