“What makes America the greatest country on earth?” The New York Jets. Despite repeated assertions that I’m an American, I am not. Sure, I’ve consumed a few hot dogs, I’ve witnessed a baseball game, I have watched an Indy Car race, and once or twice I’ve seen a Super Bowl. I only enjoy one and a half of those things a majority of the time though. Baseball is very monotonous and incomparably long, and the NFL is a turn-based strategy with adverts smattered throughout.

I first got into the American take on “football” which is hardly played by footing a ball, about ten years ago. For some reason, I was drawn to the New York Jets. Ten years and games later, I’m reviewing Madden NFL 22. This is the latest version of EA’s sports license that is as successful as the New England Patriots (minus deflating balls). I wouldn’t call it a prominent export, not anything close to the comparable FIFA series, but over the decades the NFL has advanced its way to Europe. Are there still those rumors of an English team floating about?

Returning after such a long absence, you’d think there would be some rust. However, it is still the same turn-based RPG that is held up by complete nerds who think any of this still makes sense outside their own little bubble. I’m purposefully using that turn-based strategy simile for a reason. Drill down to the core of it, and that’s all you are playing, a Friday Night Lights take on turn-based strategy. Mind you, it is one that has been perfected over decades, from Bethesda’s ’88 release, John Madden Football, to right now. With each year, it may just be making small changes; different presentation, new tech, players switching teams, and slight changes to gameplay to tighten up the feeling.

It is hardly a criticism, I know, but there is something to be said about sports games when they release yearly. Fans drop in and out as if to have a chat with Sam Malone at the bar, getting confused when everyone shouts as George Wendt walks in to receive rapturous applause. As someone who dropped out for a while, there are segments that have passed over my head, of course. Though, as I’ve said, the foundation is still there with all you’d expect like Exhibitions and Franchise modes. That is alongside the more recent additions of Ultimate Team (loot box filled hell that it is) and variations such as Face of the Franchise and The Yard.

The Face of the Franchise is very much like the story-driven series that was run in FIFA back in 2018, where you play a young lad rising up through the ranks on his Journey. However, it is you; Not you, but a generic-looking amorphous blob of an American that is meant to be you, with your name and general tributes like playing games for 6-hours. I made that last bit up. You and your entourage, some bloke I wouldn’t mind putting a brick through and an agent that is both a young Black woman and no-nonsense, do a training camp at Nike. You are running through the early career up to the draft, and bish, bash, bosh, you are contracted to a team.

I think it is fair to say that it lacks the charm that came from the roughness surrounding Alex Hunter and his journey. It was not the best story by any means. In fact, it was painfully generic and bleary-eyed. Somehow Face of the Franchise is worse than that, lacking any character whatsoever. It’s not meant to be the most fabulous story, and I wouldn’t have expected it to be. However, I’d have liked something that was at least earnest and endearing. Ultimately, it functions as nothing more than a vehicle to get us to gameplay, with the oddly American-exclusive sentimentality of the tear-soaked idealism of a young man in college securing his future as a sports star.

Once again, the gameplay is there, and it functions as a decent tutorial on things I didn’t even know were there before. Specifically mechanics such as tapping, pressing and releasing, or holding each button to give your quarterback different throws. There are solid ideas from The Journey and functionally serve as a teaching tool of some more advanced mechanics. In practice, the gameplay is the only thing holding up, while the tracing paper-thin story flails about as 70,000 fans yell my name at a USC game. At least, that last bit was the implication of the story.

Meanwhile, The Yard is a 6-on-6 game that refreshes enough about the typical Madden experience, despite its exuberant colors being there to please children fed on ADHD medicine and energy drinks. It more or less feels like an up-to-date NFL-style version of FIFA Street, a pick-up game between teenagers that could happen anywhere. As I’ve said, it is refreshing enough, but doesn’t feel as prominent as it should be for how far it is pushed. It has nothing on Ultimate Team, or as I’ve previously called it in the FIFA realms, EA’s gambling mecca.

I’ll attach my hand to the ceiling and say it: I didn’t touch the Ultimate Team mode in FIFA and still haven’t. This was my first experience with the loot box-heavy world to which EA have made themselves famous for first-hand, and I never want to touch it. The entire experience felt reductive of what I was able to play elsewhere and it generally makes me feel dirty; I stopped myself at one point asking why I was even in this mode, and it was simply because I was here to review the game. The first couple of things you do are basic bog-standard things that would be baby’s first NFL experience. I’m pretty sure I could get a dog to do them.

What was so confounding was the need to put load times advertising loot boxes and other segments of this mode between each “challenge.” Said advertising was entirely wasted since every time I’d go into the store and press the button to check the prices of the currency you need to purchase to further purchase items such as loot boxes or cosmetics. Yes, it is that needlessly complicated to skirt around gambling laws. Every time I’d attempt to find out the prices, I’d get an error telling me the currency wasn’t available yet. So I tracked down the currency on the PlayStation Store, and for the first loot box that I saw, it would cost $4.99 (or £3.99).

To the chagrin of my editor, I’m not done. The most expensive purchase that you can execute of these Madden Points, these add-ons as they are called in the store, costs $99.99 (£79.99). To buy the game for PS4, it is $59.99 and for PS5 it is $69.99. I’m no mathematician, but when you could purchase the game again and still have $40 to buy… Hades, which is $24.99 leaving you enough to buy something on sale like DOOM Eternal (currently $14.99 on sale). I can’t fathom why anyone would buy these points. I should say, I couldn’t until I saw the animations and the process of opening the loot boxes. It is done with such ceremony that it is designed to feed on those receptors that trigger during gambling.

I was never going to like the loot box heavy mode. I’ve railed against them enough to make it surprising enough that I’m here with this review. As a whole, I can’t stand the Ultimate Team mode, created with such ugliness built-in from day one. It is an insidious hellscape I never want to touch again, feeding on the few who are stuck to the milking machine. I hate that mode, and I abhor the idea that there are those ignoring its ills.

Ultimately, with the exhibition and franchise-led portions of Madden NFL 22, I could see myself enjoying a game from time to time with the Jets (and maybe the sharks). Though not in the same way I’ve enjoyed Codemasters’ two previous Formula 1 game, presently amassing hundreds of hours since their releases in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Nevertheless, avoiding the rather predatory nature of some modes and the feeling surrounding them, there is a fun game in here. A turn-based strategy, which was played by Stargirl and some short-legged dogs that resemble a wrinkly Phil Mitchell.

A PS4 copy of Madden NFL 22: MVP Edition was provided by EA Sports for the purpose of this review.

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Madden NFL 22

$59.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Gameplay refined over decades.
• Just a comfy pair of turn-based strategy slippers.

Cons

• Face of the Franchise is painfully lacking character.
• Don't touch Ultimate Team with a 10-foot bargepole.
• Load times spread out like ads on US TV.