NHL 22 Review – Putting the Franchise on Ice (PS5)

Never have I been more excited to get things back to some semblance of normal. Now that the weird COVID-shortened seasons are behind us, NHL fans can look forward to their favorite teams dropping the puck in October as God intended. Despite the last two actual seasons being off the rails, EA Sports has yet to miss a beat with their NHL franchise. Can NHL 22 bridge the next-gen gap and justify that ten-dollar price increase, or does it just feel like more of the same?

Old Dog, New Tricks… Kinda

Anytime a sports franchise makes the jump to a new console, I start to get a little bit nervous. Eventually, EA Sports tends to stick the landing, but sometimes it takes them a couple of years to get fully up to speed. Fortunately for all of us, the development team still has one more trick up its sleeve: Frostbite Engine. Yes, the engine that powers a wide variety of Electronic Arts’ stable of titles has finally made its way to the NHL series.

If you are going into NHL 22, expecting a similar product to last season, your assumption could not be more spot on. In fact, it is so on the numbers that you’d be hard-pressed to find anything truly earthshattering this time around the horn. If you’ve had the chance to take the 2020 installment (NHL 21) out for a spin, you’re likely not going to find many differences, at least as far as the standard battery of modes is concerned. You’ll have the opportunity to partake in Be a Pro, Ultimate Team, World of CHEL, and the Franchise staples, but essentially nothing more.

While I’ve started this review bagging on the lack of innovation, to call it a barebones copy of last year isn’t necessarily fair to the development team, either. Completely switching an engine is a herculean task even under the best of circumstances. How they managed to do so without having to shave modes or features in the process is remarkable in its own right. The new-gen console transition was the perfect time to make the jump because it has traditionally acted as a reset in the past, at least as far as expectations are concerned. So why not take full advantage?

NHL 22 Review – Looking Good!

Thanks to the sheer amount of horsepower available on the PlayStation 5, not to mention a shiny new engine, the on-ice product has never looked better. That said, while it unequivocally is a visible improvement over the previous generation, it isn’t the kind of visual tectonic shift that we’ve grown accustomed to from new consoles. What’s even more remarkable is the fact that a majority of the action still “feels” the same, while still getting the very obvious presentation enhancements.

The one truly new mechanic for NHL 22 is the introduction of the X-Factor system. For those who haven’t already experienced X-Factor abilities from the last couple of installments of Madden, a select few players are blessed with a singular skill in which they are especially proficient. A small sampling of these perks includes the ability to deke without any penalty to speed, being able to set up shots more quickly and at higher accuracy, or boosts for defensive abilities when facing down the opposition 1-on-1.

Be A Pro, Franchise, and World of Chel modes have been recrafted around making use of these new and unique abilities. In the case of Be a Pro, the progression system has been refactored from the ground up. As you upgrade your player, these key skills will become available to unlock across the categories of skating, hockey IQ, defense, shooting, and passing. Unfortunately, this seems to be the full extent of changes to the mode, aside from occasional dialog additions specifically related to your equipped X-Factor. Otherwise, this plays damn-near identical to last year, which seems like a genuinely missed opportunity. And don’t even get me started Be a Pro’s piss-poor narrative structure. The less said about that, the better.

In the case of World of Chel, much like Be a Pro, it plays suspiciously similar to the experience in previous years. Heck, even the intro to the mode itself seems like it was copied and pasted from 2020’s installment. While the character progression system was tweaked to account for X-Factors for each class, this isn’t exactly what I would consider the groundbreaking evolution that Chel has been desperately in need of for quite some time. Hopefully, this becomes a focus of attention next time around, because Chel has always been one of the modes that I thought helped differentiate the franchise from other annualized sports titles.

NHL 22 – More Bugs than an Ant Farm

There was one other substantial issue that drove me up the wall this time around: bugs. Good lord are there a ton of technical issues that mar the overall experience. Numerous times I found myself trying to lead a pass, only to end up launching the puck down to the opposite side of the ice. On another occasion, I can only assume that Dylan Larkin had a seizure because his facial expression post-goal looked more like someone in agony than someone who had just lit the lamp. And trust me when I say that this was far from an isolated incident when it came to odd facial expressions on character models.

Other weird quirks include the horrible animation in Be a Pro when a line change sends you back into the game. The abrupt cut from the simulation screen back to the ice leads to a disorienting jerk of the camera almost every single time. Lastly, why the hell does the simulation between shifts take so freaking long? There were times where I would have been better off just waiting for the game to play out from the bench, because taking 3 minutes to simulate 45 seconds of gameplay feels both silly and excessive.

This should have been NHL 22’s coming-out party. Everything was in place for this to be a transformative season on a fresh new platform. Unfortunately, the next-generation jump feels more like a stop-gap solution than a proper evolution. If you already have last year’s installment, I would be hard-pressed to find a legitimate reason to make the jump. Hopefully, the next outing will focus on bringing a more innovative offering to the rink, because lord knows this time around isn’t going to set the stadium on fire.

NHL 22 review code provided by publisher. Reviewed on PS5. For more information, please read our Review Policy.