izigame.me

Brit Tries That Football Game Series For The First Time

You’re looking at the hours played and the ‘not recommended’ verdict and probably thinking ‘Here’s another in those series of reviews of someone whining about a game they could’ve stopped playing 80 hours ago’, and yeah, you’d be right to an extent. But my overall goal for this review/rant is to offer a first-timer's perspective into a franchise and genre that I’ve generally not paid any attention to until recently, in spite of this being the yearly obsession of much of my friend group.
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in the UK makes football their sole personality trait. I tend to tune in for the international events where England are playing, and that’s about it. And after their unfathomably lucky run to their second consecutive Euros final, I decided to give the latest FIFA a go after seeing it for an 80% off sale. And honestly, I had a lot more fun than I was expecting, though I admittedly have no other entries to compare my experience to. The gameplay is fast-paced and deep, and there are plenty of different modes to keep the experience fresh. But for a yearly franchise that should generally be aiming to improve with each iteration, EA FC 24 is a pretty embarrassing showing from most people’s favourite industry punching bag.

The Good

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the core of FIFA is fun, but what surprised me the most is how well this was translated into options for the player on and off the pitch. The training mode helps you understand this pretty quickly; it’s not just passing, shooting, tackling and defending, it’s many types of short and long passes, different shots which prioritize either power, speed or finesse, varying mechanisms for getting the ball back with your player or bringing in an AI teammate to assist, and a staggering number of skill moves for those who really wish to master the game. It’s very easy to learn FIFA, but I wasn’t anywhere near close to fully understanding it by the end of my playtime.
The above does not consider the additional layer of strategy that comes with the formations and player instructions, giving each squad you build a far more noticeably distinct identity than I was expecting. Finding the ideal formation for your playstyle will already promote a lot of experimentation, and adding defensive and offensive tactics on top of this will change its feel even further. What’s great about this system is you can build multiple custom tactics and switch them on the fly during a game. Player instructions are probably the most noticeable tactic you can manipulate, as telling your forwards to either run behind the opposition if they’re particularly pacey, or stand outside of the box if they have good long-range shot capabilities, can completely change how effective their best attributes are. So, understanding your team on an individual and group level is interesting to navigate and exploit.
And I am also pleased with the number of different modes on offer, which helps add plentiful value and replayability. Ultimate Team is the reason most people buy into this, and I’m happy to report that building up a strong squad for free is quite doable in good time nowadays. Player and Manager Career mode gives you two different perspectives on a longer-term football journey, Clubs are the more skill-based PVP experience, and Volta is completely different to any of the above, with a smaller team size, faster pace and skill moves being the primary changes here. This was probably the mode where I had the most consistent fun since it encourages team play on a small scale, and I scored and assisted many great goals when I was matched with collaborative teammates.

The Ugly

Now we get onto the numerous parts of FC 24 that irritated me. There’s no ‘Bad’ section here as these issues affect fundamental aspects of the experience which really should not be an issue considering we are more than 20 versions deep into this franchise. So areas like bugs really should not be an issue, especially when it comes to menus, of which there were surprisingly numerous. Simply navigating these would softlock me on average once per day, forcing me to restart and wait for EA’s launcher to actually boot up the game again, as there were some cases where it just forgot to do so. I even managed to find a ‘Debug’ menu option on one occasion, and I could not tell you what I was doing that allowed me to get there in the first place. I also experienced many visual UI bugs particularly when viewing my Ultimate Team Squads, and certain UI elements would appear and disappear seemingly at random when in-game.
Focusing more on Ultimate Team, I am staggered that there were consistent server problems even during off-peak times. I’ve had zero issues with online multiplayer after upgrading my internet, and FC 24 is the only game since then where I would be randomly put on high ping or even disconnected from my opponent for no good reason. And of course, being kicked out or losing a match due to poor latency will affect both your Rivals progress and expend your team’s contracts, so it’s a gigantic waste of time that you can’t do anything about. There were also many occasions where the command I gave to a player would either not connect with the power or direction that I intended, or would simply not respond to any command at all, typically leading to possession loss during a crucial moment. This never once happened when I played offline, so I suspect EA’s netcode is in dire need of reconstruction, as a game demanding consistent accuracy from the player needs to respond perfectly on every occasion.
You know how I praised all of the tactical options the game gives you? Throw all of that out of the window for Rivals as there are a few meta combinations which are guaranteed to wipe the floor with your squad if you aren’t also using a meta setup. It was really lame to have match after match with my opponent running a single forward who the ball would be lobbed to while my defence was a decent way up the pitch, leading to them scoring before I could do anything about it. The saying goes to not hate the player but the game, and so the fact that EA has allowed such tactics to work when they would never fly in a real match is really odd.
And finally, the grind was particularly grim for both the Ultimate Team season and Volta cosmetic unlocks. Progression is largely built around being time-gated, where playing outside of periods when there aren’t specific challenges available will result in essentially meagre exp gain, meaning the game largely discourages you from playing it much of the time. And even when there are challenges available, the most reliable way to earn them is in squad battles, and they get very repetitive since the AI there is not challenging to play against. As for Volta, earning a single cosmetic takes dozens upon dozens of successful matches to get a simple reskin, and so earning those 50 vanity items for one achievement is a gigantic pain. But obviously, you can pay to skip the grind if you wish…

So, Would I Buy Another One?

Nah. Or at least, definitely not at full price. I will give EA credit that this was an interesting diversion from the type of games I’m used to playing, and the 100% achievements journey I went on was pretty entertaining for the most part. But after dealing with numerous UI and server issues, inconsistent controls, unbalanced multiplayer and some incredibly grindy progression, I can’t see myself putting 100 more hours in to knock out another 100% without getting frustrated or bored along the way. The earliest I can see myself checking back is in two summers’ time at an 80% discount when the next World Cup rolls around; but only if England get anywhere, of course.
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