A new football season has begun, and a new EA football sim was inevitable even before the months of marketing. The annual instalment of the premier football game has a new name this time around, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:EA Sports FC 24 is easily recognisable as the same core game as FIFA 23. There are a couple of good additions t꧒o this y🥃ear’s fare, but innovative EA is not. After all, why reinvent the roulette wheel?

The gameplay largely feels good, and I already prefer playing matches in EA Sports FC 24 to its predecessor. Passing is more manual, feeling as though assista🦄nce has been turned off, so it requires more skill to play those pinpoint through balls that used to leave even the best centre backs chasing shadows as Saeed Al-Owairan 🍎slotted his shot away.

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Despite the difficulty check, passing feels effective, a more legitimate strategy than previous games where you just passed to a pacey winger like Moussa Diaby before cutting back to score free goals. Don’t worry, meta rats, that still works a charm, but you have more tactical options available in PvP modes this time. My one caveat to this is that in previous FIFA games, gameplay could change drastically depending on patches as EA tinkers with its formula, s♊o this may not remain the case all season long.

For all the improvements to passing, tackling is far worse. EA realised there was a problem with last year's ‘auto defenders’, where Varane and Van Dijk would successfully defend any attack with no player input as you controlled your midfielders instead. However, the more manual tackling this year is flawed. I’ve played around 100 matches across EA Sports FC 24’s various modes, and I doubt there’s been one where some awful tackle-related ball physics haven’t occurred. The ball often pings off a tackler’s toes and straight back to the attacker, now behind them and through on goal, or worse, you tackle straight onto the striker’s shooting animation, inadvertently unleashing a perfect shot into the bottom corner.

The one player who has been largely exempt from these issues has been Ledley King. His Hero card in Ultimate Team is great, and most importantly has the ‘Anticipate’ PlayStyle+. ไPlayStyles are like FIFA’s traits, except they’re infinitely more noticeable in-match, and the gold plus versions are game-changing. Anticipate gives King “significantly improved chances of standing tackle success and grants the ability to stop a ball directly at their feet when performing a standing tackle&rdqu🌸o;. With tackling this bad, it’s a godsend, and the little golden raccoon symbol that pops up over his head every time the PlayStyle+ kicks in gives you a tangible marker that the abilities are working. No, I don’t know why Anticipate has a Raccoon symbol either.

Luka Modrić gets a flash of gold when he curls an outside-of-the-boot pass through the onrushing defence,☂ as does Lauren Hemp when she plays a thundering cross. PlayStyles, and especially PlayStyles+, make players feel unique and make gameplay much more exciting. The only downside is when the little battery representing Jude Bellingham’s Relentless stamina recovery appears on every sprint, or when Pedri’s Tiki-Taka pop-up appears just after his pass was intercepted. Those issues aside, PlayStyles are by far the biggest update in EA Sports FC 24, and one I can’t wait to see iterated upon.

A similar addition is also applied to Career Mode, where Tactical Visions apply similar boosts to your whole team playing your way. The problem is, there’s no visual feedback when your vision is implemented by your players, and it often makes tweaking formations frustrating. Switching🐬 tactical systems on individual players would result in bi𝓡g red blotches on my teamsheet telling me that pushing my full-backs forward isn‘t the Tiki-Taka way. It might not be, but it works for what I’m trying to do. I bet Pep didn’t get ugly red warnings when he told John Stones to play in midfield.

Still attempting to be Football Manager-lite, Manager Career is demonstrably worse than last year. While Tactical Visions are fun, if occasionally frustrating, the atmosphere surrounding the gameplay is deader than the Etihad. Pre-match intros that used to show tꦯeams lining up, play national anthems and the Champions League music have been replaced with ‘Dynamic Match Intros’ that are essentially highlights reels like you’d see on the intro to football coverage. The difference is that football coverage shows the anthems, too. The idea is to get into games quicker, but when Tranmere Rovers are in the Champions League final, I want Connor Jennings to hear that iconic music.

Half-time cutscenes of dressing rooms and commentary teams that play behind your menu do little to improve the matchday experience and feel superfluous. Commentary also feels more stilted this year. New additions Guy Mowbray and Sue Smith suffer worst, despite solid voice acting from the pair.💦 The problems are in the way that the lines are stitched together, it’s as if you can hear the very seams that connect each audio soundbite. Nothing flows naturally, and it’s completely immersion-breaking.

I had multiple crashes throughout the game, but Manager Career is by far the worst offender when it comes to bugs. Jude Belligham held up a placeholder shirt emblazoned with ‘Hala Madrid’ when he was unveiled as Liverpool’s marquee signing of the 24/25 season, players turn half-invisible in menus sometimes, and frame rates still randomly tank on the Xbox Series X, ruining otherwise perfect counter-attacks. While Manager Career is the most unpolished, I had the most crashes in Ultimate Team. Whether that’s a server issue or game problem, I’m unsure, but I frequently had to restart the game to progress, which is simply unacceptable for a game of this s꧋ize, with this budget, and earning this much annually.

I only played a little of Player Career, but it seems incredibly similar to last year’s ꦿoffering. Activities off the pitch can increase your on-pitch stats because buying a mansion makes you a more reckless dribbler apparently, and you can still get released from your contract for not scoring enough dinks, despite win𓆉ning the treble and a Ballon d’Or. I turned it off at this point and went back to Ultimate Team.

As you can probably tell by the sparse updates to single-player modes, everything is pushing you towards Ultimate Team, now called ‘Football Ultimate Team’ so EA can reuse the commentary lines that call it “FUT”. It’s the mode I play most, so I’m largely okay with that, but it will be immensely off-putting for those who don’t want in on EA’s surprise mechanics, and the profit-oriented approach is completely transparent. No other franchise makes live-service players pay a £7💯0 subscription fee every year to buy the latest, slightly different version 🔜of the same game.

That said, this is probably the best version of Ultimate Team that we’ve ever seen. The new menus take a little getting used to but are intuitive, I like the retro style cards, and the implementation of women is long overdue – I’m🦂 working on a hybrid team based on the two squads who faced each other in the Women’s World Cup Final as we speak.

Evolutions are a major addition, allowing you to customise your team even more, giving underutilised and underpowered players opportunities to shine. Unfortunately, I’m a Liverpool fan, so I had to go down the meta route of Darwin Nunez for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Founders Evolution and Joel Matip for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pacey Protector, but a friend of mine has upgraded solely Sunderland players and I&r🐷squo;m sure he’s tearing through Division 10 as we speak.

Combined with the tactical options at your disposal and PlayStyles improving off-meta players (Matthijs de Ligt’s 66 Pace meant nobody used him last year, but the addition of the Slide Tackle PlayStyle+ turns him into a great option), you can truly create your fantasy team without having to bow to the pressures of an infuriating Pace meta. The addition of female players also adds a host of tactical options, with only one downside: baiting you in packs. There’s nothing worse than seeing a French PSG striker walking out of your 50k pack, only for Marie Kato🤪to to appear instead of Kylian🌃 Mbappe. That said, Hugo Ekitike can do the same thing from the Men’s team, and the whole experience forces a wry smile rather than genuine frustration.

EA𝄹 Sports FC 24 is the same game you know and love, for better and worse. Gameplay feels good, PlayStyles are a fantastic addition that allow you to succeed while truly playing your way, but the game is held back by its focus on Ultimate Team, which excels at the expense of the rest of the game. Single-player mod꧒es feel completely neglected and in many ways have gone backwards since the last game, to the point where buying this feels pointless if you’re not going to play online.

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