Fundamentally, EA Sports FC 24 is just not a brand new franchise.
It’s constructed on the bones of what would have been FIFA 24, in order a lot because it’s billed as a brand new period for EA Sports soccer, like each yearly replace it’s an iterative step with a couple of showpiece options.
However, with that mentioned, the brand new Playstyles mechanic is without doubt one of the freshly badged collection’ most seen and thrilling additions in a very long time – whereas additionally pushing the pendulum additional away from stoic simulation and into the blockbuster realm of sports activities leisure.
In that manner, EAFC 24 mirrors among the developments we see in actual life soccer. It’s completely plastered with adverts – for Marvel, for Nike, for Instagram – in a hauntingly subliminal manner, all flashing background photographs and surreptitious logos that sear themselves into your eyelids. It jogs my memory of the fruit machine zone in a motorway service station.
Then there’s the long-running, unanswered query of “micro”-transation factors, serotonin-spiking random packs and the wealth of pro-player and creator-led content material which normalises spending huge portions of cash to open packs, only for the sake of opening them.
EA Sports has additionally mastered the drip feed of every day targets and seasonal targets to maximise the quantity of FOMO you are feeling for taking a day without work. Mix that with an intense and thrilling gameplay loop which, when pitched on the proper problem, has a lizard brain-tickling aggressive edge that asks you to play another sport about as politely as Jose Mourninho asks for an opposition participant to be booked on the touchline. The finish result’s a soccer sport that has the potential to be endlessly engrossing and all-consuming.
Mechanically, fresh-out-of-the-box EAFC 24 feels very targeted on momentum, with a a lot better emphasis on what a participant’s physique is doing independently of the ball. This is probably going all the way down to the revamped Hypermotion V tech the place EA used cameras positioned across the pitch of Champions League video games to seize the sector as a digital house and grabbed animations from the real-life actions. It’s spectacular and, mixed with a restricted visible refresh (the place gamers who don’t have a correct face-scan appear to look higher usually,) pushes the entire expertise away from feeling samey to only a bit comparable.
There’s an fascinating metagame within the stability between massive, quick, and robust gamers who can cowl floor extraordinarily rapidly and bully everybody off the ball and technical dribblers who’ve an extremely tight contact to weasel their manner by means of site visitors like by no means earlier than. This performs into the continued introduction of skill-gap primarily based mechanics, with “precision passes” and “managed dash” becoming a member of timed ending, energy pictures and technical left-stick dribbling. EAFC 24 is continually smashing collectively one-on-one battles and difficult you to make use of one of many tips in your arsenal to snake your by means of the scrum of athletic our bodies between you and the aim.
Then there’s the Playstyes. These are a set of basically footballing superpowers which intention to provide gamers extra character, even once they’ve obtained comparable stats. The Power Shot playstyle permits you to rip off complete howitzers. Quick Step lets your tempo retailers add insult to damage by rocketing away from slowpokes even sooner. And Anticipation lets defenders hold maintain of the ball after a sort out with out it pinging again out to the opposition.
Like FIFA, the EAFC 24 meta gained’t be the identical on the finish of its yearly life cycle as in the beginning, and the way staid EA are with giving gamers these bonuses throughout Ultimate Team particular occasions can have an enormous function to play in that. But I’ve some inklings that changes might need to be made. Fast and agile gamers with acceleration playstyles are so explosive that they could simply have the ability to roadrunner round all the things. Power pictures, however, may journey so quick that you could simply wallop them in from anyplace at any time when you’ll be able to carve out an inch.
All collectively it’s a cacophony of knowledge to soak in, digest and react to moment-to-moment. An actual adrenaline rush.
On the Career Mode entrance, EAFC 24 clears the low bar of performance to be higher than FIFA 23 (I’ve written earlier than about how the participant efficiency scores had been damaged for me throughout a number of saves to the purpose the place enjoying correctly was unimaginable). But to guage it by itself deserves, I’ve discovered the expertise as compelling because the soccer all over the place else thus far.
It’s nonetheless not as reactive because it might be, or could be in a dream-game state of affairs, so incongruous and repetitive questions imply you’re skipping by means of press conferences earlier than lengthy, however not the entire background components really feel completely ancillary.
Rather than being one other display to simulate by means of, coaching drills earlier than a match now give chosen gamers a short lived Playstyle to utilise within the subsequent sport. This mixed with barely deeper membership constructing, the place you select a training philosophy like Tiki-taka or Gegenpressing then rent workers to show it to your gamers for a stat enhance, add to your managerial to-do checklist and break up the Career Mode loop that’s been virtually an identical for some time.
EAFC 24 may go about attaining its targets in a barely completely different method to the FIFA collection, however it lands on the identical finish end result. The identical tempting sticker ebook collect-a-thon and absorbing gameplay carousel makes EAFC 24 a digital footballing platform that calls for your consideration and is troublesome to place down. Emulating the signature strikes of your sporting heroes with box-office Playstyles is a spotlight, however there’ll at all times be questions on whether or not the mechanic can stand as much as the check of tens of millions of gamers probing for overpowered exploits.
Review-in-progress be aware: We’re leaving this as a review-in-progress for now till we’ve had an opportunity to play Ultimate Team towards a greater pattern of actual gamers. We’ll put a correct rating on EAFC 24 shortly!
