FIFA 22

[eagle_bearer]

GOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!

It's that time of year again when the new FIFA hits the shelves. The first FIFA game I played was FIFA 95 on the Mega Drive. My older brother brought it around when he visited over Easter in 1995 and he let me keep it. Back of the net! Having only played football games featuring international teams, what a thrill it was to finally be able to play as Manchester United, albeit with fake player names.

As the years went by, more and more features were added to the games. Real stadiums! Real player names and likenesses! Commentators! And, of course, the FIFA soundtrack. We all remember selecting our team and setting our formations to 'Song 2' by Blur as we set off on the Road to World Cup 98.

But moving into the 21st century, FIFA, while selling more copies, took a back seat for a while with regards to critical acclaim to Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer. These games from the late nineties until the end of the PS2 era really were the bee's knees. But things change. Now renamed as eFootball, Konami's game is a free-to-play bugfest. Booo!

Confession time - I haven't actually played FIFA 22 yet. In fact, I haven't played a FIFA game since FIFA 19. Have any of you played this year's version? Any good?

[bgmnts]

It's something i'll chuck on if i want to veg out for a few hours with tunes or a podcast etc but it does blow my mind the poor buggers who do get invested in it and blow loads of cash on the gambling and stuff. Cant remember if EA ever actually got punished for their gross business practises, or any big publisher for that matter, but EA's naked greed is always offputting.

The games are just a bit samey nowadays. Plus I hate the difficulty system where, instead of just making the opposing AI better, it makes your players play shitter, i.e less responsive and more sluggish and a chore.

Whoever thought that was a good idea needs shooting.

[Mobius]

I buy it every year, same as Football Manager. Just a childhood tradition I've never grown out of. Only ever play career / single player though, never tried all that FUT real money stuff.

Apparently my ps5 is arriving later this month so I'm holding off on FIFA for a few weeks

[Timothy]

Played a few hours of offline career with the EA Play Trial on PS5 (for one pound you can play 10 hours).

Really like the haptic feedback in this game.

[Steven88]

I've played Fifa every year since probably 1999, and i'm absolutely shit at it and want to put my controller through a wall when I lose.

[ImmaculateClump]

I bought it for my nephew for his birthday and it just turned up the other day.
He seems happy with it.

[badaids]

I bought it for my nephew for his birthday and it just turned up the other day.
He seems happy with it.

I've played Fifa every year since probably 1999, and i'm absolutely shit at it and want to put my controller through a wall when I lose.

I hope that EA put these testimonies on the box next year for FIFA 23.

[imitationleather]

Isn't this from the Come to Daddy video?

[Utter Shit]

Should be picking it up soon. All the reviews say it's taken a step back to a more tactical, less arcade-y game, which would be great from my point of view...but I feel like they say that every year, and every year it has gone further the other way. At any rate, Clubs should still be a laugh. My club is tantalisingly close to winning our first ever Division 1 trophy, so we're holding on for a while longer before migrating to 22.

[Inspector Norse]

I quite liked FUT when you could build a good side by doing the player swap challenges and other things but over the last couple of years they've phased out a lot of those (for example on last year's the league challenges, which used to net you some good packs and special player cards, gave you rewards of shit like Leicester City Limited Edition Third Kit or Untradeable Eric Djemba Djemba Silver) to try to force people to spend real money.

All the reviews say it's taken a step back to a more tactical, less arcade-y game, which would be great from my point of view...but I feel like they say that every year, and every year it has gone further the other way.

The online gameplay has been wank for years, as you'd expect when the main focus is to sell it to 14-year-old boys who just want a team full of Neymars. No real room for different playstyles and too many tossers gaming the system to get easy money.

[kngen]

Been playing Ultimate Team since 2018, but skipping it (and Fifa 22 in general) this year because of what a relentless miserable grind it has become. Add to that the tedium of playing against the same sides with the same meta players (Rashford, for example, who apparently can dodge any tackle he wants just by running in a straight line), plus (and this is the ridiculous irony) by the time you DO get your Ultimate Team, everyone's fucked off to play the new version. Spent ages grinding and trading and NOT EVER BUYING PACKS to get my dream attacking triangle of Kenny Dalglish, Henrik Larsson and Diego Maradona, so I'll be fucked if I'm just going to scrap that and start all over again so soon.

Probably just play Career mode until I get a new console, and then of course I'll have to see what it looks like (or when Skate 4 comes out, which will free me from my Fifa addiction). Or maybe I'll play one of the many, many other games I've got that don't get a look in because Fifa is dopamine-driven EVIL.

[Chollis]

Is everyone playing this Ultimate Team online? Can it be done offline, or does that kinda defeat the object? Also assuming the buying of card packs is mostly done with in-game currency, with an option of real money pay-to-win? I've just recently got FIFA for the first time ever, always just played it round mates. Enjoying Career mode as I take Cambridge United into the big time but I notice when people talk about FIFA they're mostly talking about UT.

[Ham Bap]

The whole game is geared towards online only Ultimate Team and getting players to buy packs with their real money.
They make an absolute fortune from it https://twitter.com/zhugeex/status/1397650874378465281?s=21

Some people spend thousands of pounds on packs.

From year to year they make absolute minimal/no changes to single player and Career Mode which remains very shallow and broken in parts, same bugs exist from year to year etc.

I'd like a good football game to play but have zero interest in Ultimate Team.

[El Unicornio, mang]

First time in a few years I haven't bought it, mostly due to the PC version not having the upgrades that the console version has. Also I got horribly addicted to FUT, not just playing but doing all the squad building challenges and such, for 19-21 and found I spent most of my time just being really angry and frustrated, and annoyed at a lot of the toxic behaviour of some people I played against. Also I never got the complaints about pack contents or SBC rewards. If they give out better players, everyone is going to get better players, I'm not sure how it improves the game for anyone? Like, yeah you got Vardy awesome SBC card for next to nothing but so did everyone else. Really boring to see the same god squads every time I enter a game.

Find it kind of ridiculous that people spend a shitload of real money on packs. I'm a pretty average FUT player but whenever I played against the teams who have early on got a load of Prime Icons and Messis that they obviously bought, they're almost always shit at actually playing.

I might just try and get a naughty copy to play career mode, although the prospect of trying to guide NUFC to glory isn't that appealing either...

[Utter Shit]

If you have a group of mates all with the game, I'd highly recommend Clubs. It's so much fun and quite rewarding when you start getting good. There are still too many exploits that can get annoying - it's far too easy to get into an attacking positions by just banging a powerful through ball down the wing - but when you put together a good passing move and find yourself all on the wavelength it's a great feeling.

[Inspector Norse]

Is everyone playing this Ultimate Team online? Can it be done offline, or does that kinda defeat the object? Also assuming the buying of card packs is mostly done with in-game currency, with an option of real money pay-to-win?

Basically they change it up every year but the core game is the same, so based on the last one I played properly a couple of years ago:

- You get given a starter team of utter wank (a load of left-backs from Exeter and right-midfielders from Wacky Pellets) with a handful of half-decent loan players (ie they can only be used for say 7 games max then they disappear)
- You play games in various modes against real or AI opponents in order to earn in-game rewards like in-game coins, packs with players or items like kits, contracts, etc
- You try to build a team by earning coins to buy better players or packs, or by finding good players in packs
- Your team is also better if you can match players based on club/nationality/league and have them in the right position. If you have a special Mbappé card but put him at centre-back next to a Dutch guy who plays for Groningen, he'll run around like Bojack in the underwater taffy factory
- You can do other challenges to earn better players and stuff as well. Some of this is squad building, where you put together a team using unwanted players from your squad in order to meet certain requirements, then swap those players out for a reward. For example you build a team of only Ligue 1 players with an average rating of 85 including at least four Brazilians, and get given a boosted Marquinhos. Other challenges are in-game ones like Score Ten Goals With Eredivisie Players In X Game Mode This Week and win a limited edition Ajax kit. The rewards for these are sometimes worthwhile, sometimes not.
- The various online modes give better rewards than the AI "squad battles" but are less and less fun every year due to being full of kids who've skipped all the above and just maxed out mum's bank card filling their team with superboosted Ronaldos and Van Dijks, while the gameplay online keeps getting more and more one-note and arcadey, just based around speed and button-mashing skill moves.

Also I never got the complaints about pack contents or SBC rewards. If they give out better players, everyone is going to get better players, I'm not sure how it improves the game for anyone? Like, yeah you got Vardy awesome SBC card for next to nothing but so did everyone else. Really boring to see the same god squads every time I enter a game.

With them making SBC rewards shitter it simply closes off one of the only half-decent and interesting ways for those who don't want to spunk real money in-game to get decent or interesting players a lot of the time, at least before the summer end-of-season when all the servers are saturated with old special cards because everyone's already got comedy OP teams.
Earning good players through SBCs took time and thought and effort and felt like a skill in itself: you got the good rewards by doing a lot of them and reaching a certain level. But now they killed that, you either have to have a God-level squad already (swap a team with 89 rating and eight Brazilians to earn TOTW Richarlison!) or the time isn't worth it (complete all 20 Bundesliga SBCs to get 10,000 coins and a special song about Eintracht Frankfurt).

[Utter Shit]

The various online modes give better rewards than the AI "squad battles" but are less and less fun every year due to being full of kids who've skipped all the above and just maxed out mum's bank card filling their team with superboosted Ronaldos and Van Dijks, while the gameplay online keeps getting more and more one-note and arcadey, just based around speed and button-mashing skill moves.

This is the bit that annoys me. Obviously the pay to win concept is horrible, but over the years I always felt like it was to some extent optional - if you understood football, were a good player and could dedicate enough time to build a decent squad, you could still consistently beat people that had spent a fortune building a super squad. But it feels like they're actively preventing this now - the rare (read: expensive) players can just ride/bundle their way through tackles and the margin for error on shooting is so much that they can score from anywhere, so being well set up tactically doesn't stop them.

You would assume there would be a market for a more realistic football game - I'd hoped that eFootball might be it, but I gave it a go the other night and it is an absolute mess. The one game I played, one of my centre mids managed to:

-Get booked
-Get a second yellow card but not get sent off (hi Graham Poll)
-Get a second (or third?) yellow and then a red card a few minutes later despite having no involvement in the play
-Stayed on the pitch despite the red card
-Get a third/fourth yellow and a second red card
-Finally went off
-Was back on the pitch again a few minutes later

In case you were wondering, yes the slide tackle function is the only good thing about the game at the moment.

[Yussef Dent]

eFootball is that much of a broken horror show that I don't think there is a way back for it. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong at Konami for this to be shown as the fruits of their labour after a two-year development process. The very loyal and active PES community seem to be abandoning it, with the more prominent PES streamers simply unable to create content that's anything but showing how hilariously awful the game is, with some having actually crossed over to doing FIFA streams. I have bought Fifa myself for the first time in twenty years! I'm an offline player so I will be getting my teeth into Create a Club.

[thehungerartist]

eFootball is that much of a broken horror show that I don't think there is a way back for it. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong at Konami for this to be shown as the fruits of their labour after a two-year development process. The very loyal and active PES community seem to be abandoning it, with the more prominent PES streamers simply unable to create content that's anything but showing how hilariously awful the game is, with some having actually crossed over to doing FIFA streams. I have bought Fifa myself for the first time in twenty years! I'm an offline player so I will be getting my teeth into Create a Club.

The version of eFootball they put out last week was shockingly bad - so bad that even Jim Sterling made a video about it! Sadly Konami has developed a mania for destroying its most popular and acclaimed IPs.

PES 2021 season update on PC played with full manual passing and realism mods is comfortably the most immersive football game I've ever played; hopefully the community can keep it alive.

For consoles, FIFA's been the only show in town since 2008 which is a shame as there were a few years when each was iterating with an eye on the other and we got some fantastic games out of it.

[Yussef Dent]

The version of eFootball they put out last week was shockingly bad - so bad that even Jim Sterling made a video about it! Sadly Konami has developed a mania for destroying its most popular and acclaimed IPs.

PES 2021 season update on PC played with full manual passing and realism mods is comfortably the most immersive football game I've ever played; hopefully the community can keep it alive.

For consoles, FIFA's been the only show in town since 2008 which is a shame as there were a few years when each was iterating with an eye on the other and we got some fantastic games out of it.

I am really poor at playing FUMA! It will be interesting to see which factions of the community choose to keep that going. PES Universe has today shown they are committed to eFootball by launching a comprehensive player database website, but even they don't sound 100% sure in their tweets that the game will ever be properly fixed.

It was so weird how up until PES 2008, even though FIFA was massive, it seemed like most people knew PES was the proper game. At Uni in my first year in 2006 the student union had PES tournaments and never FIFA ones, there was a pub in town which had a PS2 which only had PES 6 in, and everyone loved Master League and would go on about who they had signed as they built their squad up with the default players. The 2008 version on the PS2 was ace, but they got it so wrong for the new gen consoles it put them miles behind EA.

[Beagle 2]

I find it bizarre that there's seemingly no good third football game and now there's not even two. Of course it's unsurprising that there's only room for one slick fully licensed cash generating behemoth but for there not to be any decent lower budget efforts (outside of Football Manager and New Star and the like) is quite odd. Rocket League have shown what can be achieved with a game where it's fun to play with a ball if you get the physics right.

[Yussef Dent]

I find it bizarre that there's seemingly no good third football game and now there's not even two. Of course it's unsurprising that there's only room for one slick fully licensed cash generating behemoth but for there not to be any decent lower budget efforts (outside of Football Manager and New Star and the like) is quite odd. Rocket League have shown what can be achieved with a game where it's fun to play with a ball if you get the physics right.

There's two more in development in the shape of Goals (https://twitter.com/goalsgame) and UFL (https://twitter.com/UFLgame). I think Goals is a long way off as they are still recruiting developers. It is weird though but it does make me wonder if the clamour for licensing from the masses and the cost that comes with securing those has put developers off. When I tell people I play PES they all think it's full of fake names and don't know that downloading option files can give you real kits and names etc.

These two new games unfortunately look like online only ones which doesn't interest me. I can't get into things like FUT or MyClub but the fact that they make such astronomical amounts of money means that will always be the path developers go down. Offline sim players just aren't the priority customer.

[kngen]

Dexerto saying that EA have completely fucked FUT this year in their typical Fifa Points cash grab, and building an RTG team capable of competing at a decent level is practically impossible now.

All succour to my decision to skip this year, so I'm going to take this as gospel, even if it's probably wrong or trolling or both.

[Utter Shit]

Has anyone got any experience of/tips for selling coins? I've amassed about 4m thanks to a combination of decent Champs results and the luck of packing a Renato Sanches card that was worth about 1.4m, but FUT has quickly become a joyless, broken experience where EVERY game is affected by momentum - half the games it's more or less impossible to win because the game hamstrings your team to a ridiculous extent, which in turn makes it impossible to feel any sense of achievement in the other half of games that I win, because you don't know if the other player is getting fucked by momentum.

So with that in mind, I'm exploring the possibility of selling my coins, but I don't really know how to go about it, which sites are legit, where the best value is etc. So if anyone has any tips, I'd appreciate it!

[kngen]

FUT has quickly become a joyless, broken experience where EVERY game is affected by momentum - half the games it's more or less impossible to win because the game hamstrings your team to a ridiculous extent, which in turn makes it impossible to feel any sense of achievement in the other half of games that I win, because you don't know if the other player is getting fucked by momentum.

First Fifa I haven't bought annually since 07, I think. Everything I read tells me I made the right decision.

[Noodle Lizard]

It's the first one I've bought since FIFA 13. It's fine, but it took me ages to get the hang of shooting/scoring.

I created a player called Gary Gary and took him to the top. There's so much wrong with that career system, though, and it's incredibly repetitive. You can't really skip/simulate many matches without your coach sending you angry emails and demoting you, even if you score 5 goals per game on average.

Still. Gary Gary is (presumably) wealthy and good at football.