Developer: EA Romania, EA Canada
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platfom: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
EA Sports FC 24 – Review
Due to licensing issues, the FIFA series’ name has changed to EA Sports FC, and while this may seem as if big changes happened behind the scenes, it’s still very much the same series as it has always been. EA Sports FC 24 offers ample content, and even though we aren’t veterans of the genre, we were quite eager to see how this series has evolved over the years. Drawn into the many modes the game has to offer, we were quite entertained.
Story
In terms of story, there isn’t much to find in EA Sports FC 24. You’ll basically pick the mode that you like the most, and you’re good to go. Some modes require a bit more setup, especially if you start playing one of the career modes or the Ultimate Team mode, but for the most part, it’s all about the gameplay. It would have perhaps been nice to have a more dedicated story mode for single-player enthusiasts, but even without an engaging narrative, FC 24 offers more than enough content.
Graphics
Graphically EA Sports FC 24 looks amazing, and when playing regular matches, it even looks lifelike. We were immediately immersed when we started playing, and for the most part, this feeling remained throughout our testing period. Sadly, some big graphical bugs did break the immersion from time to time, as we saw players run through walls, weird animation glitches, rubberbanding, and players with ‘dead eyes’. While a lot of these graphical glitches weren’t too bad, some were clearly a case of poor programming. An example of this would be after scoring a goal, the player would run through a wall to celebrate. It felt as if the celebration animation was made for a specific field, and the designers didn’t bother checking if it would work on other fields as well.
Sound
FC 24’s sound design is quite good. While it’s unavoidable that certain commentaries are repeated over and over again, the overall quality is still great, and you’ll sometimes be surprised by how accurate the announcers are. The supporting soundtrack is also decent, but we do miss the soundtracks of older iterations. Sound effects are decent, as well as the chants in the stadium, and all these items combined create just the right atmosphere. An honorable mention goes to the commentaries in the Volta Football mode, where you’ll get remarks in the language of the country you’re playing in.
Gameplay
EA Sports FC 24 is basically the next entry in what used to be the FIFA series. The game may now have a spiffy new image, but it’s pretty much still the same experience. This means you’ll be playing football from start to finish, be it online major tournaments, local matches, Volta Football, and so on. We did enjoy the inclusion of the women’s league, as it may attract a brand new audience of gamers because of this. All in all, the game is very straightforward, even with its fairly big learning curve.
As we are not truly experts when it comes to sports games, FC 24 is fairly hard to get into as a casual player. Don’t get us wrong, however, as the game offers more than enough content to sink your teeth into. We did struggle a bit with the general controls, not in terms of accessibility, but when it came to the overall expansiveness of what we could do once we were on the pitch. The basics are easy to get the hang of, but when you’re trying to play on a more competitive level, things do get a lot trickier. Even so, we did notice significant improvements when we took the time to learn more complex mechanics.
As stated above, the amount of content in the game is quite overwhelming. Even though everything boils down to the same thing, you’ll find your pick of the litter, and you’ll probably find a mode that suits you best. Sadly, things sometimes feel a bit tacky with all the shop windows when playing online. There is an overabundance of microtransactions and this does feel out of place. We still find it quite sad that a game that comes at a full retail price has this much paid additional content. Modes like Ultimate Team feel as if microtransactions are actually a key component of the gameplay, which is disappointing.
While this is not a new addition, Volta Football is still a great replacement for the older FIFA Street games. We did very much enjoy this mode as it provides a nice change of pace from the regular modes. Online play with strangers is not necessarily a lot of fun in this mode, however, as we were constantly kicked out of the queue, and it seems that the mode only attracts selfish players. We have never seen a bigger example of ‘every man for himself’ than when playing Volta Football online. This is not necessarily because of poor game design, but it would perhaps help to link rewards to fair play and passing to teammates.
Conclusion
Even though the series might have a new name now, fans of previous iterations of FIFA will probably find a lot of familiar content here. We were quite impressed with the amount of content present here, ranging from interesting single-player modes to more cooperative or competitive online modes. While the game still had its fair share of graphical bugs, it looked extremely realistic and at times we felt like we were truly part of an actual football match. Sadly, the overall quality gets bogged down by the overload of microtransactions present, which also affected our final grade. That being said, if you’re a fan of the series or simply would like to try out an actual football game, then we can still easily recommend this one.
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