I'm having so much fun in EA FC 24's menus – it's a pity the gameplay is so bad
EA FC 24 could've been the best EA Sports game ever, and it might be in terms of menu content, but the uninspiring and frustrating gameplay experience is holding it back.
I've had so much fun with EA FC 24 in the last few months, with Ultimate Team promos like Thunderstruck, Black Friday, Radioactive, Centurions, Trailblazers, and most recently Winter Wildcards, offering varied ways of grinding the game to obtain players, build-up fodder, complete SBCs and work towards getting a better Ultimate Team, without spending money. Things like daily login rewards, daily repeatable SBCs, free players and packs in seasonal rewards, 10 and 30-coin packs, grindable objectives and interesting SBCs have made for an engaging experience.
It's a good time to be playing the EA FC 24, at least in the menus.
Menu mania
There have been some disappointing periods, particularly some of the recent Winter Wildcards SBCs being overpriced and having strange position changes, but overall, I've really enjoyed the content on offer. And with the TOTY promo on the horizon, there's even more to look forward to.
Even the new Evolutions feature is coming into its own too after a dubious start, with players able to build a truly unique Ultimate Team, that can be pretty competitive given some of the more recent Evolutions like Pep's Legacy and Budding Starlet. But this is where things start to take a turn because, to progress an Evolution, you need to play EA FC 24, and that's just not an enjoyable experience at the moment.
Why Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's six week delay is a good thing
Players are well within their rights to expect gameplay to improve with every new EA Sports yearly title, and although game development isn't quite as simple as that, with EA FC 24, it seems that the gameplay experience has regressed significantly. There've always been meta formations or ways to score in every EA Sports game, but this year's title has had the same dominant meta for months, despite the much-anticipated Holiday Update making changes to midfield congestion.
I argued that EA FC 24 needed a gameplay overhaul back in October, and despite the recent update, it still does. Thanks to the inconsistent finishing and seemingly random shooting animations, the only surefire way to score goals in the game is to run down the wing, get to the byline and pull the ball back to a striker in the box.
There are also big inconsistencies with passing, particularly in and around the box, which is exasperated by the massively overpowered defensive AI. The best way to defend is to not control your defenders at all, and the AI will do all the hard work for you. Where's the skill in that?
Then there's left-stick dribbling, which is significantly less intuitive and responsive than last year's title and is far behind even FIFA 19. Content creator @Nick28T shared a video on Twitter in October showing the dribbling in EA FC 24 compared with FIFA 19, and it's mystifying just how much worse this year's game is compared to a game that was released in 2018.
EA Sports introduced HyperMotion technology in FIFA 22, which it said would transform "how players move on and off the ball", and this feature has remained in every subsequent title, albeit with a slightly different badge. While it has undoubtedly made player movements and animations more realistic, I would argue that it has also made the game more clunky, less responsive and slower overall. And that's definitely the case with EA FC 24.
Whether it's the lack of competition, following the demise of Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series (now eFootball), or a change in focus towards in-game purchases, gameplay in EA Sports' football titles is stagnating and has been for a while. It's not all bad though, because EA is getting a lot right in terms of content and is giving players a lot of reasons to interact with its game. As such, it's still the most popular football game around.
The exciting thing for EA, and players, is that this remains the case with EA FC 24, despite how poor the gameplay experience is. Just imagine if the game was actually fun to play.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
