![]() ![]() If you've played any FIFA recently, you'll recognise that this is the same game, yet, you'll want those quality-of-life improvements and tiny incremental updates, the new kits and squads. The question as to whether this iteration demands your purchase is almost moot. FIFA can happily play itself, so the insistence on your participation is weird. There is a top-down sim, but it's hard to see the patterns develop at speed and simmed games are invariably lost. Your skill, or lack thereof, negates all the work you've done. However, after your preparations, you still play the game, with no option to just watch. It still isn't Football Manager, and nor should it be, but its depth is sufficient to be an enjoyable challenge. The new negotiation animations make me cringe a bit, but the press conferences that play out like a Telltale adventure work better. Manager Career Mode has likewise received some new bells and whistles, with mixed results. It's difficult to get excited by this cookie-cutter approach. You can also create your own club with its own kit, stadium, chants and flags, like the co-op Pro Clubs mode, but it's a painfully walled garden, limited to some garish but unimaginative options. You'll get a chance at redemption from the bench, as substitutions onto the pitch finally come to the game, along with a functioning and fair transfer system. It may not be so after the hundredth viewing, but it's where you see the stats and understand why you're getting dropped. The new dressing room animations should be horrible, but watching your teenager sat quietly, cradling a man-of-the-match trophy, acknowledging others with a shy nod, is quite beautiful. You earn XP by fulfilling giant floating objectives, making the whole process less nebulous than it has been. There are now skill points and perks, plus a skill tree to develop your player to match your playstyle. There's still no story mode, like The Journey, but it's all the better for the narrative being player-created and largely in your own head. Take a youth with potential and play out his career-it's still restricted to the men's game-or give them your face and start them out at your hometown club, using their prodigious skill to make them world-beaters. The poor relation, Player Career Mode, is getting a welcome upgrade to its systems. Then there are the two career modes which are finally getting some love after a few years of being largely ignored. FIFA 22's flaws, although numerous, remain trifling. This is bearable, as it's still way better than Konami's PES successor, eFootball, which I found to be a jerky mess. Once that wore off, it was evident that this was, again, the same game wearing new shirts, with very few tangible tweaks. It's like running in treacle at first, but you'll adjust, and the goalkeepers are evidently better, at least until the next update and rethink. In this case I was too preoccupied by the slower, and therefore more realistic, pace of the game, to be looking for improved fluidity of movement. We aren't getting the HyperMotion tech that's appearing on next-gen consoles, and I bristle in principle that it isn't also available for top-spec PC systems FIFA games look and feel amazing to play-straddling the space between TV viewer and participant, like you're there doing it, but talented-even if the graphics settings are sparse and on Ultra it can sometimes seem a little fuzzy round the edges. ![]() ![]() We aren't getting the HyperMotion tech that's appearing on next-gen consoles, and I bristle in principle that it isn't also available for top-spec PC systems-although I didn't notice at first. ![]() I'm forty-five hours in and I've barely scratched the surface. Something, in fact, for everyone, even those for whom the packaging smacks of the defunct European Super League. There are the Kick-off quick games, House Rules mode, skill games, dozens of tournaments to replicate and internationals to play. There's Pro Clubs to play co-op with up to 11 friends. There's more to Volta, the tricksy street football option with a new bearable story mode and some new hilarious and chaotic party games at the weekend. The score below reflects this, but fortunately FIFA 22 without FUT is vast and largely scrumptious. ![]()
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