FIFA 23 Review: EA’s last ever FIFA game isn’t quite a clinical finish
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If you allow me to torture an analogy, trying to make the perfect fifa The game should feel a bit like Guardiola’s classic Barcelona trying to beat José Mourinho’s 2009-10 Champions League-winning Inter team. You can seemingly do everything right, but despite the beauty and idealism of the world’s best strike teams, there’s nothing like the stubborn force of reality to bring it all down.
fifa23 take another shot at the impossible balancing act that is presented to EA Sports every 12 months, with accessible, realistic football simulation on one hand and intense gameplay with an extreme skill gap on the other.
So while FIFA 23 is another absolutely compelling dopamine factory that I’ll no doubt be playing until the day before the next game comes out like every year, it’s still very easy to criticize and will ultimately be as divisive as it gets. previous entries about the last 5 years have been converted.
FIFA 23 is all about fast, arcade, white-knuckle gameplay with short, intense matches.
One of the incremental back-of-the-box improvements in FIFA 23 is what they’re calling Hypermotion 2, which uses motion capture and machine learning to create more realistic animations as you play. It’s a win for the realism side of the balancing act and looks great overall, removing some of the immersion-breaking (and reality-defying) jarring contortions that could show up in hundreds and thousands of games, much like EA Sports. he said he would.
The elephant in the room, though, is that the game is too fast-paced to really look realistic. The hated “skating” look where players seem to slide from one step to another is greatly reduced on offense, where hitting the ball is more intuitive and feels silkier, but on defense, players run at a gallop, full Gangnam style, and everything is very slippery.
It’s a textbook example of EA’s dueling ideologies when it comes to FIFA, where it doesn’t really matter if the animations are pulled from genuine moves if they look like they’re done in bullet time from The Matrix.
However, this does not mean that the performance is all bad. Another major addition to FIFA 23 is speeding up acceleration styles of long, controlled, explosive sprints, which is a great idea in theory that in practice also leads to some really amazing and authentic moments.
Playing tricky players like Raheem Sterling and watching him sneak around the edge of the box to push towards goal, with his signature run in the game too, similar to how he has done for England, Man City and now Chelsea throughout the years. he can’t help but bring a smile to his face.
In other areas, however, the balancing act reappears, such as the difficult task of making the system powerful and visible in the game, but not massively overpowering the backlines. Some explosive players suddenly feel like they’re running through molasses and heavy guys racking up impregnable heads of steam.
Player speed also feels like it’s very condensed in FIFA 23, something I agree with as a change. When you watch real football, outright mismatches in terms of speed are relatively rare and very context dependent, but when you put a binary number on things like pace, even players who are more dedicated to realism are going to throw up their hands like their speed. . the attacker is pulled by a tractor beam by a slower defender.
Nowhere is the dissonance between fantasy and realism stronger than in Career Mode. Another one of EA Sports’ impossible tasks is that die-hard players just get too good at the game with hundreds of hours of practice, so every obstructing AI winger must dribble like the best Maradona or you win every game 7 -0.
Taking things to a competitive level then turns every match into an tit-for-tat ding-dong, which again breaks the delicate suspension of disbelief that Plymouth Argyle are really scrapping for the Champions League, or whatever headcanon you’re throwing around. (because that’s what they’re doing even if no fairies or wizards are involved, folks).
It doesn’t help that Career Mode feels less loved compared to the esteem held by its dedicated player base. There are new cutscenes, transfer ratings, and a revamped presentation style, but they’re ultimately superfluous to the game. However, what makes you feel really sidelined is the presence of apparent bugs that mar the match experience.
One I’ve seen across multiple saves since release is that substituted players get a terrible match rating regardless of how well they played, with things like a two-goal performance yielding a 4.0 out of 10 rating.
Not only does this affect their overall growth and progression – seeking out the best child prodigies and turning them into overpowered superstars is the whole point of the gameplay – it also seeps into the introductory portions of the game. You start getting questions at press conferences about your free-scoring players being out of shape (they haven’t), as well as news lamenting their poor performances (which didn’t happen), and it quickly becomes an experience unsatisfactory
It’s surprising things like this weren’t fixed before launch and it’s easy to read this as an indication that Career Mode is under-resourced. That’s also surely the only explanation for the new “play as a real manager” option being in the state it is too. Customizable managers have been a thing for a few years now, and in FIFA 23 you can bring one of the face-scanning managers like Jurgen Klopp to a new club or play as him in charge of Liverpool instead of kicking him out for your creation. a-manager as in previous games.
However, FIFA 23 has more admin licenses than scans, meaning you can play as some “real admins” cobbled together by the character creator. While it could be argued that it’s a minor feature, it was touted as a standout piece of FIFA 23’s Career Mode, but it’s very hard to argue that this portrayal of “Mikel Arteta” lives up to the quality of a triple-A game. which generated hundreds of millions in profits last year.
Much has been made of FIFA 23 being the latest game in the FIFA series, with EA cutting ties with world football’s governing body to pursue licensing relationships of its own. Some questions have been raised about the tantalizing prospect of delaying things to start EA Sports FC off strong, and you have to wonder if one of those possible things is an overhaul of faceless scanned players, managers and characters.
Even some of the apparently older scans are beginning to stand out: Oliver Giroud’s toupee is so large it looks like he’s wearing a Marie Antoinette wig.
Rather, Ultimate Team is even more vibrant and engaging than ever, further refining the live service tricks EA has learned from the games’ most popular battle passes, weekly challenges, and other hooks.
The barrier to playing the best players and special cards is all but gone, with tons of friendly game modes that let you use borrowed players and icons in perpetuity, single player objectives that give you packs, special cards, and loads of coins, too. such as more flexible team formation and less player maintenance.
The lower stakes game modes make things less fervent, but the inconsistencies leading to open matches still have you shaking your head in despair, before you inevitably jump back into another wide-eyed clash where you almost you can feel the melanin seeping out. your gray hair from stress.
The compelling intensity can’t help but make me think of all the stories of people playing the game and spending too much on player packs. Although there is some word of mouth to get people to split their purchases by requiring different button inputs in the store, you have to think if there isn’t a genuinely addictive element, why do you need these checks and balances?
But keeping things on the pitch, FIFA 23 is still absolutely fascinating, very frustrating, incredibly realistic, and very silly. It’s endlessly playable, but just like real football, the search for the perfect model continues.
Tested on PS5, Ultimate Edition code (which included 4600 FIFA Points) provided by the publisher.
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