Since FIFA and eFootball (née PES) have enjoyed such longevity and rivalry in the football game space, it’s tempting to liken them to the Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi of gaming. But that comparison would only really hold up if Ronaldo spent the last decade popping round to your house every week asking for 16 quid and Messi recently announced he’d be playing for free then subsequently forgot how to put on his boots. The genre is in a bad way.
For the last three iterations of FIFA, its own pro players have been publicly and passionately critical of the series, citing a match engine with too many random elements and boring, stale soccer. A consensus has formed that EA Sports is far more interested in taking in microtransaction payments from Ultimate Team than creating a believable and enjoyable simulation of the beautiful game, and although its story-led additions like the exploits of Alex Hunter and its Volta mode showed bigger ambitions, they didn’t address the fundamental problem: the football just isn’t very good.
