![]() ![]() ![]() First up, fitness cards have been scrapped. If you feel loot boxes should go in the bin right alongside Project Big Picture and Ronaldo's top knot, FUT will continue to leave a bad taste in your mouth.Īt least EA has made some welcome changes to the mode. While you can unlock packs by grinding through online matches, it's far quicker to buy them by ponying up actual money. If you've been stuck on a desert island playing with Panini stickers for the past five years, FUT lets you build custom squads by opening card packs containing players and cosmetic items, like new kits or club badges. FIFA's card-collecting mode has received a lot of bad press over the years, and the continuing presence of pay-to-win features feel as tone deaf as ever. FUT it outĪnd then there's Ultimate Team. It's a decent compromise that ensures the more obsessive of us can take our teams' fates back into our hands at any given moment. The good news is you can wrestle control back with a single button press. A word of warning though: give the AI the keys to your team and you can expect to concede a lot. My experience? It's a handy and semi efficient way of skipping games during a seriously long 38-match season. ![]() Presented in top-down tactical menus, you're free to make subs and formations changes on the fly as you chew your nails while the AI tries to win matches for your club. The biggest Career Mode addition comes in the form of new sim features that let you play out matches like Football Manager lite. Balancing a competitive squad over a 38 game season is a stressful yet rewarding challenge.īalancing a competitive squad over a 38 game season is a stressful yet rewarding challenge. Sharpness is also affected by giving players sustained runs in your first eleven. Playing out fitness minigames in real-time ensures your players are as sharp as possible, while simming sessions lessens their impact. On that note, FIFA's non-FUT headline mode has received welcome improvements with a renewed focus on training and squad management. Yet even though I've regularly rinsed fullbacks with the likes of Arsenal's Nicola Pépé, FIFA 21 has a newfound respect for careful build-up play. Are speedy wingers still super effective for those times you catch rival teams on the back foot? Absolutely. Now that it's marginally easier to dribble past opposition defenders, attacks no longer have to rely so much on brute pace and savvy counters. While ball movement occasionally feels upsettingly artificial-more on the series' wayward physics shortly-there's no denying FIFA 21 plays a better game of football than last year's entry. This time out, movement feels more freeform, with unpredictable spaces opening up on the pitch in a way that just didn't happen in FIFA 20. Far too often, players in FIFA 20 felt like they were stuck on an invisible eight-directional axis-like their movement was inhibited by some unseen footballing force. The good news for sports gamers who aren't in a rush to play the latest season, however, is that Game Pass is increasingly becoming a better option for getting all the action.Before I start going studs up on FIFA 21, EA deserves credit for making the on-pitch action feel less sterile and predictable. It makes sense that publishers will want to keep titles available for purchase at launch to get money from diehard fans, using services like Game Pass as a way to boost the tail end of a life cycle and hold interest until the next iteration. The company was surprisingly able to get Sony's MLB The Show on its service in time for its launch in April, but FIFA's arrival comes seven months after the title was first made available last October. Instead, those looking for that edition will still need to buy their own copy (currently $40 at a host of retailers after being $70 at launch).Īnd while the addition of more major titles is always welcome, to be truly perfect Microsoft still has work to do in adding games closer to their release dates. 2K's NBA 2K21, for example, has made the Xbox One version of its basketball game available as part of Game Pass but not the next-gen upgrade. The inclusion of a next-gen version of FIFA 21 is a nice win for owners of Microsoft's latest consoles, something not all publishers have done. FIFA 21, which is part of EA Play, which Microsoft bundled into its Game Pass Ultimate service last year, will follow the lead of titles like Madden 21 and MLB The Show 21 with versions available for the Xbox One as well as next-gen optimized editions for those with an Xbox Series X or Series S. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |