At the start of each new football season, many fans head to the stadium with a sense that everything will be different this time. Perhaps their team has been promoted or relegated, perhaps there have been new signings, or a new manager, bringing the promise of a fresh start and fresh possibilities. But once inside the ground, those fans have a drink with the same old pals, take their usual seat surrounded by recognisable faces before the familiar voice of the announcer rings out over the PA, followed by the club’s traditional song. At that point those fans will realise: nothing has really changed. This is football as it ever was and ever will be.
That’s also how it feels when switching on EA Sports FC 24. There may be a new name for the series, now that Fifa and Electronic Arts have parted ways. But you get the same inoffensive dance music, the same authentic teams and players, the same set of options: a quick and easy Kick-off; a Tournament mode; the Player and Manager career modes, where you guide a professional through their entire life in the game; the fun Volta street football mode; and of course Ultimate Team, where you buy packs of players to build your own squad of superstars. EA Sports hasn’t suddenly gone mad and introduced a futuristic anti-grav mode, or an option to rediscover the medieval roots of football as a chaotic mass brawl involving the entire population of a village chasing an inflated pig’s bladder. When you start playing, all your suspicions are confirmed: this is Fifa 24, minus one teeny-weeny multimillion dollar licence.
So what is new? Well, there’s a PlayStyles system which buffs each player’s stats with special skills relating to the abilities of their real-life counterparts. So Lionel Messi has the ”Technical ball control” PlayStyle while Lena Oberdorf boasts “Bruiser”, which means she can batter you off the ball with ease. Players often have several Playstyles, but only world-class players also have PlayStyle Plus, which is an overpowered signature move. This all adds variety to the matches and makes you think much more about how to utilise specific players.
There are also Evolutions, a new feature of Ultimate Team which let you level up your players with various skills so that you’re not so reliant on simply earning (or buying) better squad members via packs. You earn these upgrades via gameplay challenges, which is a nice idea borrowed from role-playing games. Indeed the whole game seems to be toying with RPG elements, which I think will be a key part of the series going forward because gamers have got used to endlessly levelling up and customising their characters. Why not in footie sims, too?
Beside all that, EA Sports 24 is really fun to play. There have been noticeable tweaks to its graphics engine and its much-heralded Hypermotion animation system, which uses real-life volumetric motion data from professional players and advanced machine learning to create super-responsive player movements and interactions. You see it in how they jostle each other, how they dive or stumble over incoming tackles, how they gear up to shoot a ball. The fluidity of the action is absolutely beguiling. There were occasions, seeing Marco Verratti making a ludicrously angled pass, or Sam Kerr volleying a shot into the far corner of the net, when I thought: “Did I really do that?” Playing with friends, there are many of these little unrepeatable moments of skill, loss, control and movement that make you all gasp, laugh or want to punch each other.
It’s easier to access the more sophisticated moves now too, due to a much improved tutorial system that trains you in individual elements of the game, and gives you objectives so you can try out what you’ve learned in match situations. There are even personalised tips: one I got was, “When trying to get the ball back you can tackle your opponent”, which I felt was a needlessly sarcastic yet accurate summation of my defensive shortcomings. I also like the stats overlaid on the pitch showing info about where most of your shots are coming from, or which of your players is the most knackered at the 70-minute stage. This is actually useful information that you can act on to improve your game.
When the licensing agreement between Fifa and EA ended, the football governing body’s outspoken president, Gianni Infantino, promised a new Fifa game in the future and said: “I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the Fifa name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans … the constant is the Fifa name and it will remain for ever and remain the best.” That statement is looking even more ludicrous now than it did back in May 2022. Unless Infantino is planning to go back in time and recruit the entire development team behind Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on the PlayStation 2, he is doomed to hubristic failure. EA Sports FC 24 may be wearing a new strip but it remains the superlative football sim of our time.
EA Sports FC 24 is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X from 29 September, £65
