FIFA has always been one of those things that’s been in my life. For as long as I can remember I’ve been smashing the circle button on PlayStation. I remember a time where the joysticks used to come off and you’d have to play with just the metal sticks that poked up when the soft cushioning failed you. That was true pain.
But you know what they say, no pain, no gain.
In many ways I think this phrase could have been the main reason leading to me falling out of love with this game now that we’re onto FIFA 20.
I’ve played FIFA’s Ultimate Team (or FUT) Mode for years now, each year desperate to get all of my favourite and the best players. It’s often seemed impossible to get some of them, with the likes of Ronaldo and Messi consistently costing over 1,000,000 virtual coins.
This is what made the game interesting. It was difficult to get good players, and through different game modes within FUT, you were rewarded for creativity, using silver and bronze players in special tournaments.
Now, using silver and bronze players seems to be genuinely pointless, with no reward for being creative in your squads.
EVERYONE HAS THE SAME TEAM
This is one of the biggest issues. As there is no benefit to using worse players, you can predict the opposing team’s lineup before a game at about a 70% success rate, from a pool of about 30 different players. It’s boring. You play the same team almost every game, or some slight variation of this.
Everyone has good players, because if you put any amount of time into the game, completing the squad building challenges and competing weekly in the “weekend league”, you get very good rewards. Add all of this to those that have spent obscene amounts of money on packs, you get the mess that we have now with FIFA 20.
As can be seen above, I’m not just complaining because everyone else has good players and I don’t. Because quite frankly my team is ridiculous. This is the same problem that I’ve always historically had with NBA 2k’s MyTeam feature: everyone’s teams are too good.
The gameplay is just not inspiring anymore, skills aren’t as effective and the only tactic that works is pace. Something that has historically been an issue with players such as Gabby Agbonlahor dominating in previous games despite being 75 overall. But would I prefer the old games now? Probably not.
This year, within a month of the game being released on consoles and being ecstatic when it did, I was “lucky” enough to get a Neymar Jr card in a pack. Surely this is a dream, a 92 rated player, arguably the best to play with on the game, going for over 1 million coins at the time? This has somehow ruined the game for me. It’s like being born into money (or so I imagine), I have no drive to hustle on the game and get better, to get better cards, because I was handed it all on the 2nd week. Since then I’ve had players like Hazard among many others in packs, the majority of which have come from doing squad building challenges.
I guess it’s a nice problem to have, having too many coins, pretty much being able to buy anyone you want. But even still, when you’re coming up against the same teams over and over again, it gets boring no matter who is on your team.
Either way, it’s clear from these ramblings that I’m not particularly happy with the game, but there’s nothing I can do to change that. I’ll just go back to playing my NBA2k Player Career (I’m on the Pelicans and just managed to put a career high 47 past James Harden and the Rockets, now that’s fun)
The Over-Analytical 