FIFA-21
EA’s annual soccer game (football for most of the world) released with high expectations. Would EA finally be able to deliver a game that the community has asked for? Will the game be another crude copy of a previous issue? Questions like these were on the mind of every football fan around the world.
Unfortunately for EA, they completely missed the mark. For the first time in years, FIFA introduced many new features to all its game modes. Career Mode got a plethora of “new” features, Volta got a new storyline, and the overall gameplay got some neat new features. Even with all these changes, FIFA 21 does not seem to be a different game compared to its older counterpart.
Career Mode is something that the FIFA community has been frustrated with for the past several titles. The previous real change in the game mode that introduced some substance to the game was the introduction of Player Career Mode. Now, about a decade later, not much has changed. The big changes to the past few titles were the addition of interactive scenes as a manager, however, these did not carry on to players. This point exemplifies what is wrong with FIFA 21. The changes made to career mode this year are good, the addition of interactive simulation, the new schedule, and training system, and the long-awaited loan with an option to buy, are all features that have heightened the career mode experience. However, these changes seem to be littered over the same old FIFA game.
The changes seem almost cosmetic. The interactive simulation of matches is the best feature among all the others, but it is not a new one. This system of match simulation has been in previous FIFA titles and was something that should have never been taken off. The schedule and training system is innovative, but it still needs a lot of work. To make this feature better, it needs to be accurate to how teams train in real life. If we are given a scheduling option for training players, we should be given the option to train the entire team on some days and focus on certain players on other days. Finally, the loan with an option to buy deal is great. It allows users to play with smaller clubs to make more substantial transfers and can help users attempting a road-to-glory track get better players they would not have been able to afford otherwise. Once more, this does not feel like a lot. For this to work, EA would need to change the way that money is handled in FIFA. By making money harder to come by, it would make the new option a lot more viable.
Career Mode is not the only aspect of FIFA 21 that has gotten a lot of changes. VOLTA is back and, just as the debut story did, is fun and a breath of fresh air. The one great thing about the past two titles, including this one, has been VOLTA. Yet, it was still too little too late. The one drawback of VOLTA is that is short with almost no offline replayability. For the game mode to really take off, there should be an introduction of some sort of career mode.
Gameplay changes are not abundant, but they have made noticeable changes. The way the users’ play has changed with a greater focus on dribbling and tackling, however, there are a lot of problems as well. Playing the game, it almost feels scripted. In sports games like FIFA, scripting occurs when the game improves the AI when they are losing and this makes the game extremely unrealistic. It spoils the entire game when you are easily winning only to have the game benefit the opponent to allow them to get back in the match.
These drawbacks rest on another major problem with FIFA 21, the game does not feel like a new game. The fact that the FIFA 21 game issued for Nintendo Switch is practically FIFA 20, something they did with the previous year’s title as well, goes to show that the game has not changed enough. EA has been riding the ropes with most of its sports games for quite a while. Each year, users are upset to notice that they spend over $60 dollars for the same game with tweaks in the graphics and player stats.
EA needs to add some substantial changes in the next FIFA title for it to be a success in the eyes of the users. For over a decade now, users have slowly started losing their patience waiting for a great game that has simply not arrived.