You can call a fish whatever you want, but if it has scales, lives underwater and is at constant risk of being caught by a guy with a rod, it’s a fish.
The same goes for EAFC 24. They’ve not tried that hard to rebrand it; even the name has only adjusted two letters and shuffled them around, but I think I had a little bit of hope that things might be different since the FIFA split. I hoped maybe they’d need to up their game, but did I believe it? No. That’s why I’ve waited for it to come for free this month before playing. EA had enough of my money already, thank you very much.
The problem with FIFA is that I believe their Ultimate Team mode is fundamentally what gamers really want, and it’s broken. A chance to build and personalise a team, a chance to compete in single-player and online modes, whatever suits your playstyle. Building a stadium is always fun, and creating your own online identity has proven popular for everything from Grand Theft Auto to Fallout 4. Building, creating, moving forwards; that’s what we want from a game. It’s no longer enough to just manage Lincoln City (with the best of the three kits missed off the game) through a few seasons; Football Manager does that better. No, the magic for me is in Ultimate Team, and whilst I played a few friendlies (offline) to get to grips with the game, it wasn’t long before I dipped into FUT (sorry, it’s obviously not FUT anymore, the fish has been renamed).
I’ve played FUT almost since the beginning and noticed it evolve, perhaps not for the best. At first, it could get to March, but you were still hoping for that elusive Sergio Aguero gold card to pop up. I recall playing for a few weeks, and my best player was still an 80-rated Bernard card. I remembered getting Vidal as a Christmas SBC back in 2021 (I think) and thinking all my festive presents had come at once. However, that felt like realism. I had to fight hard for minor gains and felt a real surge of delight when I managed to swap Danny Welbeck for Gabriel Jesus. Chemistry made sense, and while it wasn’t perfect, it did feel a bit like real football.
EAFC 24 is the complete opposite. Back in the day, I’d kick off my first game trying to get a team full of unknown Chinese players to find Welbeck with a big kick. My first game on the latest version saw Socrates sitting in midfield, with Kane and Haaland battling for a place up top. How is that a place to start? I get that access to the big players is a good thing (it took me six months to save enough coins for Brian Laudrop once), but I don’t see beginners having access to top squads as a good thing. There has to be some challenge, surely?
It gets worse. After one game, I had a note in my objectives telling me I’d achieved something. I was excited, only to discover I’d achieved a lot. It seemed every kick had got me a pack to open, two untradeable players, and loads of stuff for my stadium. I’m not interested in that – stick me at the Millentor and that’s it, I don’t need streamers, tifos (whatever they are) and entrance music. I don’t want Forest Green’s badge either, thank you very much. Certainly not twice.
After what seems like an hour of wading through notifications, I get to pack opening (another hour), but then get a little glimpse of blue, rather than gold. I’ve only gone and got a special player, how exciting! These used to be Team of the Week players, versions of a normal player with a little boost. This time, out strutted Sammy Szmodics of Blackburn. ‘Great’ was my first thought, until I saw he was rated at 90. 90! For that diving…… whatever.
Another game, another host of objectives and another special. I watched as the reveal unfolded. Spanish, Central midfielder. Real Madrid. I’m trying to work out who it is when a girl called Teresa walks out. Baffled. In the same opening session, I got a big defender called Liam Scales, highly-rated, to sit in the middle of my defence.
It seems on this version, the women and men are absolute equals, and Teresa, a 93 card is actually better than the Laudrop I saved up six months for. To be fair, she’s been a monster in my team, but when I watched her muscle Casimero off the ball in one game, I was a little dubious about how Ultimate Team had developed, not least because she laid on Szmodics, who scored a worldie from 25-yards out. He’s keeping Socrates out of the team now, but I suppose with no ‘dive’ button and more powerups than Pac-Man, it’s not surprising. EAFC tries to be fun, it tries to blend the men’s and women’s game and make heroes out of the ordinary players, but it just feels like a mess.
I get that EA has tried to make the game more inclusive. I can handle that as I’m not Joey Barton (even when Sue Smith popped up in commentary). However, in my 20th game, I’m seeing players I’d previously not been able to buy after two months be discarded on a simple squad-building challenge, thank to me getting cards that are too powerful by far. That might be a French female central midfielder or a bizarrely powered-up male Celtic defender.
There’s another issue. The packs are meant to be random, but after ten matches, I’d done something special and got eight packs to open, with all two players. The little bit of blue flashed, then Ireland…. then defender…. then Celtic. Out walked Liam Scales. Again. As an untradeable card, all I could do was discard him, done and dusted. Heartbreaking. Five games later and after five assists with a through ball from a Dutch player whose middle name is Ruud (or something), I saw the little flash of blue. I didn’t wait to see what happened after the Irish flag. This Team of the Season thing, is it just 11 versions of untradeable Liam Scales?
I’m a solo player, so this morning I collected my Squad Battles rewards for finishing in Gold 1 (I don’t play a lot). I got two special players, but when I opened the packet, it didn’t even do a walkout like my 90-rated Slovakian defender didn’t warrant a special entrance. I got 9,000 coins, once upon a time not enough to buy you a left-sided West Ham midfielder, which I put with last week’s haul to get a special Joe Cole card with more pace than my car to replace the special Joe Cole card I got on a 30-game loan at the start of the game. Liam Scales popped out again (tradeable this time, for 23,000 coins), as did 86-rated Dembele, a normal gold card with as much chance of getting in my team as Rashford does of lifting the European Championship this season.
Then I went into a game and lost connection after five minutes, despite my internet being stable and as fast as it’s ever been. Sigh. Some things never change.
EAFC 24 Ultimate Team is supposedly an improvement from previous years, but I feel like it has lost itself. I have Leif Davis as a left-back because he’s better than Roberto Carlos. Teresa has kept N’Golo Kante out of my side, a player I remember literally making me jump off my sofa when I packed him two years ago. The games are as predictable as ever, even if the engine feels as good as ever. Every so often, a little icon appears next to one of my players, but I’ve no idea what it means. I don’t care. I only used to play FUT to build my team, to craft a squad over several hours finely. Now, I have a team of world beaters from the start, with no aspirations of buying anyone because I seem to get world beaters for free.
It all feels a bit arcade-style, like the FIFA games of old. Sadly, most football games have gone that way, and I’m not quite sure what can save the genre.
I know one thing for sure. It’s not Liam Scales.