EA Sports annual soccer juggernaut arrives on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to less fanfare than usual. With association football leagues in a strange state of limbo at the moment, it’s easy to see why. Konami decided to skip producing a new football game this year, releasing the updated cut-price PES 2021 Season Update instead. FIFA 21 goes virtually unopposed to store shelves and digital marketplaces this year, promising refinements and added depth to offline modes while adding new features to their lucrative FIFA Ultimate Team mode.
Some of the aforementioned refinements are welcome, a few are even innovative. But there are fundamental problems with the game itself that undo many of these wins. Coupled with a bizarre ‘digging in’ after years of criticism over EA’s microtransaction implementation, FIFA 21‘s fanbase will have mixed emotions.
…and in this case, the pudding is a football.
Before we discuss the merits of FIFA 21‘s various modes, we should discuss the single-player game of football as simulated by EA. This year it retains the arcade feel that FIFA basks in, sometimes to its detriment. Players in FIFA 21 are unrealistically agile in the turn and can accelerate like a drag racer. Dribbling is, again, too easy with a ‘slippery’ feel to tricks. FIFA 21 wants you to artlessly waggle your right stick to do tricks that look as ridiculous and as they are ineffective in real life.
Physics are non-existent when performing tricks. Animations aren’t tied what’s going on with the position of the ball or the opponent so replays of your ‘best’ tricks looks won’t look right.
Defensive AI is abysmal. Tactical or Legacy – the game seems averse to any fewer than six goals per game. 1-2 passes, especially delayed ones, will cause the opposition defence to collapse – 1v1s with goalkeepers happen many times per game. There is little satisfaction to be had scoring any type of goal as FIFA 21 gifts you everything.
Passing, even on semi-assisted, is the skill-less ping-pong play that offends a few people but delights many more. You may love it, you may hate it.
The most upsetting quirk has to be the lack of off-the-ball movement. When a supreme passer is on the ball in eFootball PES 2021, I instinctively scan the field for a run to time a threaded pass into but in FIFA 21 the players simply stand still until instructed to move by the player. Randomly trying through balls is the only option and shamefully, this works sometimes.
Lacking Their Usual Polish
Right from starting the game, an impression of incompletion is visible. That is to say the EA Sports jingle stutters on PS4 Pro (1080 mode, no supersampling).
The next rips in your fantasy happen on the field at least. Objects fail to load in before the cut-scenes begin – goalposts pop in before matches, scarves and jerseys appear on supporters’ model. It’s so sloppy from a series that does presentation so well. There is a weird visual glitch that makes the top of the some stadiums’ goal nets invisible from some camera angles.
Less frequent but more annoying is the frame-rate. It can be choppy on occasion – online or off. It’s especially noticeable in player career mode with cut-scenes of our player stuttering often. Thankfully the worst skips and jumps are mostly kept away from the action.
Offline Mode Improvements
There is no marquee signing for FIFA this year. No new gimmick or mode to sell FIFA 21 on. Instead, some much needed improvements find their way to offline career modes. Manager mode copies some of the fundamentals from PES 2021‘s dangerously addictive Master League.
Namely a somewhat robust squad training system, coach mode and enhanced stat tracking. These make you feel more like the boss – not to the extent of Football Manager but a huge step forward. I spent far more time on my players’ stats looking for weakness and deficiencies on a per-game basis. There were times when I sweated over training or pondered over a contract like I have never done in a FIFA title.
Matches can be simmed immediately like the FIFAe (plural) or yore or players can watch the game play out to their tactics. It’s somewhere between PES’s Coach Mode and FM in general. The biggest difference is the ability to jump in at any time – this is a great idea that many will use when the AI isn’t doing the job. Quite a few will forego this feature to preserve the enhanced RPG feeling of FIFA 21‘s manager mode.
Another addition from PES is players having something like a personality – potential signings may not like how you play football or may be unenthused about joining a team decked out in their favoured position. These may seem basic for 2020 but unrealistic signings undermined manager mode in the past.
Managing Immersion
Manager models may not be new but they are used far more effectively in FIFA 21. The detail of known gaffers is excellent and their appearances in cut-scenes, on-field and off, add much to each occasion. The user-made managers and players benefit from deep and wide creation tools.
The templates are varied though mostly unmanagerial, once you select your type, you can change a bewildering array of inputs to make some very convincing characters. Off-field attire and accessories are small details but add to each mode’s illusion of real football people doing real football things.
Cos We’re Gonna Play FUTball…
Online modes only see real improvement in the money-spinning Ultimate Team mode. The complex system of tutorial rewards, competitions and divisions still furnish players with packs or the in-game currency with which to buy packs. The game then offers a vast selection of items to enhance players or uninjure them.
EA have removed the fitness card and players now recover instantly after games. This is a welcome concession that hardcore players have pined for for years. There will result in less time wasted on applying fitness cards or stockpiling them when they pop up on the marketplace.
EA also have removed a type of training card that vastly boost the stats of the bearer for one game. This card could unbalance online games completely when applied to the right player or players. Subsequently those with limited shame but unlimited resources often paid to exploit these cards. The less-powerful long-use training cards remain; something that surprised me as some reports had stated otherwise.
Home Ground
The biggest addition has to be stadium creation. A combination of completing defined challenges, tiered XP progression and cards allows users to build up their stadium. Players can choose different ground styles, add Tifo gear, change seat colours etc. and it is as cool as it sounds. It may be single biggest reason for lapsed or disillusioned FUTballers to get back onto Ultimate Team.
It must be said that the increasing complexity of Ultimate Team had become intimidating to newer players. To counteract this, there is an extensive tutorial. This tutorial comes with a host of handy rewards to get you started. The incentives are folded into the opening challenges of FUT with the tutorial itself being well integrated into the mode.
It’s unfortunate that Pro Clubs has been left aside as it is still the most compelling one-character mode offered. Building a club with friends in this mode is a still a worthy endeavour but it deserves to be so much more.
VOLTA Only Highlights FIFA’s Flaws
The loud and obnoxious spawn of FIFA Street returns. Without a Journey mode, FIFA is relying on VOLTA’s mission stream to provide some sense of story and it doesn’t work. The acting is awful, the situations are annoying and the cameos are so cheesy that I started to skip cut-scenes as soon as a familiar face appears.
The rewards for progressing through the story mode is stuff to wear on the pitch and the means with which to buy stuff to wear on the pitch. Pointless.
The football itself is still a caffeinated version of an-already-too-arcadey football game. Players are encouraged to use the unrealistic tricks with an even less realistic regularity. Games of VOLTA resemble sped-up tai chi with a ball unconvincingly superimposed over the screen, it doesn’t look like soccer at all.
Some People Will Love It and Most People Will Still Buy It
It was ambitious of EA to attempt to make any meaningful improvements to FIFA 21. With a pandemic forcing most people to work from home, EA could have released a cut-price season update and explained that to their shareholders. Instead, we get an unfinished FIFA update at full price.
Review code provided by PR
