FIFA 22 is EA’s latest football simulator. Its effective monopoly over the football gaming market for the last fifteen or so years has frustrated many. Recent releases in particular have seen the franchise move away from feeling like a football simulator, and more akin to a pin-ball machine with its fast and frantic gameplay. With no other viable options for lovers of both gaming and football, it’s hoped that EA have remedied the glaring gameplay issues with the release of FIFA 22.
Gameplay:
This year’s edition of FIFA does have a notably different feel to it. Much of this is seemingly down to the introduction what the EA marketing team has called “Hypermotion Technology”, exclusively available for next-gen versions of the game.The technology, heralded by EA as the main selling point for FIFA 22, recorded real-life 11-a-side football matches via motion capture suits to implement over 4,000 new player animations into the game. In-game aerial duels, or ‘kinetic air battles’, feel significantly different this year, while passing also has a notable pizzazz to it with all the new animations. Some players have found the game to be ‘heavy’ as a result of its introduction, but the added weight serves to slow the game down, forcing players to make more considered in-game decisions. In comparison to last year’s game, with its heavy slant toward fast-counter attacks and long through-balls as an effective means of scoring goals, attacking play presently feels much more balanced. It has now been made a viable strategy to pass through your opponent and methodically break them down by triggering runs into dangerous spaces. Crosses have also become a viable option, as opposed to FIFA 21 where they were virtually obsolete. This means that physical, aerially proficient forwards such as Erling Haaland and Romelu Lukaku have found a prominent place in many players’ teams. There seem to be tangible benefits in using a player like Haaland or Lukaku to jostle and push defenders out of the way to get the ball and win headers as the game allows you to really feel the benefits of their physicality. Additionally, with more varied attacking patterns at their disposal, AI-controlled footballers feel far more intelligent than in past iterations of the game.
These changes seem to alter the game’s ‘meta’, which is gaming slang for a dominant strategy, as a result of the common use of the most effective tactics available to players. I’ve really enjoyed facing the different array of tactics my opponents have been utilising this time around. In FIFA 21, it could often feel like you were playing the same match over and over again, but this hasn’t been my experience of FIFA 22. Last year, fast attacking players with lean builds and good dribbling dominated the game; they found a place in almost every player’s team. Spammable skill moves such as the bridge are no longer very effective, a welcome relief after how overpowered they were last year where they created a game that often felt very arcade-like and unrealistic. This year, skill moves are still useful in the right areas when timed correctly but are much less spammable. Pace, although still important, is not the ‘be all and end all’ that it was previously. Slower forwards with good dribbling stats such as Jadon Sancho and Diogo Jota feel excellent in game, while players with good passing stats are both very effective and enjoyable to use. This diversity in terms of gameplay has meant that I’ve found FIFA 22 has been the most effective FIFA I’ve played in terms of functioning as a simulation of a real-life football match.
As always, there are still issues with EA’s latest cash generator. Using a finesse shot outside the box seems to almost always result in a goal, even when using players with poor shooting stats. Shooting inside the box has been much less effective, with goalkeepers saving nearly every 1 on 1. These issues have been somewhat addressed in a recent patch that came out on the 14th of October. While shots from inside the box do seem to be more effective, goalkeepers remain disproportionately strong, unless they face finesse shots from outside the box which still beat them on most occasions. Defending feels very similar to FIFA 21, however player switching feels awkward and clunky, particularly when the opponent plays a through ball. This has been a big source of frustration in my time playing the game.
Other Modes:
Unfortunately, the influence of micro-transactions can be felt across FIFA’s game modes. This is particularly notable in the FUT mode, something I go into more detail in in the Print Issue of TN2 (that article should be online shortly!). If EA invested half as much time into career mode or volta, the game would be much more well-rounded. However, investing more resources into FIFA’s other modes would risk FUT players playing them instead, thus reducing the number of players spending money on FIFA points. This has the effect of seriously inhibiting the creative possibilities of FIFA. In career mode, there is the new create a club mode, which allows you to create your own team, badge, kit and stadium. This is a welcome addition, and it’s fun to design your own kit. Despite this, it’s clear that not much thought has gone into it as many players would have liked. Puzzlingly, after you first choose your kit and stadium, you’re able to customise your stadium as you start your career, but not your kit, so your team will wear the same kit as they did in your first season as they would in your sixth. You’re also unable to customize the kit of your goalkeeper at all, which means that, after pouring time into creating your outfield kits, their goalkeeper is assigned their own kit at random, meaning it could be completely inconsistent with the colour scheme of the rest of the team. Aside from the create a club option, little if anything has changed about manager career mode in FIFA 22, which is very disappointing for a mode that is still much loved with bags and bags of potential. Player career mode has more positive changes, such as now finally being able to come on as a sub. However, team selection and transfer activity can still be extremely bizarre and confusing. My manager sold all the team’s left backs, yet we had five right-backs in the squad. Volta is just straight up weird; no one plays it, so it is often either a chore or a lost cause trying to find a game. It still plays very similar to normal FIFA in terms of gameplay, which isn’t in keeping with the mode’s frivolity. It’s clearly trying to emulate FIFA Street, yet it is missing the crucial element which made FIFA Street so good: fun. The less said about Seasons, the better.
Conclusion:
Overall, FIFA 22 constitutes an improvement on previous recent iterations of the game. Hypermotion Technology has genuinely improved gameplay, and with next-gen graphics the game looks phenomenal. Microtransactions, however, will dominate the story of FIFA for as long as they continue to exist. Sadly, EA don’t need to change this, as FIFA is still far and away the best football simulator available on the market (especially with the shambolic direction PES has now taken with ‘e-Football’). It is clear that FIFA will continue to rake in the cash, regardless of how it treats its players.
