Lazy Dribble

Will EA Sports manage to transform football video games with their latest FC25? Or are we getting a lazy rehash of FC24? It’s EA, you know the drill

FC25
Rating: 3/5
Developer: EA Sports 
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: PC, XBO, XBS, PS4, PS5
Price: Rs 4,999

FC24 marked the shift of EA Sports from its formulaic FIFA games to what we hoped were greener pastures. With the latest FC25, it seems Electronic Arts has just moved back into its comfort zone and decided that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Before we get to what’s broken, let’s get to what’s nice about the game.

FC25 is fun to play both solo and with friends. The career mode offers a nice game mode and lets you build your player through football matches and things you do in your free time. The same goes for the manager mode; it is truly fun to manage the nitty gritty of handling a club, which takes it from a sports game to a strategy management game fairly smoothly. Ultimate Team is also great but could affect your pocket negatively. All of this could be used to describe FC24 as well.

The only thing new about FC25 is Rush. The commentators in the main game are good this time around, but play enough of it, and you will hear them repeat things over and over again. I think in this glorious age of AI; it may be time to have the text mix and voice AI-generated. That way, I don’t have to select my player’s name from a list of random names that the game has prerecorded. 

Rush is great—don’t get me wrong—I love it. What is it? Well, it’s a 5-on-5 game with an AI goalie. Technically, it’s 4-on-4, and it’s a smaller play area with some changes in the rules, including when offside comes into play. It’s wild and fast, and it has a very annoying commentator. It seems a little similar to Volta, but I like this one better. Is it worth an entire new FC game… No.

Something I wish they worked on would be the graphics. It is so weird. Sometimes the game looks amazing, especially during the game itself. But as soon as things zoom in, every player looks awkward; there is not a single option in the career mode that doesn’t look weird and doesn’t have weird expressions in the game. I also don’t understand the POV (Point Of View) playback. It is done so stupidly and randomly; there is POV when a player change is called, and it sometimes triggers with goals, but usually with the ones you don’t even want to see the highlights off. It also looks super ugly. POV is such a unique thing on a game like this could do, but execution is poor throughout. Overall, graphics also don’t seem to have received any love. 

FC25 is the same old game reworked EA style for a re-release as a new title. I think it is time EA consider making FC a game service. As much as I hate game services, I think there is a good argument to be made for one here. That way, your game can continuously improve, you can constantly update stats, and you can charge people a ton of money without having to invent new terms and make up new names for things that were already in the game. 

Should you get this version of EA’s football game? If you owned the previous version, don’t see why you need to be bothered. Honestly, I had to reinstall the FC24 to see what had changed, but it wasn’t much. Sure, Rush is fun, but again, this could be a live game service, and it could easily be one of the new modes introduced; I don’t see why it needs a whole new game that EA’s patrons are now forced to buy.

Now that I have said that, despite its faults, FC is a pretty reliable football game, and it is still fun to play, especially with friends, which is true for the previous game as well. So, I would say hold on to FC24 if you still have it and play that instead. However, if you are playing an older FIFA game, this may be a nice point to upgrade to the latest version or pick FC24 up for a bargain price.

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