EA Sports FC 25 – is it any good? (Electronic Arts)
We’ve put the upcoming EA Sports FC 25 through its paces, with first impressions of Rush mode, FC IQ, and the tactics revamp.
If the trailers and deep dives coming out of EA, about this year’s new football game, have tried to emphasise anything, it is that EA Sports FC 25 will be quite different to its predecessor.
There are lots of new features being added and amongst the most noticeable additions is a new 5v5 game mode called Rush, a smarter AI with ‘FC IQ’, and a tactical revamp.
Our first impressions of EA Sports FC 25 are positive, as the new features are exciting and the tactics revamp, alongside the FC IQ upgrades, seems to open the door to new way of playing the game.
Rush is a lot of fun, as is successfully replaces street football mode Volta, with a simplified but intense football experience. The pitch is a lot smaller, it’s 5v5, but you’re still playing a stadium that houses thousands of fans.
The gameplay is all about one-on-ones and finding your way through the other team with clever passing combinations and dribbles. It’s intense, but it’s also exciting and rewarding, because you can expect a lot more goals than in a traditional 90-minute match.
Rush mode is similar to the Kings League, created by former Barcelona defender Gerard Pique. It also has a smaller pitch and fewer players per team, but Rush also has a blue card, which is given to offending players after serious fouls.
The player will then be side-lined for a set amount of time, before being able to come back on, but if the other team scores in the meantime the blue card timer decreases.
EA Sports FC 25 Rush mode, with the offside lines (Electronic Arts)
The creativity stops there unfortunately, and we can’t help but think that Rush would benefit from more wacky rules to make gameplay more unpredictable. The Kings League has additional cards that players can get, with one card counting goals as double and another giving your team an instant penalty shot, but it’s still a little underwhelming.
Another big change in EA Sports FC 25 is its tactics revamp, which is made very clear as soon as you log in, as Zinedine Zidane greets you in his office and stresses just how incredibly important tactics are, while the video cuts to him winning his three Champions League trophies as a coach.
What you learn soon after is that EA has removed some of the team and player-specific tactical instructions from EA Sports FC 24 and simplified the process. You can no longer tell a winger to stay up the pitch when you lose the ball, or select the width of the team shape.
Instead you now give each player a role in the team, just like in Football Manger, like false nine if you want them to drop deep to collect the ball, or falseback (the game’s interpretation of an inverted fullback) if …read more
Source:: Metro
