Review: EA Sports FIFA 23 – PlayStation 5
It’s in the Game, but The Game is not for Everyone!
Intro
Hello, dear readers! As you can probably remember, I am reviewing FIFA every year for almost a decade now. I grew up playing these games with neighbors, schoolmates and later online, with friends on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. All in all I’d say that I’m a FIFA fan for 30 years and that’s something, considering that I usually am not a lover of the beautiful game. I watched a bunch of televised matches, I’ve thrown away the ball as a kid in school, but not like others did.
This year I will do something different with the article. A dear friend of mine has requested to help because he knows I can no longer see and is also a huge FIFA fan. As you well know, I usually am the only one to write articles here, but this time I am glad to let Dan bring you his views because he can write very well, he is, as I said, a FIFA enthusiast and for those of you who aren’t impaired in any way, it is important to have a different opinion about this year’s release.
Before I pass the digital quill to Dan, I want to tell you that I played football games from Electronic Arts since 1993, when I was loading titles from audio cassettes. The game was called International Soccer and alongside my childhood buddy, Adi, I was spending days on end customizing teams, players and matches. Even more interesting is the fact that we were forced to do everything all over again every time because there was no save game option.
I’ll leave Dan to tell you about FIFA 23 and after that I will end this piece by speaking a little about my frustrations with the way EA handled accessibility and about how they can save some face with updates and with next year’s EA Sports FC 24.
FIFA 23 review by Dan Oprișan
Greetings, FIFA fans! Here we are with a new iteration of the number one football game in the industry. I don’t say this as a major fanboy (although have been playing since FIFA 94), but more from a marketing and sales standpoint. It has been extremely difficult over the years for anyone to come even close to the level that EA has taken its flagship product. And that is bad, too bad for customers. When there’s no viable competition, your quality drops. Especially in the case of yearly iterations. But that’s not the story here, we’re about to talk about a special edition of EA’s FIFA.
And we say special because according to Electronic Arts, this is going to be the last year when they can use the FIFA name for their moneymaker. Apparently, not many things will change, except the name. It remains to be seen if, together with losing the rights to use the name, they will also lose of the other licenses for competitions, players, etc. It shouldn’t happen since those are licensed by FIFPro and that falls under a separate agreement, according to EA.
So, what is in there for the last title? Well, it feels like a celebration to some extent, they have done a few changes, but in general, EA is following a particular calendar with regards to functionalities within the game.
In terms of graphics (we’ve played Ultimate Edition on a PS5 using a Sony 4K non-OLED TV), this year seems better than last year’s edition. There are more animations, they seem more fluid and more natural to the human being movement, and they are only in part due to EA’s HyperMotion2 technology. The other bit is PS5’s huge processing power that makes these animations feel like a breeze. The PS fan isn’t starting up (using a digital code, so no need to run a disc, can really listen to the sound), the image is stable and runs smoothly, the game – from a graphical standpoint – looks really impressive.
Talking about Ultimate Team, which is the first priority for the game publisher since that is where they make the most money, the dynamic of the game follows the patterns of years’ past. The gameplay seems chunky, players move really slow, things seem out of context. But they’re meant to be like this. There would be no difference between a player’s base card and then a special one released for Team of the Year/Season or any other special event. So they have to be slow in the beginning. Otherwise, no more money, no more interest for players to keep paying. And playing. See how much of a difference the letter “L” makes? 🙂
Ultimate Team does not have major differences when it comes to last year’s version, except one element that personally, I think it will help to attract more novice players to this area of the game and consequently, boost people’s competence levels: Moments. This is a new addition this year and it’s essentially rewarding players for doing the practice moves that they would be doing in other iterations of the game, without getting anything in return. This year, you’re getting points (stars) through a separate system, which you can then exchange for packs. It’s a welcome move that makes people aware of the changes in the player dynamics, much more than in FIFA22, for example.
As I said in the beginning, because I’ve been playing these titles since the ’94 version (before many of you were born, God, I’m old!!), I would give you some pro tips especially when it comes to Ultimate Team as I know a lot of you are playing it. First and most important one is: know your limits. Do not play over your comfort zone. Meaning when it frustrates you more than it excites/relaxes you, put the controller down or change the game. Second pro tip: if you expect top performance, use top equipment. Wired connection instead of WiFi, REALLY good TV, gaming chair as you’re gonna be playing more than just 2-3 matches. All of these provide small benefits, but they add up. And when you make that pass in the 89th minute, wishing you can score a late equaliser, trust me, you need every millisecond to help you out. Third pro tip: use FUTBIN on your phone. You can make SBCs (Squad Building Challenges for those that are unaware), work on your squad, trade cards, etc. It really helps, especially in the case of those “older” players that have limited time in front of the console because they have to babysit at the same time. Shoutout to parents playing FIFA!
Moving onto Career Mode, this year got me back into playing it. And that is for one simple reason: the addition of Ted Lasso. I have to say, the Apple TV+ series (40 Emmy nominations, 11 wins!!!) has got me hooked on it. I’ve come to appreciate Jason Sudeikis’ performance as coach Lasso but also other actors that blend in really well with the story. Roy Kent, played by Brett Goldstein, is also an integral part of the show. Anyway, this is a FIFA-related article, so enough about TV shows. My point was, this is the number two series in my all-time list of favourites, after Friends. And having the possibility to play as Coach Lasso or train AFC Richmond (or use the crest in UT, or have Ted Lasso as my manager in UT) is definitely something that I wasn’t expecting but something that really got FIFA23 to my heart. It’s a great marketing move and one that will appeal to fans across the globe. Other than this, Career Mode comes with Playable Highlights and probably, something that fans have been asking for a while now, Real-life manager play through. That’s right, you can play as Jurgen Klopp, or even the afore-mentioned Ted Lasso. Well, that last one isn’t really…real, but who’s checking? 🙂
As a player career, there’s a lot of additions coming from a true-to-life experience, with investments, shopping, player personality, you name it. There is a lot of depth added to this part of the game, and I really like it. After UT, this is the mode that players love most and this is also where you spend countless hours on the behind-the-scenes (please read pitch instead of scenes) to achieve the CR7 level that every young player aspires to be.
Volta and Seasons are the other two modes that are present in FIFA23. The first one is an arcade take at the world of FIFA and it provides for good fun and entertainment when the Ultimate Team servers are down for maintenance. It has some interesting updates versus last year’s version but nothing spectacular.
Seasons makes it interesting to compare the speed of the game, animations, when you want to have an authentic club-like experience, so playing with your favourites, in my case Liverpool, and progressing through the divisions in search for glory.
To conclude, I think EA did a very good job with this year’s version, improving key areas of the game while maintaining the same experience that gamers have come to enjoy and expect over the years. For those of you that think this is just a change in the number on the cover, please take a minute and think about this with your adult hat on. Electronic Arts is a publicly-traded company. Decisions about game changes, functionalities, etc are taken well in advance and are carefully thought out. It’s extremely difficult to keep a balance between what players are asking for and pleasing shareholders. At this stage, any change that the developers would want to make has to be looked at through different lens.
And because the game has such a positive image – do not think for a second that because Ultimate Team frustrates a lot of people, that you have a bad game in your hands – there is no mandate to change a lot of things. The UT players are just more vocal, this mode attracts a lot of attention. But the numbers don’t lie, FIFA22 was a huge hit, surpassing 9 million copies sold in under 3 months from launch. I suspect FIFA23, with the addition of Ted Lasso and the impending end to the naming convention, will surpass these numbers. From this point of view, the game delivers on its promise: to be the number one football simulator in players’ minds. Looking forward to next year’s EA Sports FC and seeing how this legacy will continue.
I will pass this back to Victor, so that he can wrap everything up. Cheers!
Accessibility leaves a lot to be desired!
I was very excited to play FIFA this year because EA advertised the game as including narration, text-to-speech, and other accessibility options that could make it playable for impaired gamers.
Sadly, my hope for an accessible experience was killed in its cradle immediately after booting up FIFA 23. First of all, narration is disabled by default and I needed to use my Orcam myEye device in order to enable this option. I guess that other blind gamers could use OCR to do this, because I don’t expect everyone to have access to such a device as the Orcam, and games should have accessibility options built-in and enabled by default without needing any extra software or hardware setup….
Even worse is the fact that narration works just on the first level of the user interface. After that, it’s dead, Jim, just like all those characters from the old Star Trek show.
So, if you are blind, like I am, you won’t be able to navigate the menus in FIFA 23! You can not choose a team, start a Match or do anything else. This is quite sad considering that if the team handling accessibility for the blind would have implemented narration and text-to-speech at all levels, leaving no line of text, menu and UI element unreadable, all blind gamers out here could have played all the modes allowing managing teams…
As it is, EA Sports FIFA 23 is not accessible at all for the blind, although it touts accessibility features that should have made it so. I really hope that EA Sports will invest the time and money as soon as possible to fix this, but to be honest, I don’t hold my breath.
Maybe, for next year, with a new generation of football games being born with EA Sports FC, the dev teams will take accessibility seriously. Fully accessible menus, images with alt text, full narration, text-to-speech for every line of text, sound cues on the pitch, vibration and haptics for gameplay which can make that game blind playable!
If anyone at EA reads this, I’m here and more than willing to help you make this a reality. To end this extensive review on a more positive note, while knocking my head against the wall trying to navigate the menus, I noticed that FIFA 23 has a very good soundtrack. From Pop to Jazz and from Electronic to Rock and Hip-hop, the music flows beautifully, just like this game should have done for all of us, regardless if we are fully abled or impaired in any way.
To be clear, I am not throwing rocks at anyone, I just want everyone to be able to enjoy games that are advertised as being accessible. Accessibility needs to be a priority for the entire gaming industry, from the smallest developer to the biggest publisher. Disability happens when accessibility doesn’t; so let’s hope that the dev teams from EA Vancouver and EA Romania should do better when it comes to this topic. I have high hopes for next year’s game.
EA Sports FIFA 23 is available now for all major platforms.
Victor Dima
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