‘FC 24’: Meet the football game that is the new ‘Fifa’ – 07/18/2023 – Sport

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EA Sports officially announced last week “FC 24”, the first game of its new-old franchise of football games. Despite the new name, the title retains the same characteristics as the “Fifa” series, which ended after the end of the company’s 30-year partnership with the governing body of world football.

Because it’s important

“Fifa” games make up one of the longest running and most profitable video game franchises in history. On a recurring basis, the series’ annual releases appear at the top of best-selling games lists in European countries and is especially popular in Brazil.

According to a report on the Brazilian gaming market by the consultancy Newzoo, published in September last year, “Fifa 22” was the fourth game for consoles and PCs with the most monthly active users in August 2022 –almost a year after its launch– , behind only “Fortnite”, “CS:GO” and “GTA 5”.

respect the mines

Among the good news of the game is the expansion of female participation. “FC 24” will have six licensed women’s leagues — twice as many as “Fifa 23”–, including the Champions League. With that, the number of women’s teams will reach 74 at launch, with 1,600 players.

In addition, for the first time in the franchise, players will be present in the “Ultimate Team” mode –formerly “FUT”–, in which users can collect athletes and assemble their own team, enabling the creation of mixed teams.

Also for the first time, a woman will assume the role of commentator in the game. Former British player Sue Smith will be part of the alternative transmission team for the English version of the game — the narrator Natália Lara was present in the Brazilian version of “Fifa 23”, but in the role of studio reporter.

collective game

Another good news is the introduction of Cross Play in Clubs (formerly Pro Clubs) and Volta (which simulates street football matches) modes. With this, players can play together over the internet regardless of the platform used, or almost.

According to the developers, PlayStation 4 players will be able to face Xbox One owners. PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S users form another group. The game will still have a Nintendo Switch version, but details of it and what limitations it will have were not shown.

game styles

Regarding the game itself, the main novelty is the introduction of the “PlayStyles” system. With it, some virtual players will receive extra bonuses according to their characteristics in the real world.

For example, a player with the power kick “PlayStyle” will make stronger shots than another with the same attributes, but without this characteristic.

In total, 34 special features will be present in the game that will be granted to virtual players according to real-world data recorded by Opta, a company specializing in sports data.

Regarding gameplay, the main novelty is the option to manually direct passes and launches, which will give players more control over the strength and direction in which they want to kick the ball.

Beautiful game

For the debut of this new phase of its football game franchise, EA Sports also included a series of graphics technologies that use artificial intelligence tools to make graphics and animations even more realistic.

Among them, HypermotionV stands out, a new version of the company’s motion capture system. According to the developers, this technology uses images captured by TV cameras to create animations of virtual athletes. With it, it will be possible, for example, to update the game with a new dribble, kick or celebration invented by a player in a matter of days.

Added to this is EA Sapien Technology, which creates player models with more true-to-life proportions, a new uniform fabric movement tool, and even an AI that animates players’ hands more naturally.

With all this, the company promises a game with more varied animations, virtual players that look and behave more closely with their flesh-and-blood versions and image fidelity that approaches photorealism.

Yellow card

After the announcement of the game’s news, I was able to test a demo version in pre-beta and, despite these new technologies and the company’s attention to detail, the experience left me apprehensive.

The game had serious bugs in animations and in the collision system. During the game, it was common to witness surreal moves, in which the ball magically passes the player’s supporting foot before a kick or behaves unrealistically when dribbling.

These were problems overcome by previous versions of the game. Their presence makes the uniform’s perfect movements and reality-identical players seem like irrelevant increments. There’s time for EA Sports to fix this by the game’s release on September 29th, but the initial impression is not good.

Also, don’t expect new game modes and big gameplay changes in this new phase. For better or for worse, “FC 24” is the new “Fifa” every year.

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play

game tip, new or old, for you to test

Retro Goal

(Android, iOS, Switch)

While “FC 24” is not released, you can have a lot of fun with this retro football game. With controls that work well on touch screens, it includes a very robust career mode for a casual title and quick matches, ideal for playing on the way home or waiting for an office. The game includes leagues from all over the world (including Brazil) and, since February, the mobile version of the game is free. If you like football games, there’s no reason not to give it a try.

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update

news, launches, business and what matters most

• The American Justice rejected on the last day 11 a request for an injunction from the FTC (organ that regulates competition in the country’s market) to prevent Microsoft from concluding the purchase of Activision Blizzard before a hearing of the organ, in August. The body filed an appeal against the decision, but the appeal was also denied last Friday (14).

• With the decision, the only obstacle to the conclusion of the deal is the CMA (the UK competition regulator), which spoke out against the acquisition due to risk in the “cloud gaming” market. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft and Activision are considering selling their operations in this sector in the United Kingdom to circumvent the organ’s restrictions.

• Amid signs that the deal could be completed at any time, Sony –the biggest opponent of the acquisition– decided to sign an agreement proposed by Microsoft in January to guarantee the publication of titles from the “Call of Duty” series on its consoles for 10 years . The movement indicates that the Japanese company already considers the battle against the lost business.

• Only 13% of games released in the US before 2009 are still available for sale, says unpublished research conducted by the Video Game History Foundation. According to the study, the situation is even more serious in the case of specific consoles, such as the Game Boy family, with only 5.9% of games available on other equipment.

• Despite the survey numbers, the president of the ESA (an association that represents the main game publishers), Stanley Pierre-Louis, said in an interview with the Game Developer website that the industry has been improving its preservation policies and disagreed with the foundation’s conclusions, which defends the opening of exceptions to copyright rules to make it possible to keep old games available.

• Microsoft has announced that players will soon be able to record audio chat clips from multiplayer games on Xbox consoles to report abusive behavior from other players. The tool will allow users to send the last 60 seconds of conversation when making a report.

• Gearbox has opened registration for players who want to participate in the closed beta of the game “Relic Hunters Lenda”, from Brazilian developer Rogue Snail, from July 20th to 24th. Submissions can be made on the game’s Steam page.

• Microsoft has created a new tier of Xbox Game Pass, its game subscription service, to replace the Xbox Live Gold offerings. Starting September 14, subscribers to the old service will have Xbox Game Pass Core, which will give access to 25 games and online multiplayer.

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