Anyone looking for a really fun football simulation on the PC is having a really hard time at the moment: The FIFA series has been treading water for years and has received the lowest rating in GameStar history for the current offshoot. And let’s not even talk about eFootball 2022, the unworthy heir to the formerly great Pro Evolution Soccer series:
more on the subject
We tested eFootball so you don’t have to do it to yourself
There couldn’t be a better time to present a new football game – and the developers behind UFL are now using it. The soccer hope first showed real gameplay on January 27, 2022, after six years in development and ambitious plans presents.
Challenge to FIFA
In case you’ve never heard of UFL: The soccer sim was first announced at Gamescom 2021’s Opening Night Live. The developer studio Strikerz Inc, which was founded especially for this purpose, has now grown to more than 200 employees in the course of development.
We are gamers! We play a lot – sometimes too much – but one thing remains the same: we know what we want to achieve with UFL. We believe the community has longed for a change. Our goal with UFL was to create a game immune to the issues we believe are currently blocking the progression of the genre.
Eugene Nashilov, CEO of Strikerz Inc.
What UFL wants to do better than FIFA: While almost everything in FIFA revolves around the online mode Ultimate Team, which is plagued by loot boxes, the UFL developers want to go back to the roots. Your greatest claim is to want to convince with good gameplay, that it should be competitive, realistic and responsive.
You can see how it all looks in action in the first gameplay trailer shown during the presentation:
link to YouTube content
Also about scripting or momentum, which has been suspected by players in FIFA for years, UFL shouldn’t be a concern, Strikerz Inc CEO Eugene Nashilov promised. Although there will be skill-based matchmaking, the gameplay should not be interfered with:
We’re not trying to change the game to make it work for both players, rather we’re giving a player the right opponent to go head to head with and a learning curve that gives them the satisfaction and satisfaction of mastering another skill level brings.
Eugene Nashilov, CEO of Strikerz Inc.
Multiplayer in focus
You should also be able to play UFL offline or with friends, but the heart of the game should be the online multiplayer mode UFL Global Online Football League. In this mode you create, manage and build your own football club, to compete against other players in a fair, league-based matchmaking system.
However, there is no more detailed information on how the mode will work in detail. So far we only know that you have to take care of player transfers and that individual players will be able to improve through training. The players who perform best in the ranked games should then be able to participate in official tournaments and win great prizes.
After all: Unlike the competition, with UFL you don’t have to start from scratch every year, the multiplayer is designed as a persistent online world in which your club should be able to grow and thrive over the years.
UFL – View screenshots
Sticking point licenses
It also remains unclear for the time being to what extent real players and clubs will be available to you. Currently it seems as if one would only one very manageable number of licensed professionals will be able to play.
In addition to the brand ambassadors Cristiano Ronaldo, Kevin de Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, Roberto Firmino and Oleksandr Zinchenko, the following partner clubs have been confirmed, whose squads and stadiums you can use in the finished game:
- AS Monaco
- Bayer 04 Leverkusen
- Besiktas Istanbul
- Borussia Monchengladbach
- Celtic Glasgow
- Glasgow Rangers
- Shakhtar Donetsk
- Sporting Lisbon
- West Ham United
As CEO Nashilov promises, many more partnerships are to be concluded before the release.
Incidentally, the publication is scheduled to take place in 2022, and UFL wants to use an F2P model. According to the developers, this not only stands for Free2Play, but also for Fair2Play – Pay2Win elements should never exist in UFL.
