If you are going to measure yourself against the best you have to be more or less at their level. From the beginning, and implicitly, UFL sought to be the greatest alternative to FC 24 even when EA Sports’ football proposal was still called FIFA. In fact, its motto from the beginning was a declaration of intent: to bring the passion for football to cutting-edge consoles based on the Fair-To-Play concept. Seen this way, those intentions are very good, but What happens with the sensations at the controls?
That it has not been explicit when giving you an evaluation of UFL from the headline itself has a reason for being: as you will see in each of our captures, it is about a version in development and that implies that elements are being tested for the final result. Which does not mitigate the enormous disappointment I have felt when playing this beta on both PlayStation and Xbox. Among other things, because I needed to check if what was bothering me online had to do with the controller, the gaming platform or the video game itself before reaching some first informed conclusions.
Despite not being the definitive version, I can already tell you that the beta of UFL It is already stumbling over the same potholes that Konami’s eFootball hit the field not too long ago: ball control is imprecise, players seem to be thinking about their own things instead of concentrating on the game and the moments of maximum tension They only have two kinds of ending: the desperation of the person in charge or the disappointment of seeing how your ideas and initiatives end up going to waste. Not because your opponent is better or worse than you, we’ll get there, but because the game simply fails to take off when it’s time to shine.
Don’t get me wrong: Strikerz Inc. is a much more modest studio than the mammoth EA Sports. It was founded in 2016 and by dedicating itself fully to a project that has not seen the light of day, instead of having the constant income of a large annual delivery, its room for maneuver and its resources are what they are.
However, none of this matters before the final judge: the players. In other words, UFL He has to shine on his own merits and if he wants to steal from FC 24 o eFootball from Konami the enormous amount of playing time that fans of the football sagas dedicate to them, which is the top priority of the big developers, then you have to offer them something really attractive. Really satisfying gameplay sensations, but also moments of genuine glory even when you know you’re not going to win the game. And in the Strikerz Inc. game, or at least the version we have been able to play, there is nothing like that.
Let’s talk about the basics about UFL and what its beta reveals
I insist, because it must be insisted, that a beta does not faithfully represent what the final result will be even if there is a narrow margin before the launch: the creators take note of what they like, what they do not like and what needs to be improved when they conclude them and work on this data. Having said that, UFL has a long way to go if you want to compete with the top football players on consoles.
Strikerz Inc. relies on both the experience of its developers and the possibilities of the Unreal Engine to carry out a project that in practically all its sections returns us to the state of soccer games from at least a decade ago. And I’m not referring specifically to what has to do with the similarities with the footballers, mind you, but to the fact that all those elements with which, year after year, both EA Sports and Konami have been outlining and defining their own gameplay, have been lost. .
That doesn’t mean that UFL looks bad or is unplayable, but lacks that point of excellence when playing that is felt by pressing a button at the right moment or its players, both those who are under our control and those who are waiting their turn scattered around the field, do not react to generate great plays nor do they position themselves autonomously to that we develop something similar to a strategy. And that, to be honest, tires me unnecessarily before going to the locker room and makes it more difficult for me in the second half.
In other sections UFL It is enormously irregular. In the absence of offering real stadiums, Strikerz Inc. pulls out of its hat invented environments in which beyond the walls that surround the stands we see exotic landscapes or embrace the generic; but the problem we find is with an animation system that takes us back to what we saw in past generations and that in the best of cases look flat, collisions in which instead of technique prevailing, luck and reactions of the ball that, far from feeling natural (within soccer games), seem to obey poorly hidden patterns. Especially when the goalkeepers intervene.
There are elements that UFL taken directly from the FIFA saga (or EA Sports FCif you prefer) and PES without taking into account the differences between both sagas: the marked wear and tear of the players during the match is very similar to that seen in the Konami games, but the pace of the matches is closer to that of EA Sports with what you see gradually how all the players, yours and your rival’s, end up completely exhausted in the final stages of each half.
Making the substitutions have a huge indirect role that completely breaks any attempt to take advantage of their tenuous Star System. Because having it, you have it.
The time has come to define “Fair to Play”
The beta of UFL It has only two licensed clubs (the AS Monaco and the Hashtag United F.C.) and the rest of the equipment is completely invented. Not like those of the PES, in which it was suspected which was Real Madrid, but formations placed in a capricious and completely unbalanced way if we played against someone at home, so that the weight and quality of your team depends on the market and the signings that you do directly from the in-game store. Of course, in the absence of being able to use real money, we are given an initial credit and currency with each game played.
As a soccer game, the beta of UFL It is designed so that little by little we create our Dream Team like an ant: we choose a Captain as soon as we start (including the possibility of starting with Cristiano Ronaldo or De Bruyne) and on this we are invited to play online games to expand our coins. credit and improve our stars in a way relatively similar to that of EA Sports or the classic PES.
However, the result does not quite materialize. At least in the Beta. The two problems, because they exist, are quickly detected:
- The gameplay will always be against you no matter how exceptional your stars are. Even if you decide to spend everything you received at the beginning and what you accumulated during two afternoons on Mbappé, Bellinggham or De Bruyne.
- But the really cruel thing is that generally, There is a huge gap when facing strangers.: either you devour them quickly because they are trying to understand and acclimatize to their very own gameplay, or you are overwhelmed by those who have gone through a marathon and already have the football elite at their service. Regardless of whether they are better or worse.
The game credits to acquire players in the Beta are obtained by chaining matches, but also through a system of temporary, daily and weekly missions, which contemplate very specific objectives such as winning three matches in a row. However, there is another additional condition: in the game store you can purchase items with special currency that increase experience by 25% and credit points obtained by 50% for a day, a week or more. And that drastically affects the two previous problems.
Perhaps this was reconsidered for the final version or was always part of the roadmap of UFL, but without truly satisfying gameplay that makes sense of the time it takes to keep playing and progress (rather than returning to FC 24 o eFootball) we come across a candidate to be the third in contention who today has a lot to warm up before taking the field.
The free proposal of UFL vs. the annual full price game model
It would be unfair to give definitive conclusions regarding UFLbut the direction in which the project is heading is more or less defined for the beta: Strikerz Inc. does not aspire so much to be the free alternative to the “old-fashioned FIFA”, but seeks to measure itself with the vision of eFootball.
In other words: the plan is to achieve a different profile than the player of EA Sports FC, which prefers to accumulate experience and improvements in a simpler and more direct way while, little by little, assembling its own dream club. All in all, the current state of the title is too reminiscent of the complicated beginnings of Konami’s soccer rebranding, and that totally works against it.
Not having the most iconic clubs, stadiums or having only a handful of licenses associated with professional football (although you do have the faces and names of the players) is something that will be very unattractive for passing players. And visually it complies, but it does not surprise. We could talk about the menus or the incomprehensible loading times but we return to square one: how far have we been able to play, This is a beta.
A step back for football in video games? The other reality is that Strikerz Inc. has a lot of work to do for the final version of UFL. They have to demonstrate that their Fair to Play philosophy is sustained in the long term at a time in which the entire video game industry has stopped competing for the number of copies sold and strives to achieve the greatest number of accumulated hours of play.
Because it is unlikely that EA Sports football fans will skip their annual appointment with that football saga that we are so obsessed with. But the conclusion we reached is curious: that there is a competition to be “the legitimate new FIFA” in which, in fact, FIFA itself is also involved. A fight in which UFL has everything to win.
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