CALLING yourself the FIFA killer is a risky choice before you have proven your gaming chops.
Despite being around for years, Konami’s eFootball has failed to take the FIFA crown, and now FIFA itself says it will make its own football “egame”.
UFL is still very much a work in progress.
There’s a lot of players in the football simulation market, claiming big things, but none so far have matched FIFA’s dominance.
UFL had a promising start. The team said all of the right things, promising a game for football fans by football fans.
However, since we’ve now seen footage from an alpha build of the game, we think their sights have probably been set too high.
It was expected to launch last year, with a general release date set for 2023, yet we only saw an alpha build.
We were warned that the “animation system” was not “polished”, so no animations were present despite being so close to launch.
Even when they are playing at full strength, each player remains standing still with the ball.
Transitions between different kinds of movement were almost completely absent from this build.
This is particularly noticeable when someone goes to kick or head a ball, as their bodies don’t convey the force of movement.
It has the added effect of making certain headers look like they are playfully bouncing off a player only to slam right into the goal from afar.
Players can intercept the ball without touching another player, and you’ll only know it’s changed hands (feet?) by the shadow on the ball.
We assume this will be fixed when full animations are added in, but it feels strange to show the media this build while still a vital part is missing.
Another worrying sign is that we only saw one kind of shot, despite claims that a variety of shots would be included.
UFL claims it will be the FIFA killer, but FIFA’s gameplay has been far more refined for more than a decade.
The one place it could surpass FIFA is in defences, which have long been subpar in the series.
However, we didn’t see anyone face long high balls or through balls, so this is yet to be seen.
The pitch aside, a lot of detail has been put into the skill system, and the depth of tricks available is clear from the gameplay footage.
Small taps seem to have a large impact on the direction of the ball which helps you open a passing line or space to move into.
It’s the alpha build of a free to play game from a new developer, so it’s important to keep that in mind when judging things like the graphics.
While not having the money for scanning technology like EA Sports has, the player’s faces are varied enough that they don’t look out of place.
This is a point FIFA is often picked up on, as many players suffer from an uncanny valley default look.
However, the stadiums and audience have been predictably blurred to hide the lower production value.
While it seems possible that UFL could surpass eFootball, it seems a long way from FIFA even if the promised animations come in.
The main issue from this preview is that we have seen so little, it’s really hard to judge whether it will be able to take on any other series.
At the moment it’s too rough to give it a proper evaluation, and we’ll have to check back again when it’s more fleshed out.
Written by Paolo Sirio and Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
