

In these moments, a Bayern defender lolloping hopelessly behind you, you feel that rarest of sensations: like the player and the ball are separate entities.Īnd this focus on the minutiae of one-on-one battles has, at least, the potential for fascinating online matchups. You can wrongfoot defenders by changing your pace and direction every kick, and pull off massively satisfying chops by directing the analog stick away from the player and tapping sprint.


Rather than a hold-to-beat-defender button, sprinting has been reworked to reward deft taps. It's slow, and fiddly, sometimes to the point of ponderous and frustrating, but it's also impressive in how forensic it is about dribbling. Even though I've been playing as Napoli and only Napoli in Partner Clubs mode for hours on end, even though I keep going back to the main menu, the hideous main menu, and clicking on the greyed out icons to make sure that nope, this really is it… I'm not ready to give up.īecause I can see the intention in its football. Isaac Newton would be in tears if he were in the stands, and the fundamental dodginess is only exacerbated by a revamped pace system which so often sends players hurtling into one another at full speed.īut I'm not ready to give up on it. On that: there's something ungodly about the collisions. It's slow, and fiddly, sometimes to the point of ponderous and frustrating, but it's also impressive in how forensic it is about dribbling Players do have a disquieting sheen about them though which detracts from the face scans, and an odd way of articulating their facial expressions when arguing with the ref or pinging around like detritus in Goat Simulator after a stand-up tackle. To this reviewer's wizened eyes the stadiums, crowds, and pitch surfaces look better than they ever have before. Some have levelled accusations that the grass looks plasticky now and that players all look like haunted waxwork dolls-your mileage may vary.

It's now running in Unreal Engine, and perhaps the momentous task of engine migration explains the bugs and bizarre collisions that discern eFootball 2022 from its predecessors.
