Fifa 23 (PS5) International version

After an incredible 30-year run, FIFA 23 had to go out on a high – and to be fair, we reckon it just about has. Fans of EA Sports’ flagship football franchise will be familiar with the formula: this is more refinement than revolution, but FIFA 22 threaded through some of the best virtual soccer we’ve seen from the juggernaut publisher in several years, and the latest instalment iterates on that without ripping up the tactics sheet.

Much to the malign of bigmouthed YouTubers with even bigger followings, the gameplay is a lot slower, with a greater emphasis on passing the ball between players rather than running rings around defenders using Lionel Messi. Tackling has also been buffed, meaning it’s now possible – albeit risky, as you’d expect – to slide in and poke the ball away from five-star attackers. All this leads to a more deliberate, physical game of football that better replicates the real thing – with perhaps the exception of the arcade-esque Power Shots, which have an exaggerated wind-up time but are deadly when aimed correctly.
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Of course, with such complicated physics at play you inevitably run into some strange collisions which break down the immersion like Erling Haaland against a Premier League back four. If you’re able to turn a blind eye to these moments, however, the newly captured HyperMotion 2.0 animations – paired with a continued improvement to last year’s Machine Learning – really help sell the illusion that you’re the puppet master of a professional football team. It’s impressive!

But outside of the moment-to-moment gameplay, the enhancements are a little harder to find. Ultimate Team, being such a big money-spinner, has perhaps received the bulk of the project’s budget – and to be fair, the alterations border on brave. The firm’s done away with the old Chemistry system, a pivotal team-building component, replacing the iconic green lines with a tiered system that sees you achieve buffs as you add more complementary players to your squad.

Personally, we’re not particularly big fans. While we can appreciate this is easier for newcomers to understand, and actually allows for fresh team-building possibilities, the flexibility takes away a lot of the reward from finding the perfect piece for a particular puzzle. This, of course, expands to the Squad Building Challenges, which are popular team-building exercises you can complete for rewards – it’s just not as engaging as it once was.
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There are other issues, too. In an effort to augment more single player content, the FIFA Mobile-inspired FUT Moments seem like a ridiculously smart addition: bitesized gameplay challenges that you can complete with your team in return for tradable stars. But where in games like Madden NFL 23 you’re able to tackle an entire set, back-to-back, FIFA 23 wants to take you through several screens of menus before getting you to the next objective – it all feels a bit disjointed and cumbersome.

And of course, old habits die hard: this is still by far the most costly sports game on the market when it comes to microtransactions. While rivals like NBA 2K23 allow you to assemble a reasonable team with little to no investment, the reality is that even competing on the lower rungs of the FUT Champions ladder is going to require you to cough up, because barely above average players cost an absolute fortune on the Transfer Market.

While it’s possible to earn plenty of packs through gameplay, the odds are always rigged in EA Sports’ favour: pull an 83+ player and you can guarantee you’re getting a random goalkeeper from the Eredivisie and not Kylian Mbappe – that’s just how the game’s designed. It’s true that competent players with weaker teams can overcome rich kids with God squads, but with elements of pay-to-win at play here, it belittles the competitive aspect of the entire experience.