This is not a review, but rather a general impression amid disappointment with the dampness of eFootball 2022 after the patch, which was supposed to “fix everything”, and how strange Konami's virtual football looks now in general.
The experts at EA Sports have been chewing and chewing the same gum for several years, the taste of which is lost more and more every year, but in the end, every FIFA is a game that you can play and get some pleasure. The Japanese, in this regard, decided to shovel everything they had, and when creating eFootball 2022, they demolished the Pro Evolution Soccer base to the ground, changing not only the engine, but also the name in order to build everything from scratch.
The new engine was supposed to take the game to the next level, but broken player intelligence, buggy scripts, stupid goalkeepers and defenders, as well as monstrous response times and many smaller problems put an end to this idea. As a result, history partially repeated itself, which already happened in the days of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Then Konami tried to make the game of passing and player movement more modern for their time, and this turned out to be much more difficult than the developers expected. However, the only difference with the current situation is that earlier there was a potential that needed to be unlocked, but here there is not even a hint of it. It is especially sad that eFootball 2022 is doing poorly even after a major update.
Back in 2009-2010, the developers of Pro Evolution Soccer had an attempt to match the realities of football with ball control and “horizontal” passing play, and the updated eFootball 2022 does not even try to be like modern football with its “gegenpressing”, high pace and density between the lines . It was very difficult to build a team so that it plays “vertical football” before, but now it is some kind of clowning. Players run in all directions, any action that does not fit into the scripts breaks the intellect of the players and they walk around the ball like idiots, stumble in an empty place and wait until a partner or opponent from the other end of the screen takes the ball for themselves. Although he can miss and join this “Japanese round dance” ...
In the current version of eFootball 2022, sometimes players are not just stupid - they can stand in their tracks and not react to the situation in any way. Whatever tactics and scheme you choose, the movement of players across the field and some of their actions will be simply illogical and often break any plan and strategy.
For example, when you raise the strategy indicator towards the attack (a mechanic that is controlled by the up and down arrows), the players of the attacking group sometimes line up in a tight block at the offside zone, regardless of where the ball is and what the situation on the field is, thereby creating a huge gap in central zone between defense and attack. The transition from defense to attack also often fails due to the fact that some of the players quickly ran away, while the rest slowly head out of their penalty area, not even thinking about opening up for a partner to play the ball.
The movement of players on the field is generally very strange. Any football fan watching the same “Champions League” probably knows how closely the teams have played against each other in recent years and how small the distance between the zones is. At the same "Bayern" central defenders are often far away in someone else's half of the field. This almost never happens here, and if it does, it means that somewhere there is a big gap where you can pass the ball and bring the attacker 1 on 1 with the goalkeeper. By the way, a defender can easily let an opponent pass behind him and fail to intercept a flying ball due to a completely unsuccessfully chosen position. As a result, even not the fastest players can run away from the defender and create serious scoring chances.
Goalkeepers here also do not shine with intelligence and seem to have come from that very broken Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. The position is chosen extremely badly, they beat off only what flies at them. Often, after the ball is deflected in the penalty area, a uniform circus begins, and the goalkeeper will be the main soloist in it until the ball flies off to the opponent and he sends it almost into an empty net. Such ridiculous moments often happen in the game - matches are filled with funny goals.
In the discussions of Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 - one of the most successful and best parts of Konami's football series - my forum mates and I joked that all the movements look so natural and realistic that you can confuse where the broadcast is and where the game is from the general plan. Here, there is no such feeling. The movements of players in space just look unnatural. It seems that the run animation itself and the speed of movement across the field do not correspond to each other. The players move like in a jelly, and the response time is somehow too long, which makes it very difficult to simply maneuver and even distribute passes.
In addition to all the gameplay and visual problems, there are flaws in the network infrastructure of eFootball 2022. You can score a match, and at the very end the opponent leaves the game and the match is canceled. They don’t count your victory, and it’s as if there was no match - consider that you just wasted your time. Another time, in a similar situation, due to the cancellation of the match, I was credited with a technical defeat. This has happened several times during the writing of this text.
In general, while I want to say that despite the improvements compared to what it was at the time of release, eFootball 2022 still remains in an indecent state. This is especially noticeable in tactical elements, which have always been Konami's strong point in football, but here it's just some kind of never-ending shame. Compared to the school grading system, Konami seems to have corrected the original one she was given, but not for a positive assessment, and not even for a dead three, but for a miserable deuce.
I would like to end on a positive note. I liked the new dream team building mode. Unlike myClub, here you can finally buy players directly without a roulette with a random selection from a set of cards. It’s also nice that now you can pump individual characteristics of your choice. It all seems to be a very logical and correct decision, which has the spirit of that old Master League Online, which I loved very much. However, there are some nuances here. Although it is too early to talk about problems in this mode, there are concerns that the game is built on the forced purchase of virtual currency, because eFootball 2022 is a shareware project. It can already be seen that simple matches do not bring money at all, and competitions do not give so much in comparison with the prices of players and have their own limitations. It's also worth noting that players subscribe by number of days, not by number of matches, which will be a problem for those who don't play regularly. A lot of icons with different currencies are also very annoying, like in some kind of mobile game. In general, it is not yet clear how difficult the club's penniless development will be.
However, no one will need all this at all if eFootball 2022 is not fixed.
Summing up, I would like to note that while eFootball 2022 does not live up to expectations and still seems to be a very raw game. Given the pace at which Konami fixes the problems, it is likely that we will not see normal football soon, so the project can be safely forgotten for the coming months. If suddenly something changes for the better, then I will have a reason to write another note. However, I really want everything to finally work as it should.
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