FIFA 22 Review Tiki-taka

The first shot of FIFA 22 is a close-up of a steaming hot cup of coffee. The camera shows that David Beckham is stirring the spoon when the camera moves out. The former Galactico is eating pancakes for breakfast on a balcony in Paris, while your avatar is being woken up by a friend who says they’re late. It’s a strange way to start a football game, which also includes Eric Cantona feeding pigeons, Thierry Henry and cover star Kylian Mbappe trying to act on the Parc des Princes pitch, and cameos from boxing star Anthony Joshua and F1 driver Lewis Hamilton that you’ll miss if you blink.

FIFA 22 doesn’t add any new mechanics like this one, but that doesn’t mean it stands still and doesn’t move the series forward. Instead, the series’ core gameplay is changed and made better by using new, innovative technology and a slower pace. The marketing term for this new technology is “HyperMotion,” but it is more than just a fancy word.

FIFA 22 adds a lot of new animations that affect every part of a 90-minute match. This is because every tiny detail is captured, including actions that might not come to mind in a traditional motion capture session. Players can control the ball with more than one touch to make an extra yard of space or catch a high pass, then move their bodies to send a diagonal ball to the other wing.

Because of this, FIFA 22 is much slower than its predecessor. Most of the time, matches in FIFA 21 were like back-and-forth basketball games because the ball moved quickly from one penalty box to the other. This year’s game doesn’t lack goals; they’re made through smooth passing instead of taking advantage of the fastest players.

Regarding game modes, FIFA 22 has borrowed a few sentences from PES and added a few of its own. You can now make your team in Career mode. You can change the uniforms and stadium and choose whether the randomly generated players are young or old. It’s an excellent idea that seems long overdue given how long Master League has been around, but it’s hard to enjoy using a team of nobodies compared to taking over a real club with famous players.

Once you get out on the field, FIFA 22 is a great football game. It has a realistic and systematic style that rewards passing and vision over exploiting cheap speed merchants. EA tends to make things worse with each new update, so let’s hope these strong foundations can stay the same for the whole game’s life. There isn’t much as crucial off the field, but small changes and new features make game modes like Volta and Career more fun. Ultimate team is easier to get into, but its microtransactions still make it hard to play.