EXTRA LIFE
A game of two halves, or more, in EA FC 24
This game drives me to drink. It’s a basic Pavlovian response. I started playing FIFA 20 in the darkest days of lockdown, when there was no football, while waiting for my five-year-old to finally fall asleep, knowing that I’d have to try to home-school him in the morning and that tomorrow would be the same as today, and every day for the foreseeable future. I would eventually get to stop and, like most people back then, have a beer. The two became linked.
This respondent conditioning is one reason I resisted installing the latest iteration on launch day, as is my wont. Playing gets me all riled up, and then I want alcohol, an urge I find uncomfortable. I play games to relax, after all. Another reason was that I’d taken part in the Switch beta testing, and wasn’t excited by the new format, which was familiar. After 650+ hours of Player Career Mode, I felt done with it. I play on Ultimate, using the Pro camera and still become Messi in short order. But here I was, like the proverbial alcoholic who thought he could have just one glass, pressing A to start.
MORE VIOLENT
Some work has definitely happened under the hood. For the careerminded, players now have agents who are continually working on your next transfer, although only time will tell if this works in the long term. Just being able to choose specific targ
