EA FC 27 review: Familiar flaws hold back a game that needed more
EA Sports FC 27 begins with an interesting scene, a first-person view, walking through the Bernabeu in the eyes of Kylian Mbappé . The player looks around, gets a fist bump from Jude Bellingham and steps out on the pitch, suggesting a new way to play the long-running video game series, now in its fourth edition without the Fifa branding. Instead, the player is brought back to the pitch the same as it ever was. The presentation of the game has barely changed since 26, which itself had barely changed from 25. There is a staleness to how many features appear in the game, which need a complete refresh instead of subtle changes. The menus sum up that feeling. Once bright and vibrant, making it enticing to play 10 years ago, they still glitch at times and have a dour greyness to them that make them unattractive. It is a small thing but given half the gameplay is on the menus on the most popular modes such as Ultimate Team and Career Mode, it matters. On the pitch, the gameplay is decent, but not particularly groundbreaking. Defending has improved and it is satisfying to have it less AI-influenced and more manual once you master it. Corners have changed to become more regimented and routine-based, perhaps inspired by the success of Arsenal in real-life, but it is more frustrating than rewarding in defence and attack. At higher levels online, while exploits are almost impossible to stop, the “fidget spinning” of any agile forward turning like peak Messi in double speed in the box remains. It is hard to see how EA Sports can truly innovate until they move on from the Frostbite engine, first used on the PlayStation 4 on Fifa 17. There is a feeling that EA is constantly papering over the cracks on this somewhat dated engine each year and we won’t see anything that will wow established or new players until a new engine is introduced. Creating a new engine is an expensive and risky move for a company that has annual releases, but sometimes the greatest risk is to risk nothing. One wonders if this year’s game could have been a squad update on EA FC 26 while they worked on something more lasting and innovative for 2028. Especially at a time when EA does not have serious competition from other football games after the decline of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer and the release of Grand Theft Auto VI in November. Perhaps with GTA in mind, EA Sports’ big play is the new Grounds mode which involves an open world park, with various sized games – from 1v1s to 11v11 – in three settings in the style of Paris, London and Buenos Aires. Your own player is created and you can run around interacting with other players in the world and queue for games with rewards and attribute growth. The Clubs mode is now through Grounds. The jewel in EA Sports’ crown remains Ultimate Team, and by far the company’s most lucrative mode, where you can buy store packs to improve your team. It gets the most attention with daily content and more former legends included than ever. It now includes FUT Gallery, which leans into the card-collecting aspect and has a sticker-book feel to complete sets for your favourite teams. Ultimate Team’s content is reliably engaging and addictive, but the familiar does not move the dial for the more jaded football gamers out there. ♦ EA Sports FC 27 (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (copy reviewed), Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S). Price €79.99 for standard edition, €109.99 for ultimate edition Making peil from pixels: is the new Gaelic football video game any good?