Football articles
FIFA 22 is actually a big step forward
With some time to kill and spotting a decent discount on Steam, I picked up a copy of FIFA 22 a week or two ago. It’s too late in the game’s cycle to warrant a full review, but with Konami royally screwing up PES and FIFA having come a surprisingly...
In defence of scripting in football games
Spend any length of time reading online forums for football games and you’ll come across complaints about “scripting” - the alleged way games like FIFA and PES artificially infuence games to create drama. This quirk of games’ design and programming is always portrayed in a negative light, and often rightly...
FIFA is my new year's resolution (kind of)
There’s an episode of South Park that first aired about a decade ago where Stan wakes up one day and everything is shit. The food he eats is shit. The chatter on the radio is shit. The new films at the cinema are shit. Everything he used to like is...
eFootball 2022 is no match for PES
eFootball 2022 rang alarm bells as soon as it was announced. Gone was Pro Evolution Soccer, the stalwart of slower, more considered football gaming. In its place we were to be given a free-to-play, cross-platform title in the form of eFootball. The change, the skeptics warned, was a downgrade designed...
What if Football Manager was a tabletop game?
What if Football Manager wasn’t a computer game you play alone in front of a screen until the early hours of the morning, but a physical product you could reach out an touch with your hands? Maybe even an activity you could do - dare I say it - with...
Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (PS2) Master League retrospective
Pro Evolution Soccer 5 has always been an all-time favourite of mine, but it is only now, 15 years after its initial release, that I have found the inspiration to do it justice in words. Of course, there are many reviews out there from 2005 that cover its gameplay, features,...
Why Football Manager is the most addictive spreadsheet ever designed
This month’s off-topic post delves into the world of Football Manager – a game I’ve found myself playing again in the last couple of weeks. Here I attempt to explain why the much-loved series has always been greater than the sum of its parts. If you’ve previously read even a couple...
