eFootball is clearly not ready for its bizarre launch
Last week, I said I was worried about eFootball. Now it’s out, I’m afraid to say it’s even worse than I expected.
eFootball is available to download now – for free – in extremely limited form. This bizarre launch for Konami’s football game, which, let’s remember, is two years in the making after PES took 2020 off, lets you play offline 1v1 matches against the computer and online 1v1 matches in a challenge event that expires in 10 days. And that’s it.
There is so much that’s weird about eFootball’s debut. Konami had described this as sort of a demo, with updates set to flesh the offering out. But it’s not called a demo on the store. This is eFootball 2022 – warts and all – and it doesn’t even have all the kicks in.
Konami had also said only a handful of teams would be playable at launch, but this isn’t true. If you play online you have access to over 200 teams – mostly with fake names. I played a handful of online games today with my beloved Chelsea B. Why Konami didn’t signal this before eFootball came out is beyond me.
The first thing you notice is the atrocious menus, which, well, this is Konami and what was once PES so I’m not surprised. Then you get on the virtual pitch and notice all the other issues.
eFootball is not a looker. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it looks poor. The grass looks plastic. The people in the crowd look like cardboard cutouts. There’s nothing here that screams next-gen to me. If anything, it looks last-gen. Oh, and I’m playing on PlayStation 5.
The player faces range from the ultra realistic for the super famous players on officially-licensed teams, such as Manchester United’s Paul Pogba and Juventus’ Giorgio Chiellini, to the hilarious waxworks effect for everyone else. And they do this astonishing thing with their mouths where they open to form a nightmarish square shape. God knows what they’re trying to say to each other.
As for the gameplay, there are some significant problems, although I do think there’s at least some potential. Passing feels extremely weak, and by that I mean the ball travels remarkably slowly, particularly across the ground, no matter how much power you put behind it.
