FIFA 22 has been in my PS5 library for a week now, giving me time with a good chunk of its single-player and multiplayer offerings including Ultimate Team, Pro Clubs, and its Career mode. However, after struggling to find players for its improved Volta street football mode, thus being unable to experience the extent of the changes made to one of the series’ newest additions, I’m not able to yet give our final scored verdict of EA’s latest football sim. Still, despite Volta clearly not being the most popular mode right out of the gate, the rest of this package is shaping up to feature some of FIFA’s finest on-the-pitch footwork yet, even if it isn’t exactly a giant leap forward for the series.
What’s changed?
FIFA 22 places Volta at the front of the pack this year, with it appearing at the start of the menu to highlight just how much EA is pushing it. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of difficulties when it comes to getting into one of its Volta Squads matches, with seemingly few players trying to play this 4 vs 4 mode right now. Given that FIFA 22 is only accessible to EA Play subscribers, I imagine that the mode’s player base will fill out when the full launch rolls around, though at the time of this writing it’s a struggle to find anyone to team up with.
When the mode does work, it’s fun, if a little confusing. Similar to last year, Volta Squads is essentially Volta mixed with Pro Clubs, as two teams of four player-controlled avatars battle it out to score goals against one another. However, there are a few key changes this year, most notably its new signature abilities and skill meter.
Signature abilities are three distinct moves your player can use that will be activatable for a short period of time before going on cooldown. These include Power Striker, which allows you to take hard-hitting shots from anywhere on the pitch, Pure Pace, which significantly increases your player’s speed, and Aggressive Tackle, which transforms them into a defensive behemoth. The skill meter now actively encourages you to spend time performing skill moves rather than immediately going for your goal, with each successful move that you use against an opponent building up a multiplier that allows you to score more points per goal. This is a great way to make even the most seemingly one-sided of matches much more interesting, given that one player can start pulling off fancy tricks with wild abandon, build up their meter, and score a goal worth three points in one fell swoop.
In the limited number of Volta Squads games I got to play, I appreciated the improved customization options though this also means it’s difficult to keep track of who is on your team. Given that there are no kit colors in Volta, I’d often find myself mixing up my opponents with my teammates, something which I’ll potentially get used to when I’ve managed to sit through more Volta Squads games when its number of players increases. On top of Squads and the single-player Volta Battles, in which players take on AI-controlled teams for rewards, there’s the fun Volta Arcade mode in which players take part in party games such as Dodgeball, Foot Tennis, Team Keepaway, and Disco Lava. This mode is inexplicably restricted to weekends only, a roundabout way of preventing it from growing stale too quickly, but is instead a frustrating barrier in what could be one of the game’s most enjoyable multiplayer features.
But while Volta may be the mode EA is pushing the most, Ultimate Team is still going to be the mode that the majority keep returning to. Divisions Rivals offers seasonal progression for players, utilizing a new ladder system that aims to better reflect your skill level and form. More testing will need to be done here to see if this holds true after I’ve progressed further up the ranks, but the improvements to FIFA 22’s gameplay have created plenty of exciting matches for me so far, and this new progression system further opens the door to unlocking high-end cards without the need for FIFA’s notoriously pernicious microtransactions.
No glossing over crossing
The most glaring change in FIFA 22’s actual football is the improvements made to crossing. Previously, crossing often felt like a last-ditch attempt when attacking, given that headers would rarely play out the way you wanted them to. This year, there’s a ton of variety in how the attacking team will deal with a cross, and the player in the box needn’t be a target man in order to sink the ball into the back of the net. It feels like EA has toned down the more overpowered attacking options such as pacey players running onto lobbed through balls, and has instead improved the overall variety in how you can score goals. In my time with FIFA 22 so far, this has led to more realistic goals being scored.
Another interesting attacking option is the new ability to switch control of players when you have possession of the ball. With a click of the right and left thumbstick, you can now control other nearby players when you’re attacking, allowing you to make a run before calling for the ball. While this move works well against the AI, it’s a lot more difficult to pull off against player-controlled players, who tend to be a lot more aggressive with their defending.
The newfound diversity in attacking options also seems to have positively contributed to Pro Clubs, which is far less reliant on 5’5″ strikers breaking through the defense with inhuman pace, and now allows for more realistic goals to be scored. I’ve been continuously disappointed in the lack of attention paid to Pro Clubs over the years, given that it’s the FIFA mode I play the most. However, with a ton more club customization options including kit and crest, ball, home stadium, club commentary nickname, crowd chants, and goal song, FIFA 22 is the biggest advancement for this mode thus far. The addition of women Virtual Pros, who can play directly alongside the male Pros with the exact same balancing, is also an excellent added touch that greatly increases the amount of customization the player has over their Pro this year.
I’ve been impressed by my time with FIFA 22 thus far, with it shaping up to be one of the tightest entries in the series so far. While it doesn’t offer a great deal in terms of new modes, the improvements made to existing staples of the series such as Ultimate Team, Pro Clubs, and Volta are all welcome, helping to diversify current modes and make them much more distinguishable. We’ll have our full review soon.
