It’s the most wonderful time of the year, FIFA fans - no, not Christmas (put those darn decorations away). It’s once again time to see if the Nintendo Switch version of EA’s premiere soccer series is still a complete mess. The good news is that, alongside a name change to EA Sports FC 24, we’ve finally gotten past the point where this port is simply a copy of the previous year with “the same gameplay innovation from [insert previous year] without any new development or significant enhancements,” like it was last year, and the year before that… and the year before that (and the year before that). The bad news is that it is still dreadfully out of date.
The long overdue switch to the Frostbite engine is a considerable step up from the previous Legacy engine, as the visuals look a bit more detailed and the gameplay feels better than FIFA 23 Legacy Edition, but the leap isn’t massive. EA Sports FC 24 has essentially gone from having PS2-era graphics and framerate to that of the PS3 – while the difference between those two was impressive in 2006, unfortunately for Switch owners, it is currently 2023. The 30 frames-per-second action feels painfully slow, especially compared to the HyperMotion technology used on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC versions.
With HyperMotion, each player has their own unique flow, and you can feel every bit of the individual movement when controlling them. This works well with the new PlayStyle feature implemented in EA Sports FC 24, where you can dribble through the whole field single-handedly with a player like Antony due to his Trickster movement attributes. By comparison, PlayStyles on the Nintendo Switch lack the same realistic feeling, missing key real-time animation software and physics used by the next-gen technology that plays a big part in bringing the mechanic to life. Dribbling the ball up the field as Antony feels the exact same as if you were controlling Kevin De Bruyne, despite them having two completely different styles. Even without these issues, matches are still home to many of the same poor defensive AI and passing error inputs that have had us screaming “this game is rigged” for decades. You can only take so many of the same near-corner post goals by opposing teams or incorrect pass directions before you throw your controller down in disgust.
The overall presentation also suffers a lot without HyperMotion, as there are no fancy overlays or satisfying powershot replays that show the stats of how hard you hit the ball or its shot percentage. Instead, EA just reused all the assets it had from the Xbox One and PS4-era FIFA games for its pre-, live-, and post-game segments. Ironically, the intros I desperately missed in my EA Sports FC 24 PS5 review made their way into the Nintendo Switch version. Unfortunately, it was the most monkey’s paw wish I could have asked for, as the pre-match presentations look awful, with players phasing through one another, refs dropping the ball mid-way into the walk-up, and loads of bad close-up animations.
Even with its lower framerate, EA Sports FC 24 is still full of glitches, dropped frames, and poor load times through every aspect of its gameplay. Players spasm and twitch unnaturally on and off the field, and celebrations with more than three people move so slowly I feared my Nintendo Switch would overheat and explode. Even the menu loading screens drop frames occasionally, so you can only imagine how bad it is when in-game surrounded by thousands of more moving parts instead of something as simple as text, especially during the career modes’ new cutscene-based Dynamic Moments. In Manager Mode, whenever you first accept the job and go to the press conference, your head coach ceremony is less of a presentation and more of a PowerPoint slideshow, only showing about four frames in the 30 seconds it is on the screen. I tested this multiple times with new and playable managers alike and got the same frame-skipping result each time.
At least I had the fun FIFA-street mode VOLTA to look forward to finally playing on the Nintendo Switch without issues… right? Well, yes, but actually no. While it does load and take you to its menu screen without a problem, it is an absolute ghost town when you do arrive. After waiting three minutes looking for a match multiple times, I gave up the hopes of ever finding even one other person to play the ever-elusive VOLTA match I’d been hoping for. Clubs was at least a little bit better, but I there I would also get timed out looking for matches more often than not. The usual connection issues when playing online are particularly bad in Clubs, as the Nintendo Switch has a hard time handling multiple users in the same lobby, resulting in matches that lag so much they become unplayable.
EA Sports FC 24 does at least deliver a significant change to Ultimate Team, as the dream squad-building mode is no longer just a copy of FIFA 17. Instead, FUT is almost identical to its PC and console counterparts, letting you complete the Objectives, Moments, Squad Battles, FUT Champions, and Division Rivals modes that have all been available outside the Nintendo Switch for years. Evolutions has also made its way to Ultimate Team, and you can now take your favorite young players and improve their card’s stats by completing specific objectives, which are broken down into three manageable levels. As long as they fit certain criteria, like less than 80 Overall, Pace, and Rarity, applying an EVO card to a player like Ansu Fati can bring them from a 75 LW to a 85 Relentless Winger. But even with these improvements, you’ll still need to actually play games to earn XP and improve your standing in Ultimate Team, which makes seeing any of these upgrades in action a chore all the same.
