EA Sports FC 27 Review – In on The Grounds floor

As if the buying up of sports teams by foreign investment hasn’t been controversial enough over the past 20 years, now they’ve come for our sports video games as well. The change of EA’s ownership from a publicly traded company to being owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (which also owns Newcastle United), Silver Lake Partners, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners has been one of the biggest stories in football this past year. It has raised questions on the long term ethics of supporting the company’s games in general, but in the short term, the question is what kind of impact it might have had on FC 27? Not much, from what I have played.

FC 27 looks to push the gameplay on from the previous game, with one of the key distinctions being reduced automation and more manual control. That essentially means players will need to be more involved with the plays of their team in attack and defence, with the AI having a reduced input in both for your teams. It is a system that takes a bit of getting used to, but it also varies depending on whether you are playing career mode using authentic settings or something like Ultimate Team which is much more arcade like.

Defence is where you will notice the lack of AI assistance with no automatic tackles, with players needing to be much more aware of getting into position to perform tackles, and disrupt runs. This can cause problems for you when needing to switch between your players to deal with an attack. There were frustrating moments, especially online, where a ball would bounce free and could be picked up by an AI player but that player would run away instead, allowing the attackers to get the ball. There will be a learning curve for a lot of players to adjust to this change, and no small amount of cursing the game’s AI.

One of the other and most prominent additions to FC27 is The Grounds, a new hub area with streets styled after different European cities, joining up training grounds, pitches, and futuristic buildings. You first create your avatar, which you can later style further with cosmetics from the shops dotted around, and are initially introduced to things by Alex Hunter, the protagonist of FIFA’s The Journey story mode. From here you will meet other players including Mbappe, Chloe Kelly, and Paulo Dybala who have their own challenges for you to undertake. The delivery of some lines are a bit questionable, but that isn’t what the main focus of The Grounds is.

You can drop in to play some of the minigames including 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and Rush as well as more unique offerings like Goal Control, in which you try to capture as many goals as possible and keep them from your opponent. There is Balloon Ball too, where you try to hit players with a ball to pop their balloons – it’s a football version of Mario Kart’s Battle mode. Others include Bucket Ball, Big Race, Bocce Ball, and Attacking Scenarios. For bigger games, the Kickabout sets two teams of 11 against each other in friendlies, but The Grounds are also now the home of Clubs, for which you’ll need to head to the specific arena and join a team, whether it’s your own, a private one, or a public one.

There’s quite a lot of features bundled into The Grounds, but it lacks a truly compelling atmosphere and will need fresh content to keep people invested and loading into it.

Career Mode has had some changes to it too. While much of the package is similar to what was on offer in FC26, there have been changes to how transfers are done. Instead of the awkward cutscenes of doing transfer and contract negotiations, the transfer negotiation screen is basically a phone screen. I did find that when putting out enquiries to clubs about players, a lot would just outright reject without any sort of negotiation being initiated. This does make the career mode feel more realistic as some of the more unexpected transfers aren’t given the time of day, but it does make it tougher to grow your team. Of course, you can invest in the youth team and develop those players instead.

When set to authentic, the gameplay in career is fine and gives some more realistic scenarios on the pitch, so you have to pass and probe your way up the pitch to get in on goal. This, of course, depends on the team you are playing against, so some are easier to beat than others. In online matches, especially with Ultimate Team, FC 27 feels more arcade like with matches going end to end and high scores being the norm. It is here where you will really need to get to grips with the way the defensive play has changed, and it feels like goalkeepers are kind of pointless.