The latest iteration of Konami's free-to-play successor to Pro Evolution Soccer, eFootball 2024, is live now. It introduces a new season and a slew of baffling bonus unlockables and currencies to celebrate, but the real draw is that they've continued to try to improve its football simulation after the abysmal launch of eFootball 2022.
If you don't remember, eFootball 2022 launched in early access in 2021 as the first new Konami football game in two years. It was a total disaster and rapidly became the worst rated game on Steam, due to missing modes, a barebones on-pitch simulation of football, and plentiful bugs. Konami cancelled DLC plans and refunded some players as key features were delayed.
All of which is required context for the trailer above, which is six-minutes of no-context football, but which is really showing off new animations and features that you might have thought were already present in previous iterations. Things like defensive block animations, new goalkeeper punch animations, and better responsiveness when dribbling with the ball.
eFootball 2024 also features updated team rosters and kits. You can read more about specific additionsl on on Steam, including a list of the aforementioned baffling launch bonuses.
Note that since eFootball is now a live service free-to-play game, its 2024 iteration doesn't have a new entry on Steam, and is simply a renamed update to the previous store page. That means that at the time of writing, although recent reviews are more positive than they were back in 2021 ("Mixed"), the overall rating remains "Mostly Negative". Still, 37% positive reviews is a big improvement on the 15% positive it was once upon a time.
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