FIFA Women's World Cup: A valiant attempt to lead NZ to a World Cup win with FIFA 23

stuff.co.nz:

It’s taken almost 30 years, but the EA Games FIFA series finally has a Women’s World Cup playable mode, included in the latest update just weeks before the tournament kicks off in New Zealand and Australia.

With the Football Ferns set to open the sport’s biggest stage in real time in Auckland in a few weeks, I embarked on a video game mission to see if I could lead the team, not only to their first World Cup match win, but to overall victory.

As someone who has been a fan of the sport for years, while possessing no actual skill, it was disappointing to learn my go-to “bash and smash” gaming technique did not translate to great FIFA 23 skill.

I led New Zealand’s best to a few disastrous losses in the pool games before handing the controller to someone with better hand-eye coordination.

So, what’s the deal with the update, anyway?

There are a few different ways you can play once you’ve chosen your favourite team of all 32 in the tournament – control the whole team while swapping between players, choose your favourite player or come on the field as your own custom team member, and take them through the tournament matches.

We were stoked to get the Football Ferns their first World Cup match win with a 4-0 result over Norway, led by striker Hannah Wilkinson, before falling short of getting the team through to the knockout rounds (our success was helped by the fact you can disable offside penalty, thanks EA Games).

Finally, after making our custom player, Amz Jack, we managed to lead the team through the first round, into a 2-0 win against Japan in the round of 16 before losing to the world champs, the US in the quarter-final.

While we never managed to get the Kiwis to the grand final going the tournament route, with kick off