Why I'm Not Playing FIFA 23

thegamer.com:

I have a love/hate relationship with FIFA. It’s a game that I enjoy playing, conceptually, but half the time when I load up my Xbox for a session, I come away feeling worse for it afterwards. Between toxic players, promotions that encourage non-stop grinding, and constantly trying to funnel you towards EA’s signature ‘surprise mechanics’, it can get too much. I just want to play football with an all-star team.

I should clarify, I’m talking about Ultimate Team here. I don’t see the point in Career Mode these days, as I’d prefer to play Football Manager for that kind of transfer wheeling dealing, and FIFA’s gameplay isn’t good enough to hold up when you’re just playing AI team after AI team. I want to build a squad with the stars, and I want those stars to have buffed up stats and for them to score outrageous goals against real players. Ultimate Team has no equal in that regard.

Related: FIFA 23 Needs To Rework Team Of The Week

I usually play Ultimate Team at a casual level, but this year I went hard. I grinded nearly every promo, I built the strongest teams, and I even spent a little money during Team of the Year (between buying a few packs and saving over a hundred, I still didn’t pull a TOTY). Whether I was trying something fun like a Liverpool past-and-present squad or using the most meta Benzemas and Fekirs (sorry), I kept my squad ahead of the power curve in a manner that you can only do by playing nearly every day.

Because I have a life, my FIFA games would mostly happen late in the evenings, after my girlfriend and daughter went to bed. It’s not a great time to play FIFA, and trying to grind through a Weekend League in the early hours just to be rewarded with the worst red picks you’ve ever seen is not the one. I