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Hey everyone, I’m Andy and I’m a massive fan of multiplayer games, mostly Fifa and COD (Warzone). Over recent weeks I find myself wanting to be more involved with gaming communities and my good friend Welchy recommended Forever Gaming as a great community to join. The last time I was part of a gaming community was back when OSRS started to die down and coders started making private servers for OSRS, so if you ever played LostPKZ many years ago you may have come across me. I’ll try to be as active as I can be and you may see me upload gaming reviews, I’m currently writing a review for EA Sports FC 24 which I hope to finish over the next few days. Anyway, I look forward to chatting to you all and being part of the community. Andy

Hey Luseth. Thanks for letting me know. I shall keep that in mind. I may need to upgrade my pro before jumping on clubs 😂 I mostly play Ultimate Team when it comes to FIFA. I’m not a massive fan of the standard multiplayer and mostly play it when I need to level up guns but may jump on from time to time. However, if there are any Warzone lovers then that’s more my style 😊 Thank you 🙂

Hey everyone, I have decided to write my very first gaming review and would love any feedback/thoughts. I have played Fifa religiously since I was a kid so have a lot of love and hate for this game and decided it would be the best game for me to give my thoughts on. "EA Sports FC 24 has been out now for just over 3 months and with TOTY promo now in packs, I thought it would be an ideal time to review whether spending £70 on this game back in September 2023 has been worth it. This review will focus solely on the Ultimate Team mode within the game, which is one of the most played modes on any game. As always, EA implemented some new changes into the game, with the introduction of evolutions, player traits and woman footballers. All of these changes, especially within the ultimate team game mode, have had a positive impact in my opinion. As someone who usually gets bored of the game within the first few months, I find myself coming back to complete objectives, evolve some of my favourite players from the football world and to compete in FUT Champions to build my team even further. Player traits have added an additional benefit to specific players, allowing users to control them and play with them in the same way in which they play in their real-life football matches. This has created a uniqueness within the game and opened options for different styles of play that users implement into their game plan. It also adds further value to the players that are considered ‘world class’ or ‘top tier’ such as players like Salah, Pele or Hansen. Another completely new introduction to FC 24, which comes with their growing popularity within the football industry is woman footballers. At first, as is the case with most change, the introduction of woman footballers along with men footballers wasn’t met with much optimism. However, as the game has gone on and EA have released promos, the popularity of some of the woman footballer cards have increased. Players such as Bonmati and Putellas of Barcelona, Diani of Lyon, and icon cards such as Hamm, Abily or Sawa have been a mainstay within teams that users have created. The downside for me, is that with the additional players now in the game, you have a higher chance to receive what users refer to as ‘fodder’ cards from your rewards which are cards you are mostly likely to submit into Squad Builder Challenges (SBCs) or sell to increase your coins within the game. EA have used this as a perfect opportunity to add higher priced packs to its store with some of the most expensive packs costing you around £40 per pack but with the guarantee you’ll receive a certain amount of high rated cards back from the pack. This has allowed users to build a far superior team earlier on in the game compared to the previous games, putting those that don’t purchase packs with real money in a difficult situation when it comes to competing at the highest level. EA have tried to combat this to allow users that do not wish to spend any money on the game by adding a lot more in-game content and rewards/packs that you can earn by completing objectives or by just playing the game. EA are often releasing new cup objectives or objectives that tie into the game modes you’ll already be playing such as Rivals, FUT Champs or Squad Battles so it doesn’t necessarily add any extra stress onto your gaming hours. Another positive change for EA has been the addition of evolutions. This feature allows you to take a player and insert them into an evolution where you are required to complete objectives with the player to earn them an upgrade to their overall stats. With new evolutions being added over the course of the game, this should allow you to keep upgrading some of your favourite players within your team so they remain within the power curve of the game. For example, my 75 rated Garnacho has been upgraded to 88 through some of evolutions that have been released so far. I do have a few concerns with evolutions and I’m hoping it is something EA improve on going forward. My first concern is that some of the evolutions that EA release has a coin or FP price attached to them meaning you either need to spend real money or put some of the coins you have earned in the game towards upgrading one of your players. This isn’t so bad if the player you are choosing to evolve and upgrade would cost a similar amount or even more if they were released as a special card in a promo. However, if you are someone that supports a lower league club and have found yourself wanting to upgrade some of the bronze or silver rated players of that team, then to pay between the £50,000 - £100,000 to upgrade those players can be very costly. It would be ideal if the amount it costs to place the players in these evolutions changed and increased/deceased in relation to the players rating. For example, an 84 rated card would cost £75,000 to be evolved and a 74 rated card would cost £10,000 to evolve. This would allow those users hoping to turn a bronze team into a team of superstars more flexibility when completing the necessary objectives for those players or provide them with the extra funds to evolve them in the first place. Gameplay/connection has always been a big issue for me on EA Sports FC 24 and the previous set of Fifa games they released. I find myself trying to play at certain points of the day or weekend just to ensure I am getting the best connection possible to allow me to enjoy the game. If you compare playing the game on a Friday at 6pm when everyone logs in to see the new promo that EA have just released to a Sunday where most people have already finished their FUT Champion games, you’ll notice a much steadier and smoother connection and consistency with the gameplay on the Sunday. EA need to try and find a solution to ensure that the gameplay and connection is steady no matter what time or day you want to play. Some people, due to other commitments don’t have a choice on when they can play and if I was them, I would definitely want to play the game at it’s best. With gameplay being mentioned, it might be best to mention the improved AI. Every year EA are trying to make the game more realistic to real-life scenarios and with each update I feel as if they make the game a lot less fun and a lot harder to score goals, especially with how good the AI defending is. With some of the more top tier defenders, it almost feels as if you don’t need to control them for them to defend effectively against your opponent. It is important EA find a balance between a good AI but still requiring users to have some defensive control for the more effective defending techniques. At times it can almost feel as if you are playing against the computer on the highest difficulty setting, which isn’t enjoyable, not for me at least. Overall, I think EA have made some positive changes this year to the game which has spiced things up a little, giving you a lot more creativity around the team that you build and more flexibility with the style of play you want to implement. With some improvements to the gameplay, AI and connection, I believe EA will continue to have one of the best football games in the gaming community for years to come. I look forward to seeing how they expand on some of the new features such as evolutions as the game progresses throughout the year. What do you like/dislike about EA SPORTS FC 24? What rating would you give it? My personal rating – 6.9/10 " I hope everyone enjoys reading, I'm curious to see what you all think and whether you agree/disagree with certain points. Andy

More of generalised thought process @Luseth, I'm pretty sure not everything will. When you think of two ways stuff changes, it either evolves or there is a revolution, the revolutionary ideas and ways society drive have becoming far less as we developed all the amazing things we have over the past 200-500 years. So things will evolve and I do think digital media will be the mainstay of what we see, but it evolves over time like you mention about Vinyls and other such physical items in their own categories like gaming, music, etc. You see artists now try to create money through special edition vinyls because they realise they can't make as much money with digital media. And that's where I think most things now get driven by - money. One of the highest, well known games that made a huge profit was Witcher 3, and a lot of that was down to how they packaged their physical media and accessories within it. As I watch prices go up more and more for retro items and things people want to 'own', the key here is that humans enjoy that owning feeling and when its not tangible, they can't see or feel it and that doesn't fill them with joy. Digital will be 80% and 20% will be the specialist items we all want to have in our hands, kind of scenario. So both can be right to a certain extent. Chad @Riff Machine goes into it a little on their latest podcast too after Ubisoft guy went and said the thing you shouldn't say.

Welcome to FG @Andy_White_07 ! Hopefully its a good thing that Welchy gave some glorious feedback that this place is half decent for your new interwebz home 😄 We do play it from time to time, however before FG I used to play Campaigns on CoD and ended up just not wanting to miss MP nights with any of the FGers that were on. Funny how nearly 99% of our game decisions get created from this ol' place. Hopefully you'll pop in one day soon. Like you'lll see, we have loads here we try to get involved with. You could argue too much sometimes but I like to think theres enough here to keep people busy and call it their home. Looking forward to seeing you around FG and hopefully online too. 😄

Hi @Andy_White_07 welcome aboard! There are quite a few COD / Fifa players here, typically Monday nights are pro clubs nights if you fancy joining us sometime! On COD we mostly play multiplayer, we have a couple of good players here so if you get on with them your win/ loss ratio should start ticking upwards and COD tends to be the go to game if there isn't a specific event set in the events section. Anyway yeah the forum can be a little quiet sometimes but that's because the whatsapp tends to be fairly busy with people talking nonsense 😄 But yeah glad to have you aboard!

Being someone that mostly plays fifa and cod, I have no idea 😂 Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League - 84 Foamstars - 75 Helldivers 2 - 81 Skull and Bones - 78 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - 86 Alone in the Dark -79 Dragons Dogma 2 - 80 Princess Peach: Showtime - 81 Rise of the Ronin - 76 South Park: Snow Day - 80 Black Myth: Wukong - 84 STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl - 80 Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 - 86 Star Wars Outlaws - 89 Little Nightmares 3 - 75 Avowed - 70 Towerborne - 73 Hellblade 2: Senuas Saga - 90 Indiana Jones - 82

This game is amazing! Currently has the highest concurrent players at 1,221,744! What this has achieved so far is mind boggling. I still play Pokémon on Switch but for PC other games fell short. TemTem became a grind fest.

Alright mate, welcome and enjoy your stay 🙂 Just don't be a gooner and we'll get on fine 👊

Thank you, it's good to be here. I'll keep that in mind haha, my competitive nature might come out!

I always use to complete the campaigns back in the day on COD. Now I struggle to stay on single player games/modes for long periods. I'll definitely try to at some point. For now, you probably see me more active on the forums 🙂

Just to add to this, and I can't remember if I saw an article about this or whether it was just mates talking but we discussed having some kind of point system, where if you decide you no longer want a digital game, you could revoke your rights to it and earn some points which could be used as currency towards a new game/DLC. If that was the case, I feel physical copies of games would die down even more, especially with the price of games increasing. I gameshare with a friend so we split the costs of our games to make it more affordable.

Welcome to FG. There's a few of us you'll have to take a pinch of salt with other than that a great bunch to game with.

I don't see why Sega would even consider making a new console, reading that letter it is a letter wrote after someone has just played their old sega for the first time in 30 years.... Physical media is coming to an end, there are positives to physical and I am a big fan of owning and collecting it but I do not see how we can continue to make physical media in a world with limited resources and the issues creating physical items brings about. This will ultimately bring about the end of physical consoles in the way that they are today and Microsoft can see this and have been getting ahead of the curve with their streaming service and subscription offerings. Sony have also cottoned I think now and that is what the PS Portal is about, a dedicated streaming device, I suspect the PS Portal 2 will be standalone and just stream titles from PS Plus. I even think Nintendo will get caught out if they don't consider things going forwards, people have a lot less money today to keep committing to paying full price for Nintendo First Party titles (even when they have been out a number of years). There is also the R&D costs to create a new console today, I don't think Sega have anywhere near the funds to achieve creating something new and different. Correct me if I have misread this Lee but some things we do, fashion for example but not all, do you really think USB's or physical hard drive's will keep going as more and more people move to cloud storage? When was the last time you bought Microsoft word on a disc? Vinyl has come back but that's because it has made listening to music more of an activity again, you have to take your time and you savour it more but you would not see cd's or tapes make the same sort of return. While video game's, the activity is playing them, not many people (especially in the modern world) appreciate the manuals, appreciate the box art and such, it's niche to collector's and that's why collector's editions of games still do well. I think physical media has largely been kept alive by the ability to buy and sell second hand for a while.

I'd agree with this as it seems on the face of it their company are structurally ready to be able to get a new console break into the market. That has been getting harder and harder to do out there...but equally as with everything in the world, it isn't impossible. I really genuinely believe in the world we do have a cyclical process on how we do things though - I can see a world where some games go back to basics, build them all on one disc without digital updates and people will lap them up. Indie games have had a revival and now they are a mainstay of what games many gamers love to watch out for. I feel like a mid-tier group of games set around 30-40 pounds would generate some interest with offline play to keep and play forever. Good marketing tool anyway, just sayin'.

Nice review mate. I've opted not to get EA FC just yet! I don't have much interest in UT. Biggest thing that gets me about EA games, it feels like who can do the fanciest tricks the most often, even watching pros on Twitch, feels less like football and more like showboating. With that, and me being a very bad player in the first place, I decided to go full manual in football games probably around the time of FIFA 16. The satisfaction feeling you get from scoring a wondergoal because you had to actually put the effort in to aiming your through balls, passes and shots is what makes football games. Manual, while rewarding, never gets any attention from EA and leaves certain types of passes broken. So my football fix is currently SP Football Life 2024, which is a standalone mod of PES 2021.

Nice review mate. Would agree with majority of points, my biggest issue with Ultimate Team is that you have to play religiously to be able to keep up and have a team that can compete, or you have to be willing to spend a lot of real money, or both!! As someone who likes to play a large variety of games, I don’t have the time to keep up with everyone else, and I’m definitely not giving EA any more money than the £70 I paid for the game. Other than that, I still enjoy the Career modes, clubs and normal online seasons. Interested in why you gave it a 6.9, and not just a 7?!

I think at this stage, Pokémon characters are heavily influenced in all monster hunter games. This game is something though, I'm trying not to burn myself out early on, so only play in stages for a bit at a time when I'm not grinding Monster Hunter World. If you're a Pokémon fan, this is definitely worth picking up, still enough content for Early Access. GP version is slightly different to Steam too. That is a couple of updates behind currently and there's no dedicated servers. On Steam you can have servers that support up to 32 players, on GP it's 4 player invite only. Also they pretty much brought GP version straight over from Xbox, as I couldn't even find an exit game button when I tried.

Thank you mate. Looking forward to it 🙂

Good to have you here Andy mate! I know there a lot of Warzone and FIFA players here that would be happy for you to join them!

I paid for game pass for the month to give it a try and it is really good fun, it might give the pokemon dev's a bit of a kick up the backside, that said I can see the blatant rip off's of the pokemon monsters which is really poor in my eyes. It can't be that difficult to come up with new one's surely?

Games for me have lost their way. The lust for bigger worlds, betterererer graphics and realism. Even sonic lost its charm in a 3D world. Would games find their magic if they were constrained by older tech, could innovation and retro collide to make a gaming future where you don't download updates? Multiplayer on the net only, no DLC, no payment plans. Sounds good to me.

Welcome Andy - nice to see another new face 🙂 There's a goodly number of NFL fans on here as well if you're interested in that? Anyway, enjoy your stay

The trouble is who would subsidise the loss against the new product? You could buy one AAA game for £50, withdraw the licence and then claim such points against an indie game for instance. The developers of that will then either have their income reduced or someone like Sony or Nintendo would have to foot the deficit created by the points generation. The beauty of digital gaming for the likes of publishers and developers is that they have no physical media and shipping costs plus more importantly the purchase is set in stone where licences cannot be sold onward as second hand. A similar thing came up on Steam recently regarding Steam Points where someone suggested that these should be converted into vouchers to spend in the Steam Store. This was not feasible because these points are generated out of thin air so if someone spent £50 on a AAA game, got £5 in return and used that to buy an alternative product from a different developer, Valve would have to pay it out of their own pocket. Based on my estimations, if each active account earned just one voucher on average per week, it would cost Valve £2,000,000,000 a month which is 25% of their annual income that would result in a yearly loss of -$16bn. Digital games and optional DLC were partly designed to combat against the second hand market but it's now become the ultimate income stream especially with production and shipping costs further reduced or in the case of Alan Wake 2; removed altogether.

Thank you 🙂 I support Manchester United so no issues there haha!

That's my biggest issue with the gameplay these days. FIFA was so much more authentic back in the 08-12 era with far more realistic ball physics and less animations. Since they moved to frostbite, the animations are so wonky and they've spent way too much time on fancy moves that look ridiculous and can be spammed to hell. The ball often has no realistic weight and often simply travels in straight lines with a consistent speed. I watched a major e-sport match a while back and they were just pulling off the most silly moves plus every pass was in a straight line and being darted around like an ice hockey puck. The final score was 8-6 or something. There was nothing wrong with FIFA a decade ago and it used to be a lot of fun trying to break down an opponent from a tactical standpoint. EA seem to think children will get bored if they actually try and create a simulator. Apparently 14 goals a game, skill spam and endless rewards based on spend and play is the best way forward and whilst that's true for their income, it's made the games so much worse.

The gameplay has always been a big issue for EA. When the connection is running smoothly, you feel as if you can play the way you want to play but when it isn’t running smoothly, you can’t do anything. I usually find playing at certain times during the day/evening you have a smoother connection on their servers but you shouldn’t have to restrict yourself. I do enjoy opening packs and the thrill of getting a world class player is great and I do think with this Fifa and even the last one, they have improved on allowing those who can’t afford to spend loads of money on packs, the opportunity to build up rewards in game and complete SBCs for top tier players like Best and Zidane. Even when I’m not enjoying the game I find myself going back to it but I’m a big football fan in real life so as soon as I watch a game I want to play and with no other company offering a decent alternative, it is hard to avoid Fifa.

When even IGN say the game is shite you know it's gonna be bad. They'll still probably give it a 7 to avoid upsetting the publishers but rule of thumb with them is always deduct 3 for the real score🤣

I still loosely follow UT although I haven't played a FIFA game in a long time plus have a few close friends that still play it religiously. From what I've seen, the mode is just so corrupt and bloated these days plus the gameplay is a cross between the pace of ice hockey and the scores seen in basketball. It's a shocking representation of football. They may as well just remove the actual playing matches altogether and just have pack openings with matches being simmed. EA have done the business though - they know how to drive retention and average player spend so to hell with the actual quality of the game. Sports titles are in such a shambolic place now that I don't even bother with any of them.

The player count currently stands at 1,333,559 - bear in mind that this is a normal Monday morning in most of Europe and America is still very much still in bed. Absolutely insane figures really. Nobody had heard of this game last week!

After looking at the other predictions, it seems low 60s may have been a more appropriate prediction but who knows 😂

I will be STUNNED if Suicide Squad gets an 84 … but stranger things have happened! Thanks for submitting predictions mate!

Couple more new ones this week. Episode 81 and our episode from last Wednesday are both LIVE. In 81, we talked about the Ubisoft execs' recent comments about consumers "getting comfortable not owning games" and the bonus episode started on why I prefer the @d Mario games over 3D ones, which evolved into a talk about platformers.

Came across this guy and have been watching loads of his stuff, I just love his presenting style and he certainly seems to know what he's talking about. He's definitely a big fan of Elon 😂

I'm buying this later.

Happy Berfday @GazzaGarratt!!!

Sadly I can't see Sega ever making a comeback in mainstream console terms. The company just doesn't have anywhere near enough money required to even fulfil global hardware production and distribution let alone produce an array of new games. They've been acting as a publisher for way too long whilst the likes of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have been capitalising on massive revenues along with research and development. If Sega were to throw together a machine, it would likely be off-the-shelf hardware and all a bit desperate. They are however looking to revive a few classic franchises so that's worth keeping an eye on. With Nintendo adopting a lot of bad modern day practices, I've kinda lost a lot of hope and things like DLC, subscriptions, live services and DRM is pretty much engrained in the industry. If Microsoft and Ubisoft keep pushing, the next generation of consoles could see us not even being able to buy or own games outright - it'll all be subscriptions and other bullshit.

Thanks for the submissions so far! Quite interesting how different some of our scores are! Now that we’ve seen the Indiana Jones gameplay trailer, I’m pretty happy with my prediction! I think I have gone too high on Avowed though!