The last time I got my hands on Strikerz Inc.’s UFL was early June, so when news released about the second open beta, I was curious to see what improvements had been made.

My initial thoughts regarding UFL were that I was skeptical, mostly because the game was/is marketed as a skill-based alternative to FIFA/EA FC. That’s high expectations for an upstart game and studio, but if you’re going to enter the football/soccer arena, your goals should be to take down the champion.

So how did it play you ask? Well, let’s get into it.

By the way, there’s going to be a lot of comparisons to EA FC in this piece, so you better get used to it.

What I Like

Familiar Control Scheme

One of the nicest things about UFL is it mirrors EA FC’s control scheme. This makes it extremely easy to pick up and play for those of us who have been playing EA’s soccer offering for years. Of course you can customize your control scheme layout, but the fact that the buttons come second nature means that you’re not learning both the game and how to play it. You simply get into a match and are ready. Everything from finesse shots to sprinting is a copy of EA FC so playing feels like second nature.

Keepers

Of all the gameplay mechanics within UFL, keepers were by far the most impressive area to me. While EA FC 24, after numerous patches, still has some of the worst goalkeepers to date in a video game, UFL‘s actually look believable. Save animations look believable unlike in EA FC 24 where you often see keepers beat near post or dive and make a save when the ball is already past them. Keepers in UFL command their box catching crosses and claiming corners.

They also don’t panic in 2 vs. 1 scenarios, which in other games result in an easy squared ball leading to a tap in. While they visually look a little small compared to the goal, they stop long shots, parry dangerous shots out of harm’s way, and lastly are pretty responsive once you manually control them by displaying strong throws and decent kicking animations. There aren’t many areas where I would like to transpose an entire position over to EA’s game, but if EA FC 24 had UFL’s keepers the scorelines would be much more realistic.

Passing Error

There’s A LOT to critique overall when it comes to passing in UFL, but one thing that caught my eye is that the game will punish you for attempting to play passes that should be hard to pull off in real life. The contorting that’s often done in EA FC, which can lead to an unrealistic passing angle and ultimately a successful pass, instead is deflected or off-target. It helps that UFL doesn’t feel as “on-rails” as EA FC but passing is one of the hardest skills to master in real-life so it’s refreshing to have to think twice about what passes to play in UFL.

What I Don’t Like

Input Delay

If the goal of UFL is to create a skill-based online football game (and the developers have made it clear that is the goal), you simply cannot have the type of input delay that currently affects UFL. I was fortunate enough to have good connections when matched up against H2H players, but when it feels like you’re playing against the game and the opponent it doesn’t become a matter of true skill, it becomes who’s the best at playing video games.

I’ve always been a believer that H2H sports games should be skill-based but with strategy (in this case, tactics) playing a role in helping to compensate for a lack of stick skills. As it currently stands, UFL — partly because of input delay — results in matches being end-to-end attacks and more similar to basketball than soccer.

Poor Animations

I could have led with this as it’s probably the most prominent issue plaguing the game right now. Simply put, there just aren’t enough animations to provide variety, and as a result the game suffers especially as it relates to passing. There are too many times when you attempt to play a through ball, and because of the passing error (a good thing), the ball might be slightly behind the receiving player. Instead of turning with your back to goal to receive the ball, the player will unnaturally attempt to take the ball in-stride resulting in the ball morphing ahead of the player as you’re off to the races.

Even with dribbling, there are too many times when shielding results in awkward-looking moments:

Head-tracking and ball awareness is also poor at best and non-existent at its worst:

Notice how the goalscorer, who’s running through on goal, doesn’t even bother to turn his head. He’s running at full-speed to get onto the end of a through ball that’s a little behind him. In a normal situation, he’d be looking backwards to control the ball, which would force him to slow down. Instead he blindly runs onto it and puts it in the back of the net.

Bottom Line

My fear for startup games like UFL is always the same. I don’t know for certain, but there is usually a rush to release the game when it’s clearly not ready. This could be to generate some revenue to pump back into the game and thus improve it with more resources, but the fear is that a poor first bite of the apple usually results in throwing the apple away. This happened with Konami’s eFootball 2022 and Steel City Interactive’s Undisputed (boxing), two sports titles and genres that are near and dear to my heart.

Overall, I applaud the Strikerz Inc effort. It’s no easy task making a sports game from scratch, especially when the direct competition is EA FC. It’s no secret I’m not fan of Ultimate Team modes but that’s what UFL is up against. They are hoping to capitalize off EA’s lootbox approach, which is essentially “pay to play” and hence UFL’s “Fair to Play” mantra. Now that there is an official release date of September 12, there’s a lot of pressure on UFL to be able to deliver and keep the attention of football gamers ahead of EA FC 25’s September 20 release date.