UFL Review - Still Searching for Its Signature Move

It’s been a long time coming, but the official UFL release is upon us. With years of development under their belt, Strikerz Inc. finally delivered on their promise to make a game that could rival the two established soccer giants, EA Sports and Konami. Just getting to the market is a huge feat in and of itself, but is the game enough to pull players from the vaunted EA FC and eFootball games? Well, let’s find out in this UFL review.

What I Like

Another Football Game On The Market

In an age where the startup costs to enter the footy market are more discouraging than encouraging, it’s refreshing to see an upstart company like Stikerz Inc. take on an effort of this magnitude. It’s no secret that EA dominates much of the market, and due to their deep pockets they have more than likely priced out a lot of would-be competitors, especially in an era where licensing takes center stage.

Creating a sports game from the ground up is undoubtedly difficult and you can tell the folks behind UFL have spent a lot of time and resources in an attempt to offer something new. While it’s most certainly a console/PC based game, there are some elements of mobile gaming sprinkled in, but for the most part it looks the part and that’s a good start.

It’s FREE!

As games creep into the $70 and up price range, it’s nice to see UFL taking a page out of Konami’s eFootball tactics sheet and offering the base game as a free-to-play title. Of course, the idea is to reel you in with the free download and then microtransaction you to death, but there’s certainly no mandate that you have to use your money in order to have fun with this game. While I have been guilty of splurging on a few packs in eFootball, I haven’t felt the need to purchase any DLC yet in UFL as I’ve just been coming to grips with it and getting a feel for my way around the game.

Graphics

When it comes to visuals, UFL is not quite on the level of EA FC but comfortably ahead of Konami’s eFootball. Perhaps my expectations were low given what we’ve seen with eFootball’s demise, but graphically the game holds it own and is worthy of a current-gen sports title. Player models are solid and realistic with the faces being easy to recognize. The pitch is vibrant and the stadiums are rendered well despite there not being too many cutscenes to showcase them.

Kit textures and menus are also on par with current sports offerings, although there’s always room for improvement in areas like pitches showing signs of wear and tear and other seemingly minute details that often make the difference between realism and ultra-realism.

What I Don’t Like

Gameplay

Look, if you’re going to try to differentiate yourself from EA FC, which is obviously the intention with the whole “Fair to Play” mantra that’s absolutely plastered throughout the game and their website (which by the way is a UI nightmare), then it’s probably a good idea to not model your gameplay off EA FC.

Everywhere you look, it feels like you’re playing EA FC-lite. A lot of the same issues that plague the EA series are present in UFL:

• End-to-end action that completely bypasses the midfield ✅
• Heavily assisted controls ✅
• Overpowered shooting ✅
• Lack of fouls ✅
• Poor player awareness ✅
• Clueless defenders that leave you out high and dry ✅
• etc.

The list is endless, but let’s break it down to some of the game’s core gameplay issues.

Passing Is All Over The Place — In A Bad Way

Literally the first thing I noticed right from the kickoff is just how fast the ball gets passed around the pitch. Want to pass it to your teammate standing two yards away…ping!

Nearly every pass along the ground that isn’t a through ball travels at such a high velocity that it completely throws off the balance of the game, which is also ironic because the through balls don’t have nearly enough power to them and often run out of steam. Allow me to talk a bit about what this issue does to the gameplay.

By allowing the ball to be played along the ground at such a high speed, you completely cut out any semblance of a build-up, which in turn ruins the entire shape of both the attack and defense. I wouldn’t be surprised if Erik ten Hag’s name can be found in the credits as a consultant. The consistency in passing is also frustrating, especially as you adjust to the game knowing that passing is overpowered (in the literal sense). The only saving grace in this area is that the first touch is also poor so there’s a semblance of reality when your player can’t control an MLB fastball hit at them. The core fundamentals of any football game start with passing, and if the balance is off then the rest of the game will suffer as well.

Player Awareness

Similar to its free counterpart, eFootball, UFL struggles with the concept of players reacting to the ball. There are times when your players who are closest to a 50-50 ball will just not react to a ball despite them being the closest to it.

It’s not just these instances that showcase the poor awareness in the game, it’s also the static nature of how players move off the ball. A lack of movement in the final third when attacking is only compounded by your players not recognizing when to stay forward and when to retreat back into their defensive shape. For example, if you set your tactic to “press after losing the ball” and you win the ball, you’ll quickly notice that many of your teammates who should be supporting you in attack are in fact retreating — leaving you on your own to carry out the attack.

Shooting Is Too Accurate

Once you come to grips with shooting, you will find that it suffers from the same fate as eFootball and to an extent EA FC. While the shot velocity is better tuned than passing, it’s far too easy to get a shot on target. Once you find your way with the skill controls, this can easily be exploited by finding the sweet spots where finesse shots run rampant (angled shots from a few yards inside the 18-yard box).

While keepers do a pretty decent job at getting a hand to shots faced from outside the box, the amount of wayward shots isn’t to my liking, especially considering the low rated players you start with. My initial squad captain was Danny Ings. While he has certainly had a solid career, the amount of goals I scored with him would even make Danny himself shake his head in disbelief. Shooting variety by way of different animations could use some work, but it is somewhat to be expected from a game built from the ground-up without the resources of Konami or EA.

Defending

Defending is hit or miss in UFL. In general, your AI teammates do a little more than EA FC but still suffer from a rigidness that perhaps takes cues from UFL’s bare bones tactics system. Fullbacks tuck in far too narrow, helping to create the same sort of rigid defensive line and shape that makes EA FC so frustrating with their HyperMotion feature. Defending crosses, whether they be from corners or open play is hit or miss because the game lacks a true collision system, which often results in your defenders not even jumping.

In the case of corners, it often plays out like this:

1. Corner comes in perfectly to a spot because of the target mechanic
2. Two players (one attacker and one defender) are engaged but the attacker manages to get off the ground
3. Bullet header that’s saved off-the-line
4. Rinse
5. Repeat

Lastly on defending, tackling suffers from player awareness issues, and while the tackle button is more responsive than the other two footy titles, the ability of your defender to collect the ball is absent at times because of a combination of lag and poor player awareness. Overall, defending leaves a lot to be desired.

Yay, Another Card Game

For those folks who like to play offline, feel free to skip this section, but for those who like to build squads, collect cards, and compete online, this one is for you. Look, if you’re interested in a card collecting Ultimate Team sort of game, there are simply better options on the market, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of design.

For starters, the match experience that your players earn takes too long to accumulate and level up, which means that you always have to hit the market to buy players that are faster and more skilled. Instead of building a squad where you learn your players and level them up according to your needs, it’s much easier to just purchase a better player. Perhaps this is where Strikerz Inc. looks to recoup some of their startup costs by pushing players to purchase their e-currency (CP or Credit Points) because they know that the majority of their target base won’t have the patience to grind, especially considering some have migrated over from EA FC after years of frustration with Ultimate Team and EA’s direction.

Market values, especially after the last patch, feel inflated with sell values not commanding the type of return they should. This forces you to keep a really big squad and hoard players. In the early access builds, CP was too easy to accrue during general play, but now it seems as if the developers have done a 180 instead of finding a happy medium that creates balance in the market.

Bottom Line

After the initial hype of a new title wears off, there isn’t much in UFL that warrants keeping this game in the rotation. The main game mode, their version of Ultimate Team, isn’t as developed and polished as EA FC, and the legends/icon player cards aren’t as deep as eFootball. While you do have to grind more to get a better squad than in eFootball where Konami throws a Messi card at you every time their server maintenance messes up, the game simply isn’t unique enough nor polished enough to pull folks away for an extended period of time.

I certainly applaud Strikerz Inc. for even getting this off the ground, and the amount of resources it will take to compete long-term will depend on them committing to making improvements to keep the community engaged. The early signs, as evidenced by the most recent patch, are positive but community feedback and commitment will go a long way towards really improving this game.