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This month something extremely unusual happened in the video game world: someone launched a new football game. It used to be that the market could support a vast array of contenders, from arcade kickabouts such as Super Sidekicks and Hat Trick Hero, to serious simulations named Actua Soccer or This Is Football, to eccentric oddities such as Namco’s LiberoGrande which made you experience the whole match as a single onfield player.
For the past decade plus, however, the scene has been dominated EA’s Fifa series, now EA Sports FC. With the exception of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, now eFootball, there have been few competitors – and few plucky upstarts.
But now we have one. Launched on 4 June, Goals is a free-to-play football sim developed by a new studio, also called Goals, based in Stockholm. It’s described as a gameplay first” football game. All the licensing pomp of EA Sports is missing – there are no real-life players or teams. Instead every side and player is randomly generated, so each participant has a completely unique squad. Your players can earn XP and thereby improve their performance, but they also age and retire, forcing you to continually tweak your squad.
The developers have also made a big deal of the fact that there’s no scripting, which means the match engine doesn’t try to assist the player by massaging passing or shooting accuracy, and it won’t generate excitement in the final minutes by adjusting the competence of defenders and attackers.
What Goals promises instead is a fast-paced, highly responsive experience, where skill is the only factor. Having played for several hours now, that does seem to be what we’re getting. The controls are a simplified version of the Fifa staples, with shoot, long pass, short pass and through ball on the face buttons, as well as a sprint function and modifiers on the triggers to pull off chips, driven power shots and other special moves. You can call an AI teammate to make a forward run, you can bring the keeper out from his line, you can jockey and you can use the right analogue stick to do stepovers. If you can play EA Sports FC, you can play this.
The difference is in how fast the players move and react, and how the physics respond. You can really ping the ball between teammates, building attacks at aggressive speed, finding little gaps in your opponent’s back line and getting in behind. Defending is also more intuitive than usual with an auto-tackle function that lets your player block an opponent and take the ball just by positioning them correctly. The feel is like a slightly sped-up version of the earliest Pro Evolution Soccer titles, where teams are rewarded for tiki-taka passing onslaughts, defence-slicing through balls and pinpoint shot aiming.
But I also see problems. Not everyone is going to like the slightly stylised visuals, although they do have a slightly retro feel that will please players brought up on football games by SNK and Sega rather than EA. The team AI seems inconsistent, too. I felt supported using a 4-4-2 formation but when I switched to a 3-5-2 derivative, neither of my wingers were bothering to join forward runs, even with the team set to an attacking mentality. Modified skill and finesse shots are also tricky to access, which may frustrate newcomers – and those who like to chip pretty much every shot to humiliate opponent goalies.
The test will be in how it holds up as an online competition. It’s playable on PC, PS5 and Xbox, and so far connecting with opponents has been seamless. You can play one-off friendlies, single ranked matches or take part in timed tournaments. Clearly, the developer has its eyes on the esports scene, as single-player options are limited – there’s no epic career mode here.
Monetisation will be another factor that decides how the game fares. Right now, you can spend money on packs of players, with differently priced packs offering increasing odds on getting players with high stats. There will also be regular special edition Originals cards, which may feature a well-known real-life player or influencer; the first is streamer KSI. Currently there is no EA Sports FC-style auction house where you buy and sell cards with other players, so it doesn’t seem as though a vast meta market of incredibly expensive match-winning cards is going to develop. The system doesn’t feel too invasive and you can earn points to get free packs through meeting daily and weekly challenges. But, considering the developers have made a big deal of marketing the game as an answer to Fifa/EA Sports FC, it seems rather disingenuous to essentially replicate EA’s monetisation system. And while things feel balanced now, pretty soon, you’re going to be playing against opponents who are spending £20 a week to load their team with top-ranked players.
Goals is a fun footie sim with a solid engine and some interesting, innovative ideas. But it also lacks the sheer buzz and idiosyncrasy of, say, Sensible Soccer, Mario Strikers or even Fifa Street. The aim may have been to counter the predictable, highly merchandised offerings of EA Sports FC and eFootball, but it’s playing on their pitch with a lot of their rules. As with any plucky upstart in this sport, the question is whether it has the legs for a long campaign.
