eFootball 2022 Gameplay & Cutscenes look CLASS in early build

We've finally got our first look at some proper eFootball 2022 gameplay!

Three matches were streamed at what appeared to be a press event, including Mancheter United vs Arsenal, Barcelona vs Man United and Bayern Munich vs Arsenal, complete with cutscenes, played on PlayStation.

Despite not being played by "professionals", we can still get a good idea of the gameplay on the way.

Gameplay

Overall, the general feeling from the gameplay is that it plays a little slow.

On top of this, it looks like eFootball 2022 mechanics will be more manual and less assisted than ever before.

Players can be seen running straight past the ball in some instances and defending looks much harder this year, with miss-timed tackles being given as fouls left, right and centre.

The new collisions between players also look pretty clunky and a bit unnatural at times.

The circle indicator around the selected player, which has been taken from the mobile version of the game, is large and very distracting, but we're hoping you'll be able to turn that off.

Overall, the gameplay does flow nicely, with seamless restarts between plays helping this.

It must be noted that it's pretty hard to get make an accurate judgement without playing the game ourselves.

Cut Scenes

eFootball 2022's cutscenes look super realistic compared to other football titles.

Initially, we get to see the players walking into the stadium in their suits before the game.

Konami has focused on small details to make the cut scenes more realistic, like players fiddling with their bags as they enter the stadium, or keepers calling for the ball from the ball boy.

We then get a look at the kits in the dressing room and this is where you get to choose whether you want to wear the home, away or third kit.

The players are then shown warming up on the pitch as we get a look at the lineups of the two sides, much like real televised matches.

The players are also shown motivating each other as they leave the dressing room, before lining up in the tunnel and walking out in front of the crowd.

Graphics

It must be noted that the video was streamed from a third-party camera, but we can still get some impression of the graphics on the new game.

Firstly, the player builds look fantastic, as we'd expect from a game built on Unreal Engine.

Next, we noticed the poor pitch quality, with the grass itself not looking very attractive.

The ball was actually seen floating above the grass in the centre circle as the teams prepared to kick off, but this is possibly a bug that will be fixed before the games official release.

More to come!

The matches we've reviewed here gives us only a taste of what you can expect from the new free-to-play eFootball, and given this is an early build, we are very excited!

Some of the bugs will most definitely be cleared up before the games' full release on Thursday, 30 September.

Plus, we can't wait to get a proper look at the all-new graphics which have been built on Unreal Engine.