10 Video Game Abilities Developers Always Get Wrong
7. Penalties In Football Games
EA
While this isn't to say that EA Sports' FIFA series has nailed the idea of simulating football on every other area of the pitch, a particular problem rears its head in pretty much every entry - penalties.
Set-pieces have always been an issue for the series, with freekicks and corners in particular often seeming unpredictable, but penalties never fail to frustrate - whether you're striking the ball or trying to parry it away as a keeper.
If you watch football, you'll know that there are all sorts of ways to score a penalty. FIFA includes a few select methods (including the famed Panenka), but no game ever gives you the freedom to choose your positioning in an exact way, or even control your speed without striking the ball in a bizarre shape.
Recent entries also over-sell head movements as a means of either clueing in or deceiving the opposition goalie. Factor in penalty exploits that seem to get uncovered every year, and it's pretty rare you'll ever feel satisfied taking a spot-kick in any FIFA.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
