EA’s football franchise has gone beyond the FIFA license in recent years, and EA Sports FC 26 is another solid entry that die-hard soccer/football fans will no doubt have flocked to already.
Still, if you’ve been on the fence about lacing up your virtual boots, then there’s a Deadline Day deal you can snap up right now – Amazon has slashed the price of the latest game on all platforms by 57% as its kicked off its official sale event, making it just $29.99 on PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox just in time for the Black Friday.
As for what’s included in this year’s game, EA has promised it’s more community-driven than ever before. As a result, it refines a lot of pain points from recent years, like AI defender positioning, improved goalkeepers, and more responsive dribbling. It's already seen some sizeable patches to adjust gameplay based on continued feedback, too.
You can pick between Competitive preset, which features similar gameplay to what’s come before, or a more realistic-feeling Authentic option that’s closer to the real game. Player Archetypes are also new, letting your player grow into the next world superstar by following a rough stats template.
Live Challenges keep Manager Career fresh, while you can also see managers move clubs for the first time ever.
In our review, Ricky Frech gave the game 7 out of 10 and said, “EA Sports FC 26’s on-pitch gameplay is the best it's been in a long time, but its overly aggressive Season Pass is also EA at its most money-hungry yet.”
Playing offline in Career modes helps sidestep that issue, though, and hey – you can use the 50% you've saved on Ultimate Team points, right? RIGHT?
You Don't Need a Prime Membership to Shop These Sales
Amazon doesn't require you to have a Prime membership to access its Black Friday sale. Unlike Prime-exclusive events like Prime Day and Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday is open to everyone. There are some exceptions to that, and you may run into some deals marked "Prime Deal", but for the most part you shouldn't run into any issues if you don't have a subscription.
There are quite a few benefits available to Prime members that can be helpful during Black Friday shopping, however. Most notably the free shipping comes in handy if you're buying anything for less than $35. There are a couple of different free trial options available to new subscribers you can check out during this sales event, with the base option giving you 30-days free.
PlayStation's Black Friday sale officially begins on November 21, and Amazon will most likely price match all of those deals as well, which include discounts on PS5 consoles, games, and accessories.
There was also the Nintendo Black Friday announcement a few weeks back, that stated the official Nintendo sale would be starting on November 23, so there's unlikely to be many Switch games on sale until then.
Most of the video game deals available now are thanks to GameStop's early Black Friday sale starting this week, but rest assured that more are on their way.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.
