One of FIFA’s yearly promos is the exciting FUT Birthday. Traditionally, this promo celebrates the anniversary of Ultimate Team making its way into the game. Technically, that came last week; however, with the ongoing global situation around the coronavirus, it’s easy to forgive EA for taking an extra week to get things together. FIFA 20’s version of FUT Birthday gives players a new team of players in packs, some fun objectives, and the promise of upcoming player SBCs. Check it out below.
#FUTBirthday is here!
SM & WF upgrades
#FUT20 pic.twitter.com/g8qtPuLXsn
— EA SPORTS FIFA (@EASPORTSFIFA) March 27, 2020
As you can see in the tweet above, the big draw of this FIFA 20 promo is players with upgraded skill moves and weak feet. If players like Mbappe weren’t overpowered enough for you, now he’s added a five-star weak foot, meaning he can drive in bangers with either foot now. Also, I don’t know about you, but I’m already shaking in my boots at the thought of coming up against that Allan Saint-Maximin card. His One to Watch version was already deadly enough and now he has a five-star weak foot? Someone save me.
Personally, I’m probably most interested in the new Joao Cancelo and Theo Hernandez. There’s something incredibly enticing and dumb about having defensive players bust out five-star skill moves. Is it going to be that helpful? Probably not for most players, but it’s a fun addition.
Outside of the new promo team, EA has added in several players you can earn in-game or through SBCs. In objectives, you can now earn a new Lucas Paqueta and Karim Bellarabi. Paqueta will be an incredibly easy grind, as all of his objectives can be taken care of in Squad Battles. Bellarabi, on the other hand, will be a bit more difficult given that his objectives need to be finished in Rivals. That said, outside of the “assist with a cross” objective, they don’t look that tough.
For now, the SBC selection is a little bare. You can get a new Mesut Ozil for two 85-rated squads. That doesn’t really move the needle for me, but this is the first day of the promo. There’s plenty of time for EA to add fun players if they want to. Outside of the players, there are few easy objectives and SBCs for you to complete and grab some easy packs. These are nearly always worth doing during a promo, so make sure you give them a look when you hop onto the game.
While this promo definitely has some exciting players, it continues to be disappointing that FIFA 20 constantly recycles the same players through each promo. Mesut Ozil and Raphael Guerreiro were in the Halloween Scream promo. Moussa Sissoko, Marcus Rashford, Kai Havertz, and Hirving Lozano were all in FUTmas. Eden Hazard has a permanent player SBC that’s been in the game for months. To some degree, you can understand that they keep using guys like Mbappe, Messi, Neymar, and Ronaldo to sell packs. However, it just seems scummy to keep using the same lower-tier players over and over again. It stagnates the meta and makes every team you face look the same.
At the time of this writing, we haven’t yet hit the time that EA usually releases lightning rounds. For me, that will be the most telling part of this promo. Given the current state of the world, it would be such a bad look for EA to try and entice players to buy packs. You would hope that they leave them alone for FUT Birthday, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem likely.
FIFA 20 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. FUT Birthday kicked off today. The promo will last two weeks, which means a second team is coming next Friday.
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