AFL 23 (PS5)

After quite an absence, Australian Rules Football returned to gaming with AFL 23.

There are plenty of options in this game, you can play in the AFL or choose a state league like the VFL and there is even Women’s football so there is something for everybody.

All the teams are in the game which is cool so you can play as St Kilda in the AFL or choose Sandringham in the VFL or pick the state league of your choice.

At first, I couldn’t win a game on medium difficulty, my Saints would get blown away at the start, would have a good run to cut the margin down and then the opposition would kick five, six goals in a row to again blow out the margin.

After some research I discovered that there is a faint vibration when it is time to take a mark, this cut down my losing margins from 100-150 points to 50 points as I could defend and take pack marks.

Eventually I slowed the opposition down further and eventually started to kick goals and to my amazement I started to win games, taken me about 50 games to do it.

Set shots for goal are pretty easy, just got to make sure you don’t over kick or under kick the ball sometimes I forget to hold down the circle button and I end up kicking the ball a few metres.

The computer seems to have an advantage where of the ball is always falling where their players are when the ball is punched away and they can play on easily without the risk of holding the ball as my players are standing still.

The biggest gripe is tackling, it sometimes takes too long for a player to tackle, and the computer kicks the ball easily to their players while my players are running to nowhere or not manning up.

There are some movement quirks in the game, players can suddenly run at fast speed, sometimes players run away from the ball allowing the opposition to play on with ease.

The commentary can be repetitive, they dug into the past to say the lines that made past games famous like AFL 98 of AFL 99.

Overall it is a decent game, I’ve put 42 hours into it so far so it’s not a stinker of a game, it just needed more work, maybe some sports are just not possible to fully replicate in a game.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Tiggy.