EA Sports’ modified take on 5v5 Volta is a great pick-up-and-play entry point but it’s lacking exactly what you would want for a fun night with your friends.
Akhil Arora, an Open Critic-certified gaming critic, who has played spent several hours with Rush in EA Sports FC 25. He has been reviewing video games since 2016 and has written for NDTV and SlashFilm.
First, they let go of FIFA, now it’s Volta’s turn. Death has come for them both. With EA Sports FC 25—the annual iterative update to the planet’s most popular football video game—the new-age four-year-old take on the erstwhile FIFA Street is gone. Why? To put it plainly, as senior producer Sam Rivera did, players weren’t “engaging as much” with it as it was separate from Clubs and Ultimate Team. Gone are the dedicated street stars and the option to carry your Pro avatar onto the wacky, stylish Volta arenas. You can still play 3v3 matches in those venues in Kick-off with real-life teams and players but the rest of it is disappearing. Or rather, at least what you knew it as.
With FC 25, Volta is being transformed into Rush, a 5v5 format that’s available across FUT, Clubs, Career and Kick-off. (This might be confusing for some as “Rush” was used in previous editions to describe 3v3 and 4v4 Volta games that didn’t have goalkeepers and had tiny goals. Except the new 5v5 Rush in FC 25 always has goalkeepers and has a full-sized goal you would find in an 11v11 match.)
What is Rush in EA Sports FC 25?
In Clubs and FUT Rush, you are locked to one player. That naturally means you’ve to play with your created Pro in the former while you’re free to pick from your FUT player items in the latter. Albeit with restrictions. At the time of launch, FUT Rush events limit what kind of player item you can turn up with. One of them set the bar at 79 overall (a good one given the early days) and another defined the overall pace (in a bid to slow things down) as well as a silver card policy. Additionally, duplicates are also not allowed, so you can’t pick the same player as one of your three human teammates. (The goalkeeper is AI-controlled in Clubs and FUT Rush.) With Clubs Rush, there are no such rules or regulations. You’ve to deal with a disparity in overall values, as each player inevitably spends different amounts of time in different FC 25 game modes.
If you prefer to have full control over your squad—including the goalkeeper—you can try out Rush in Kick-off or Career. In the former, you can pick from the over 700 available teams and choose your five favourite players. Love playing with Mbappé, Rodrygo, Viní Jr. and Bellingham and don’t really care for the rest? You can do exactly that in Kick-off Rush. The final way to play Rush is buried deep into Manager Career. You can speed up the development of your youth academy prospects by engaging in 5v5 Rush tournaments that will pop up now and then. Career Rush gives you the option to play with their current overalls or at their fullest potential to give you an idea of what they will develop into one day. This is the first time in the history of FIFA or EA Sports FC that you have the option to take potential prodigies to the pitch without promoting them to the senior squad.
How is FC 25 Rush different from Volta?
At this point, you might be (rightfully) wondering: “Isn’t this just an expansion of 5v5 Volta? How is it different?” Well, for starters, the FC 25 Rush pitch is larger. Per EA, it measures 63.7 by 46.6 meters, which comes out to roughly 41.5% of the area of an 11v11 pitch. I couldn’t find numbers for Volta’s pitches—which are characterised as small, medium and large—but the Rush one feels bigger than Volta’s “large”. The Rush picture is also squarer than a typical football rectangle. (Swipe left on the photo below for a comparison.) EA did that because it wants to “encourage lateral passing” and ensure the pitch doesn’t feel “too narrow”. And unlike Volta, you can be caught offside in Rush. The implementation is also unique. Unlike the half-line system in 11v11, offside rules only apply in the final third of the pitch in Rush.
The Volta DNA hasn’t fully disappeared. Long balls are too loopy, in my opinion, and allow defenders to get easily in position and intercept. EA Sports might claim FC 25 Rush isn’t a “mode” on its own as it’s available across FUT, Clubs, Career and Kick-off. But I would argue it is its own thing because it plays differently than the other match types in those modes. Air passes don’t behave like this elsewhere. These annoyances must be ironed out.
Some of the other changes are reminiscent of ice and field hockey. If you commit an egregious foul, you’ll be handed a new blue card—this takes you off the pitch and puts you in a punishment box for a minute. You can also earn yourself a blue card by picking up two yellow cards. If three of the four outfield players are sidelined at the same time, the match is forfeited. While Volta was carefree, FC 25 Rush wants you to consider how you play. Penalties and penalty shootouts also borrow from hockey. You aren’t forced into a direct kick. Instead, you can dribble and beat the goalkeeper in a 1v1 situation, starting from the edge of the final third. In penalty shootouts, you get 10 seconds to take your shot, like the eight seconds given to real-life players in field hockey.
Rush makes for super swift gameplay
Okay, but how does it play? Appropriately, FC 25 Rush makes for super swift gameplay. The attack and defence transitions are akin to being on a basketball court. If anything, it’s more pronounced as the Rush pitch is bigger than a court and keepers can fling balls with a lot of force. A save from an attacking opportunity can immediately turn into a clear-cut counterattack if a team overcommits. Overloading can help at times, too, in nabbing rebounds but it’s a double-edged sword.
Of course, the quality of Clubs and FUT Rush is dependent on how your teammates play and strategise. I’ve had all kinds of frustrating experiences. My FC 25 teammates have given up after conceding a few goals and just stood in one spot until they got kicked out. Others have run blindly around the pitch, either going off it or running into the net, essentially being useless. Some are only interested in attacking and leave the defence wide open time and time again. Yet others are so aggressive that they spend half the match in the punishment zone. Some are only in it for themselves, being so ball hungry—either hogging it or incessantly asking for it by issuing commands to AI keepers—that it cuts both ways. I’ve had a fair share of good runs, too. There’s nothing like the joy of well-minded teammates who recognise the value of passing and defending.
Rush is a great entry point for casual EA Sports FC players
The great thing about Rush in EA Sports FC 25 is that it’s casual. Since you can drop in with just one player, it’s a great entry point. EA’s football games have gotten incredibly complex over the years, so much so that even those with a good history of playing FIFA aren’t aware of the game’s deeper mechanics or anything beyond the basic controls. With Rush, all that matters less. Sure, you do have to be tactical to an extent. Running helter-skelter without any plan of action will result in you conceding a comical number of goals. (I speak from experience.) But at the same time, you don’t have to be worried about setting the team up properly or about switching between players and managing the team’s structure.
This is also why I appreciate the restrictions on FUT Rush—at least, for now, I cannot speak to what is coming down the line—as they indicate an attempt by EA Sports to level things. It helps ensure that those who put more time into FUT don’t turn up with cards that are infinitely better than others who devote much less time to FC 25. (A lack of a similar tiered system in Clubs Rush is annoying. Even a couple of days prior to launch, with my lowly 81-valued midfielder, I was going up against and alongside players who had already scaled their Pro avatars to 86 or more.)
FC 25 Rush suffers from an ironic restriction
In my opinion, FC 25 Rush is then perfectly suited for impromptu pick-up and play sessions with your friends. Alas, EA Sports isn’t interested in catering to that. Both Clubs or FUT Rush require some level of commitment—you’ve to build a Pro avatar or develop a FUT squad. There is no drop-in Rush mode where you can play with friends online without having to devote time. What if seven of my friends and I just want to spend a Sunday afternoon with our favourite players? Like, have Kaká, Beckham, Ballack, Gerrard and Beckenbauer take on Zidane, Nesta, Platini, Robben and Lampard. (If you know, you know.) Why won’t FC 25 let you do that?
The closest thing to it is Kick-off Rush but that only works if you’re all in the same room. Even with that, you can’t lock to a player. That option is only available in Clubs and FUT Rush, inexplicably. This is where you see EA’s economics being prioritised over the joy of FC 25 buyers. If you want to build your dream 5-a-side in Rush, you must engage with and invest hours in FUT. (There is a potential workaround, but it only works offline—edit the squads locally and move players around to suit yourself.) EA Sports has created a new offering—or rather, modified an existing one—that caters to casual experiences and then restricted the online component to modes that require commitment. It’s ironic and it defeats the purpose of Rush. It’s typical EA.
EA Sports FC 25 released on Friday, September 27 on PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
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What do you think?