Reviews

Got him out hero pack and he just scores everything hes a machine so if any of you guys get him give him a chance hes a beast, and a beast from corners.

As the great Gattuso wisely put it, "Sometimes maybe good; sometimes..." you know the rest. That saying fits this card quite well, except the "good" is more a "GOOD" and the "****" is more an "absolutely atrocious." Indeed, this card's performances range across the board. Half the time this card racks the goals in 1 after the other. Other times Crouch is fumbling about, falling down and missing the target if the shot even gets away (shooting with this card takes about 12 years).

I bought this card because I didn't preorder this game and had FOMO for these World Cup Heroes; I wanted to taste that sweet, sweet P2W with my limited coin budget.

This card is discard price for a reason.

It's just not near consistent enough. The games this Crouch performs in are 1/4, with the other 3/4 being like playing with a Yaya Sanogo and Nicklas Bendtner hybrid. Words cannot describe how

terrible this card is most of the time, yet those 1/4 performances kept this card in my XI.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it: I used this card mostly in World Cup Swaps, with the rare foray into Rivals and a few Squad Battles games (I do not partake in the abomination known as FUT Champs any more). My conclusions in this review are based entirely on like the first 10 minutes of 100 games (somehow I score/concede way earlier on in Golden Goal mode than any other. Very interesting). However, I feel that, from my FIFA experience being a long-time player, cards do not get better as the 90 minutes rage on, so I see this review and its subsequent conclusions as valid.

I was running this card in a few formations, depending on my assets for the particular nation objective. Mostly I was in a 4-4-2 with Crouch upfront, but I sometimes went with a 4-4-1-1 when the players lined up. From this I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, Crouch must be played as a SOLO striker. When in the 4-4-2, I found this card to not get into the box for crosses near enough, often standing on the edge of the box doing nothing. In the 4-4-1-1, this card was ALWAYS in the box. I think I went 6 wins out of 7 games with an Ecuadorian squad in a 4-4-1-1 because I just crossed to Crouch. If there's 1 thing you can rely on this card for, it's heading the ball.

Here's my general takeaways:

The Goods:

• Heading (beats every defender and sometimes the keeper)
• Shooting (1/4)
• Being Peter Crouch

The ****s:

• Positioning (rarely in the box when used as 1 of 2 STs)
• Shooting (3/4)
• Pace (omds is this card slow at running, shooting, and dribbling)
• Balance/Strength (falls down/stumbles under no contact; can't dribble)
• Passing (absolutely terrible as you'd expect)

Overall, this card is cheap enough to give it a go. If you paid an extra 40% more for Ultimate Edition and got this card, HA! Give this card a try and see for yourself. If there's 1 thing I've learned after 21 years, you never know how a card is going to play until you try it out. My favourite ever FIFA cards were not META at all, they were cards I had fun with that gave me a return that made the game fun. Who knows? Maybe this Crouch is your Shunsuke Nakamura (my favourite ever FIFA card). Give it a try. At least now, after reading this, your expectations aren't high and you can't be disappointed.