You have probably heard the following words about "eFootball 2022". Lack of content. Terrible bugs, sketchy online play, overwhelmingly negative reviews, and the death of the franchise. Sadly, this struggle against the microtransaction-hungry behemoth that is FIFA has been accurately described in all of these ways this year.

The problem is that this game is not that bad a soccer game. Somewhere under the rubble is a good soccer sim waiting to be liberated.

The idea behind this strange and totally ill-conceived launch is that Konami will release the skeleton on day one and flesh it out with future patches. The full game will be free, and the "Premium Player Pack," offered on Steam for £31, will add in-game currency and "chance deals" (two mechanics for modes that do not currently exist). These are for modes planned for future updates.

This free version offers nine domestic licensed clubs to play exhibition games, plus four Serie A teams and Zenit St. Petersburg, which can only be selected in the "Partner Clubs" section of the online challenge mode, and once selected Once selected, they cannot be changed. Completing this online challenge will earn you virtual currency, which is currently unavailable.

And this is the current state of eFootball 2022. It is utterly baffling. Some say it looks like a demo, but it really isn't. The demo is a free sample of a product available for purchase. That's all this is right now.

Big content drops are planned, the first of which is scheduled for November 11 and will add a creative team (think FUT in PES clothing). The visual bugs reported by many players on launch day were not seen in my experience, whether due to hotfixes or sheer luck. In any case, it is imperative to provide a few more if anyone is going to purchase the Creative Team Pack.

Why did this happen? By abandoning last year's full release and instead opting for "seasonal updates" that simply update teams and players according to real-world transfers, the eFootball 2022 team has afforded virtual soccer a major step forward.

The arrival of the new console will force the team to push the boundaries of fidelity, and the PC version will enjoy it as well. We've all been saying that for years, being Michael Pachter: the annual franchise 2019 should be skipped a year and instead do something really worth playing next year.

Obviously, it will actually take more time to accomplish that. Aside from the eerie absence of a feature mode, there are some animations and even kicks that are currently unreleased that are planned for later. An update to add kicks. This will not unveil the successor to PES.

It now runs on the Unreal Engine, and perhaps the significant task of engine migration will explain the bugs and strange conflicts that distinguish eFootball 2022 from its predecessor. There are accusations that the grass has become plasticky, or that the players all look like haunted wax figures. To this reviewer's old eyes, the stadium, the spectators, and the surface of the pitch look better than before. However, there is a disturbing sheen to the players' faces that detracts from the facial scans. Also, their expressions are odd when they are arguing with the referee, or when they are jumping around like wreckage from Goat Simulator after a stand-up tackle.

On that note: there is something ungainly about collisions. If Isaac Newton had been in the stands, he would have shed a tear. The basic dodginess has been exacerbated by a revamped pace system that has players crashing into each other at full speed.

But I'm not ready to give up. Even after hours of playing as only Napoli in partner club mode, even after repeatedly going back to the main menu and clicking on the grayed out icons to make sure that no, this is really it: ...... I am not ready to give up yet.

Because I can see the intent in that soccer. It's slow, fiddly, sometimes ponderous and frustrating, but it's also impressive how scientific it is when it comes to dribbling. Instead of being a button that keeps beating defenders, sprinting is reworked to reward skillful tapping. You can outsmart a defender by changing pace and direction with each kick, or you can tap the analog stick away from the player and tap sprint for a very satisfying chop. In moments like the one where the Bayern defender is prowling around behind you in desperate form, there's a rare sense that the player and the ball are two separate entities.

And this focus on the details of one-on-one battles has, at the very least, the potential for engaging online competition. Dink past a defender, drop your shoulder to create space, or create an opportunity from three perfectly judged touches. Rarely do we actually see a thrilling play.

More of this would require a little miracle of passing help and AI. At the moment, the grounders' passes are gems, but it takes very little time to square the ball up the full width of the pitch with a lob pass. But the real problem is the behavior of the team AI: as in PES, players on both sides fall asleep and watch the ball travel enormous distances like annoying, passive jerks. Defenders are tangled up with each other as if they were made of unbaked pretzel dough, and no one seems to understand 100% of the tactical system you are using.

And all of this could have been avoided. Because what we are playing now is in fact a public beta, and only the PR disaster that comes with it. Had the current build been offered as a beta, we might have worried about the eventual release of eFootball 2022, but we would not have given up on this prospect and thrown it on the bonfire that No Man's Sky once kindled.

I still believe, as did Baddiel and Skinner in '98, that the "new" No Man's Sky will be a great success, and that the "new" No Man's Sky will be a great success. While there is a huge amount of work to be done on the mechanical side, past "PES" titles have made dramatic changes on the pitch with data packs. And as the aforementioned Hello Games saga taught us, studios have no choice but to keep pouring resources and updates into their games until people quietly decide that they like them very much now, even if it's years later.

I sense that somewhere in a coffee-covered office, the price of an earlier update is likely to be hastily revised. I certainly like the sprint operation, but £34 for just one more mode feels almost like charity.

I can only hope that eFootball 2022 is a late bloomer.