We ran a diff checker on IGN's EA FC reviews. 73% identical. Year over year.

I have a recurring nightmare. I'm reading an IGN FIFA review. Then I wake up, check the date, and realize it's a different year but the same review. Then I realize I'm not dreaming. This is just how IGN covers EA's annual football game. They hit Ctrl+C on the previous year, Ctrl+V onto a fresh document, update the number in the title, and submit it before lunch.

Every single year, IGN's EA FC review contains the following phrases in some order: 'meaningful improvements,' 'refined gameplay,' 'Ultimate Team remains a grind,' and 'the beautiful game.' It's like reviewing weather. 'This year's autumn features falling leaves and lower temperatures — a meaningful improvement over last year's autumn, which also featured falling leaves and lower temperatures but slightly different ones.'

The 7/10 is chef's kiss. Not because it's accurate — who even knows at this point — but because it's the exact score you give when you've spent four hours with a game that is 97% identical to its predecessor and you need to justify your salary. A 6 would imply something went wrong. An 8 would imply something changed. The 7 is the Switzerland of review scores: aggressively neutral, offending nobody, meaning nothing.

Mark, buddy, I ran your review through a diff checker against last year's EA FC 24 review. The structural similarity was 73%. Seventy-three percent. I've seen more original content in a Terms of Service update. At least EA has the excuse that developing a new game engine is expensive. What's your excuse for not developing a new paragraph?

IGN's annual football review isn't journalism. It's a cron job.