Obviously, FIFA 16 is a very particular take on football. I want to pick at these calcified bones for a while before, yes, I’ll tell you what’s new. Other compromises then trickle from this starting point. For example, football games have long had computer-assisted passing, to help players get the ball to their intended target. Sensible Soccer had it, in part to compensate for the eight-directional controls. The role of a creative director is pretty complex and multi-faceted but it is essentially to drive the complete game design for the product and franchise. It's to come up with the ideas that help keep FIFA 15 at the top of its game. It takes a whole lot of very talented people to actually deliver them but essentially as a creative director you help lead and direct those features and the vision.
On the pitch though, FIFA 16 simply blows PES 2015 away this year from a pure presentation standpoint. Commentary is still an area Konami leave largely untouched and while FIFA 16’s duo of Taylor & Smith still suffers from repetitiveness, it’s better than the woeful Beglin and Champion double act who read their lines irrespective of what’s happening on the pitch, sometimes even contradicting each other. Konami’s dotted line system for set plays looks slightly silly compared to the slick system FIFA 16 incorporates as well. This is an issue that we hope will be rectified in subsequent seasons, as midfield battles are a prominent feature of the modern game. We would like to see some major development focus on addressing the shortcomings of the AI.
Offline, the gameplay doesn’t fare much better. The computer AI still hasn’t found a sweet spot between challenging and downright cheating. In addition to forcing the player into a very distinct playstyle (quick passes and air through balls for days), the AI will still decide that it wants to win at times and there’s not much the player can do about it. I was playing a game as Liverpool that was completely in my control before the computer decided that it would score two straight 25+ yard screamers from outside the box and then, in the 90th minute, get a phantom penalty call in their favor. This is a common occurrence that has plagued the series for so long that the community documents the “EA Scripting” every year.
The majority of improvements in attack have come from the ability to tell your players what kind of runs you want them to make or how you want them to move around on the field. This brings us to the tactical side of the game, which we believe goes hand in hand with attacking play. You now have the ability to give each player specific instructions now. This new tactical element makes the game feel more dynamic. You can change things as you see fit to counter what the AI is doing or not doing for that matter. However, a concern from previous versions of FIFA is still very much evident in FIFA 16. This is the lack of midfield play and the constant end-to-end action especially when playing against a human opponent.
Career mode is still my favorite FIFA time-waster. My preferred way of playing FIFA 16 (and most sports games) has been by playing as myself in career mode. If you’re unfamiliar with how Career Mode works, you pretty much play through the career of a budding footballer until his retirement. If you’re more a manager than a player then running a team in Career Mode may be more your style. Your job here is to build a team a team of champions. Being a player, the focus is purely on driving up your market value. Both are pretty fun to play and both offer enough interesting challenges for two very different styles of play.
The defense and team tactics have been refined and when playing against the computer artificial intelligence (AI), you'll see more fouls and yellow cards (previously, the computer opposition rarely seemed to get yellow card for a slide tackle, and fouls were few and far between). It certainly makes for a much more realistic match. Career Mode has some improvements: storylines, better player search, realistic player growth, and the ability to see a player’s overall after fully scouting them (thank goodness).
Who doesn’t like scoring goals? Obviously, EA has still let a small fanbase down on the next-gen consoles. With EA’s NHL 15 being stripped of features on the next-gen consoles, FIFA 16 is missing a key one: Creation Center. While slow and not highly used, it was a great feature allowing people to mass create players and teams with ease. For the second year in a row, FIFA left the feature out, with no explanation as to why and if we will ever see this feature. There is also the issue of no announcement being made on MLS Expansion teams. Will EA include them in a winter update like they did in a previous FIFA?
