FIFA 15 developer EA Canada is focusing on bringing the emotion of soccer to life. Through a feature dubbed "emotional intelligence," players on the pitch will respond to events in the course of a match by emoting with their faces and bodies. A goal that should've been an easy save may cause the keeper's teammates to express frustration; a missed opportunity for a late equalizer may leave the trailing team feeling particularly dejected.

Where FIFA 15 truly excels is in creating moments of footballing joy that have you jumping off your sofa looking for someone to celebrate with, only to discover it’s your day off and no-one’s home. Stylish play through the midfield, a perfectly weighted through-ball met sweetly on the volley that flies into net past a helpless Thibaut Courtois has you completely lost in the emotion of the moment, and that is a very rare quality for a game to have. The customary sliding celebration in front of the fans just puts the icing on the cake.

"If you start losing 4-0 after 25 minutes, the players won't crumble; the stadium won't be in tears; the commentator won't be in so much shock that he becomes almost like a poet and says, 'Everyone who's witnessing that knows that they're witnessing history,' and you can feel it in the way that the fans behave, the way that the players behave, the way the commentator speaks," said Jaramillo. "I think those are the things we don't quite have, because they're rare, and you need moments like that to inspire you."



After the disappointing season that was FIFA 14 I was worried that FIFA 15 would be more of the same from a usually reliable franchise. Thankfully, EA Sports bounced back from their difficulty transitioning their flagship sports franchise to the new console generation. The ball physics and movement also saw very big changes. Shots and crosses look a lot more natural for instance. What this does is every shot and cross looks different every time instead of using the same animations. When on defense you’ll see that sometimes just standing in the right spot will disrupt an offensive. Counter-attacks are more prevalent in this year’s version and offer really butt-clenching moments, particularly after committing a bone-head play like a bad pass into three defenders.

On the whole the game is very smooth to play, with all of the new enhancements making for a much more enjoyable and realistic game, but there is one major problem that severely hampers the game; the artificial intelligence of the goalkeepers is terrible. So many times a close game has been completely ruined by a ‘keeper doing something so ridiculous it actually makes you laugh. One of the worst instances I have encountered is a goalkeeper actually diving into the side of the net as an opposing striker ran towards goal, they then proceeded to just walk the ball over the line.