EA Sports presents the year’s new FIFA game, with new next gen graphics and revamped goalies – but are all the changes for the best? As far as EA are concerned this year’s FIFA is all about emotion. Emotion and intensity in fact, if you go by the game’s tag line. Not only are the next gen visuals good enough to show the pain and elation on player’s faces but a new artificial intelligence system has them sulking, shouting, and celebrating just like a real player. So much so that they’re in danger of ending up more excited about the game than you are.
The FIFA franchise has become an anomaly in the gaming world. Year after year, the development team at EA Canada comes up with a game that could, understandably, become a repetitive rehashing of the prior year’s version. Yet since the reinvention of the series that started with FIFA 08, the developers have delivered an improved experience yearly. Every year that I review FIFA, I’m left astonished at the subtle changes and nuanced adjustments made to the physics engine. On their own, each change would barely be noticeable, but collectively, the enhancements bring the franchise to new heights with every release.
A football game should live and die by how it plays, not how it looks. It’s what kept Pro Evolution Soccer ahead of the pack for many a year before it lost its way. In many respects FIFA 14 moved closer to PES last year with a slightly slower game which relied more on passing and movement than pace and skill moves; but at times it felt too heavy, and ultimately it succumbed to the dreaded lobbed through ball as a way to break defences and to score a hatful of goals.
Emotion and Realism is an obvious response to recent PES titles, which have been balanced heavily in favour of sparkling offence, and while the goals on display are rarely as beautiful as the ones seen in Konami's series, there's just as much variation, and they're arguably more satisfying, due to the work that needs to be put in to make them happen. Sweet spots still exist - particularly with short crosses, we've noticed - but more than ever, you'll find yourself having to mix up your attacks to keep the defence on their toes. On the other hand, the two simulators seem equal when it comes to each players' physical resemblance to the real thing. Features, expressions, scars, hair cuts, beards: every detail is reproduced with meticulous detail in both FIFA and PES. I must admit, however, that on the ground level, the Konami game is really impressive .
The problem with last year's Fifa, though, was it always felt like you were fighting the game itself, rather than simply trying to beat your opponent. It would always be trying to think ahead of you, switching players pre-emptively and passing the ball to areas it felt you had intended, when possibly you did not. It was as though the game thought it was a better player than the actual player, when all that's required are the tools to show off the player's complete ability – no matter how good or bad they are.
