Players in FIFA 16 adjust their bodies while making slide tackles or blocks in order to get just a toe or a knee to the ball, rather than ignoring it once locked into an animation. Keepers are more human – rushing from the area to clear overhit through balls and adopting better angles at shots from out wide, but also flapping at crosses and sometimes out-jumped by taller forwards. Referees use vanishing spray at free kicks which, like in real life, stays on the turf for a few minutes afterwards. In isolation none of these adjustments constitute a selling point, yet together they again bring the series one step closer to what you see on Sky Sports of a Sunday afternoon. The downside to the more cerebral action is that it slightly diminishes tactical variety. An array of possible formations make themselves available, yet from English Premier League to Colombian Liga Dimayor, it often feels like neat passing triangles are the only viable play style.

 

One of the arguments I see every year is that one game is ‘sim’ whilst the other is ‘arcade’. Again, there’s no real consensus on this with just as many people arguing the case one way as the other. For me, I think they have different approaches to football and it depends where your focus is as to what your opinion will be. FIFA has the realistic ball movement and physics (though sometimes exaggerated it seems, with shots pinging the woodwork a little too often) and can give you the scrappy goal mouth incidents and excitement of the Premier League, whereas PES will give you more of a considered Serie A type affair where players have time and space to display their unique abilities. If it’s the tactical side of the game you’re after, PES has the far better player movement and overall intelligence to create beautiful set pieces. If it’s the core fundamentals of kicking a football around (with all the realistic difficulties that can entail and well as the pleasures) then perhaps FIFA has a slight edge. I think these conflicting arguments often come from how the games look in motion as well as how they play.

 

FIFA looks a lot more like football at first glance but doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny as well as PES which feels more like real football, perhaps more through trickery than the science EA employs, but there you go. More skillful players appear to have slightly greater control over the ball. Rotate the left stick and you can really see David Silva shift the position of the ball with the outside of his boot. Defenders also move more realistically and are less likely to win the ball in the air if they turn their back on it, meaning positioning is crucial to dealing with danger. Sometimes it’s better to drop off and protect the space than challenge for every single ball. Players might be more agile now but they also deal with danger more pragmatically, taking the safe option when in doubt and clearing a ball into touch rather than risking it falling to an opposition player in a dangerous area.

 

The FIFA series has dominated soccer simulation for the past decade. But this year, Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 is a true great. It's fluid, fast gameplay matches and arguably beats anything EA Sports had offered before. Like a game of chess - move, counter move. The presentation is, as we've come to expect, top notch. While I still feel the player models look strangely stretched, the lighting, textures, pitches and stadiums have never looked better. Improved, too, are the menu screens, with more "live" information provided as you log in each day, including, quite delightfully, a selection of the best goals from the past week's FIFA that autoplays on the main home screen. FIFA very much sets the bar when it comes to how a football game should look and sound, and it's managed to somehow raise that bar yet again.

 

There's some obvious visual variety to be found thanks to the inclusion of women's international teams, however, and although you wouldn't be blamed for assuming that a skin swap is all that they bring to the table, you'd be wrong to do so in this case. A huge step forward for the franchise, sports games, and even football as a whole, the 12 included women's teams bring a surprisingly fresh flavour to gameplay.

 

A lot of effort has clearly been put into how to correctly differentiate the ebb and flow of women's football, and the result is a less physical, more deliberate style of play that provides an interesting, alternate angle on FIFA 16's systems. Of course, it's a bit of a shame that all of this is limited to online friendly matches and offline tournaments, but if EA Sports can build on what it has over the next few years, then women's football should turn out to be a very welcome addition.