FIFA 15's game engine is so different to last year that it lends the impression not just of development teams working completely independently of each other, but also of a series sorely lacking this sense clear sense of direction or identity. What should a football game be like? "Different to last year" seems to be the only answer at the moment.
Where FIFA 14 at times resembled a game of rugby, with impenetrable banks of four colliding and pace nerfed to the point that even the fastest player couldn't escape a marker without a 10-yard head start, FIFA 15 is almost the opposite. Passing is rapid-fire, with only light caresses of the control pad allowing you to weave slick triangles through the opposition's midfield, and the speed of your players is utterly critical to success, much like it has been in some previous iterations.
Ardent fans of the Fifa football games know two things to be true whenever the latest installment arrives. It will be mostly the same game as before, and it will also be the best football simulation ever. EA Sports, much like Apple with its iDevices, has found a winning formula, and it is reluctant to do more than drip feed us tiny changes every year.
That said, it has long been believed that this year’s installment would be the big one. After all, developers have had almost a year since the launch of the Xbox One and Playstation 4 last November to really get to know the possibilities and limitations of these machines.
Perhaps, then, EA has reached the same realisation: that, in their own way, the enthusiastic blobs of Sensi and the eight-way running of PES 3 captured something integral about the idea of football that modern FIFA, with its momentum modeling and exquisite skills system, can’t improve upon. Honestly, that seems unlikely - it’s more feasible that EA doesn’t feel an urgent need to improve its interpretation of football, because of a lack of competition from old rival Pro Evo, and because of the dominance of and financial success of its Ultimate Team mode. This would explain why the bulk of FIFA 15’s improvements are concerned with presentation and atmosphere. Feel the game - through crowd chants, commentaries, vast stadiums, a range of emotional expressions unknowable to the blank miniatures of Sensible Soccer. It is binding us to an idea. It is selling us something.
For "FIFA 15," gameplay was the major focus, and the changes make the experience better, for the most part. Player movement looks and feels more realistic, from the way they change direction to the new animations. Goalkeeper play is improved, too-once post-release patches are downloaded and installed. Not all the tweaks work. EA Sports touts new emotions and attitudes toward each teammate on the field that change organically based on the game's events. Perhaps they are changing the way the game plays, but any effect is hard to notice.
After much frustration and swearing about the incompetence of it, I rectified the issue by going into my homehub’s admin and changing the settings. Suddenly the game worked, which was great, but of course I shouldn't have had to do that.
Whatever the trouble is and whoever’s fault it is out of EA or Sony, someone dropped a clanger on the high-profile release of one of the year’s biggest games. It’s absurd customers should be disappointed in this way after spending £50-60 on a product and should have to fiddle around with their internet settings to make it work.
FIFA 15 is not perfect, however it is the most successful game in last few years.
