EA Sports ultimately brings in the football video game that they were aiming to build since FIFA 2012. Pure flair in the gameplay department, with presentation determining the core of the emotional immersion. Amidst a lot of criticism for its unskippable intermittent cutscenes, I give FIFA 15 a double thumbs up for heralding the kind of fan immersion that determined every sport video game today except football. FIFA 14 was a mere stepping stone for EA Sports’ obsession with realistic football experience. As a highly polished IMPACT engine appears in FIFA 15 and breaks your heart and mends it, all within the same game, quite beautifully. First touches are clearly not randomised, as more physical aspects of the real game are brought alive in this so called video game, every moment of the reaction time and every pixel of your boot determine how the ball will end up.
For a start, all 20 Premier League stadiums are now available and prior to each match the camera will float overhead, taking in a birds-eye view of the arena. It looks brilliant and really adds to the pre-match build-up. The little improvements continue once the action gets going too. When a goal goes in for the home team, the camera jiggles ever so slightly, just how it does in real life when the crowd goes wild. Scoring a late winner for United in the Manchester derby now feels like you've genuinely brought joy to 70,000 odd fans packed into Old Trafford.
Goalkeepers steal the show in EA Sports FIFA 15. This year’s edition of the game introduces a series of massive goalkeeping improvements with an infinite series of real life animations. Netminders are also more intelligent than in past and show similar defensive anticipation to the defenders of FIFA 15 in handling shots, crosses and passes. They will now come out towards attackers in one on one situations without you having to draw them out. While football video game goalies have been erratic at times and engaged in saves that defied everyday logic, those in FIFA 15 have evolved for the better and make decisions based on situational awareness. We’ve also seen them pull off multiple saves in sequence via quick body adjustments via quick reactions. A world class goalie in FIFA 15 can earn even an average team a draw in FIFA 15.
Close control is now better, in our opinion, than it has ever been in any version of FIFA, and as such the players are able to keep the ball far better than ever before, particularly when under attack from an opposition player in the tackle. The player with the ball is able to use quick deft touches, drag backs and side slides with far greater efficiency and because of this it is much more difficult to stay with the player if you are defending. As a result what happens, more often than not, is that the defending player makes an approach to the opposite number with the ball, is side-stepped with considerable ease, and then you spend the rest of the action trying to keep pace with the advancing player regardless of if your speed is greater than his.
Fifa isn’t perfect – that pre-game hype and the endless replays, while accurate, serve only to delay the action, but luckily, when you do get down to it, virtual football has never looked or felt better. FIFA 15’s individual instructions also provide you with additional options when determining the most prolific balance. Experimenting is key if you wish to work out the optimum moment you should tell a player to roam freely, or offer greater width on the counter. You wouldn’t fire up Battlefield 4’s multiplayer without trying out a range of sights on your weapon, so the same principle applies here.
