FIFA 15 isn’t a leap into the future of the series; it has a lot in common with the version of FIFA 14 that's already out. But this is FIFA, as you know it - from one-off fixtures to ongoing seasons, online friendlies, a selection of that week’s matches, a career mode, and skill games. And of course the revamped Ultimate Team, one of FIFA’s most popular modes. It’s all present and correct. And if you’ve already started the season on current-gen, progress in modes like Ultimate Team is transferable. For a sports title, FIFA still can’t be beaten for its sheer variety.
Off the pitch, FIFA 14 has a variety of modes which will be familiar to anyone who has played the series recently, but sadly, several of them have not made the cut between console generations. You can still play friendlies or take control of an individual player in Be a Pro. Career mode lets you manage a variety of teams or start a career as a player. Ultimate Team returns for fans of building their very own fantasy sides. Skill games and the practice mode are back, Pro Clubs allows you to create an online team with friends, and single-player or co-op seasons are available via Seasons mode.
Ultimate Team is a brilliant set of ideas superbly executed, and FIFA 14 does nothing that is likely to break its stranglehold over its fans’ time, having been tweaked in appealing but conservative ways. You can now play single matches against random online opponents, for example, and you can search for players by name (in-game at least - you can’t in the support apps) and run quick price comparisons on items you want to trade. All are welcome additions, none is particularly exotic.
A bigger change is that formation cards are gone, meaning you can freely experiment with your team’s formation without having to buy consumables that change each player’s preferred set-up to match your new system. In their place we now have Chemistry Style cards, which boost a few of a player’s key stats permanently, allowing you to turn your striker into a battering ram, for example, if that suits your approach.
Career mode has received some much-needed tweaks, including the option to disable the first summer transfer window, finally giving you the chance to maintain a real-world squad up until the January transfer window. A Global Transfer Network has been introduced too, which masks a player’s overall rating (OVR), so you’ve absolutely got to use scouts to find the best youth players. A tile on the Career mode page keeps you up to date on scouting progress, letting you choose to move forward with in-depth scouting, after which the OVR is finally revealed and you can decide who to purchase. This is far more engaging than simply hitting up the search box and looking for players with the highest OVRs, and it means you've got to put a great deal more thought into your purchases.
The trend for football games this year is capturing the sport’s unpredictability. PES 2014 achieves this through its ‘heart’ mechanic, where players having a bad game grow ever-more skittish and liable to make mistakes. In response FIFA has taken a different path, hoping to capture unpredictability through physics rather than psychology. This isn’t necessarily the direction FIFA should be going in. Last year’s ‘First Touch’ feature, which saw the ball cannon off world class footballers’ feet, was as divisive amongst fans as a Xavi pass. This year it works in tandem with a rebuilt animation system, which makes for a slower, more methodical game that can frustrate as often as it delights.
There are still moments when the game can be maddening, though. With practice, holding L2/LT to protect the ball can be useful, but it so changes the stance and balance of the player in possession - backside out, ball away from the body - that it can also slow play and make tight control and turns laborious. Slip away from the top tier of football and first touches all over are hesitant and unwieldy - one Sheffield derby, as if not marred thoroughly enough by Martin Tyler’s “steely contest” line, became a soup of miscontrols, challenges and counter-challenges. FIFA’s mantra used to be that is should be easy to do whatever professional footballers find easy. Extra ball mastery sessions for the Owls, Blades, and indeed the ranks of lower leagues globally, is probably in order.
