Sport is human endeavor in which we strive to push past the hypothetical limits of our own, imperfect, schlubby bodies. So for starters, FIFA re-creates the skill and fallibility of actual humans, making Gareth Bale a terrifyingly athletic man-horse and staffing every lower league minnow with wheezing, puttering, human lawnmowers. At least some of the above complaints can be put down to reasonable human error on the part of the fallible machines you’re meant to be controlling. After the disappointing season that was FIFA I was worried that FIFA 16 would be more of the same from a usually reliable franchise. Thankfully, EA Sports bounced back from their difficulty transitioning their flagship sports franchise to the new console generation.
 
The goalkeepers in FIFA 16 seem to have a similar problem in that they either perform incredible and realistic saves that have you on the edge of your seat, or occasionally make comical errors that have you pulling your hair out. It was a risk to implement the new keepers but we believe it was one worth taking in order to develop better goalkeepers long term. Recent updates have also addressed some of the goalkeeper issues, a positive indication that the development team will continue to improve this area.
 
The AI is less of a problem in multiplayer, of course. Here it’s even more apparent that FIFA 16 has prioritised attacking play in lieu of fixing its defensive weaknesses. Close control has been improved, making it easier - particularly for flair players - to retain the ball, even at speed. Meanwhile, slide tackles have become a less reliable option than in previous years. The result is that defending feels even more inelegant than usual, and so online games tend to be unrealistically high-scoring affairs, with an end-to-end flow that’s often more like a basketball game.
 
EA dubs this feature “emotional intelligence”, we dub it “a bit of wasted time”. It’s an improvement of celebrations and more cutaway scenes. The players react to more things: bad tackles, epic goals, etc. For example, pretty much every tackle resulting in a card, the two players involved will push each other like a school yard fight is about to break out. Every Premier League stadium. These include objectives like a certain number of goals to score in the season or more in-depth objectives, such as staying above a certain shots made percentage.
 
The Player Career mode is always my favorite in any sports game and is often where I spend most of my time. That is certainly no different with FIFA 16. At the start, you have the option to create your own player or use an existing player. Naturally, I had to create and put myself on an MLS team. EA Game Face is back and actually worked well here, though it would be nice if they could have implemented something similar to the face scanning technology that the upcoming NBA 2K15 is going to include. After you get your character created, you will be given four objectives that you are supposed to meet throughout the next season, two primary and two secondary.
 
All-in-all, FIFA 16 has improved quite a few things in terms of the series’ gameplay, but has also added a few new flaws into the mix to boot. Despite this, at its core it is still a solid football sim, and as should be expected it is the most solid FIFA game to date in that respect. Unfortunately, it’s let down significant lack of effort put into its game modes. You start out with a bog standard collection of middling players, but for the first few hours there's a steady drip of new card packs that let you build your team into something a little more formidable. It's not just a case of having the best players in the best positions though.
 
Also, the good thing about FIFA 16 is that if you played FIFA last year, or year before everything will look similar and you will easily adapt to new game without too much problems. Controls are intuitive and you within hour or two of playing you’ll master everything essential for you to excel in game. Football is the greatest drama on earth and FIFA 16 puts fans center stage, allowing them to feel the emotion and intensity of the world's greatest sport.For the most part, FIFA 16’s changes are most obvious in the subtle way they affect each match. However, there has been little change to the game modes. In some ways this is okay; the major overhaul to the game modes happened quite recently and FIFA is still happy with them. FIFA 16’s manager mode has some new tweaks that are simple but clever, but for the most part EA has left FIFA’s game modes intact.