The most notable change for FIFA comes down the goalkeepers. No longer are they the brainless mannequins who casually glance at every ball that whizzes by their bodies. The goalies have a ton of new animations and generally play the ball at better angles. One-on-one encounters with the keeper are completely exhilarating since they actually seem like they want to stop you from scoring. If you’re worried that the extra attention given to the goalies will somehow turn FIFA 15 into a defensive affair, sit relieved knowing that isn’t the case. In fact the new goalie behavior just makes every goal look a lot more impressive.

The AI is also being reformed so that players are now aware if they're winning or losing, and they'll become more aggressive when a goal down. Likewise if they're a goal up they might run the ball to the corner flag to waste a few more seconds. Elsewhere there're new attacking runs, defenders who are more patient and don't just slide in, agile and quicker turning, players who dribble using the inside and outside of the foot, set-piece tactics from 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil and even shirt pulling.



At the start of a match in this year’s release, every player on each team starts out in a neutral emotional state. We see this first hand  during a pre-E3 preview session in a series of screenshots snapped in-game, with a debug mode turned on to demonstrate how emotional links play out behind the scenes. In another example, one player shares words of encouragement with a teammate who misses an easy shot early on in the game. The same miss in the closing minutes of a losing game would bring a different, more negative reaction. These interactions cross between teams as well, with rival players locking eyes as they pass one another on the pitch.

However, 'improvement' is likely a word that's alien to EA's servers. At this point, they're a running joke, and that doesn't change with FIFA 15. Frequent disconnects are still a problem – even when playing single player modes – and although we didn't encounter anything too terrible, there have been reports that a constant connection to the servers can bring the game grinding to a halt, with ridiculous amounts of input lag and stuttering resulting in an unplayable mess. Again, the experience has been a buttery smooth one for us, especially thanks to snappier and more professional opening and ending match cinematics, but these issues can't be ignored entirely.

Anticipatory football ceases to exist because if the controlled player did not compute covering the empty space between the running player down the pitch, the user anticipated through ball will be just watched as it rolls past toward the running attacker with the number 7 on the jersey and then goal. Now I ask, are any of these beside the presentation much spoken about in 15 and the ignite engine, still present or corrected in EA Sports’ new FIFA title?