![]() Even relatively low-skilled players can pivot and sprint with ease, and when even Leon Osman can repeatedly waltz his way into your six-yard box you can't help but feel that some kind of balance has been lost. You needn't even use right-stick skill moves - the new dribbling controls mean even FIFA novices can change direction, at speed, and find themselves easily breaking between lines.Įxhilaration turns to anxiety, however, when the boot is on the other foot and attack turns to defence. In real life, after all, Raheem Sterling could knock the ball past most left-backs in the league and reasonably expect to outrun them. To begin with, having the freedom to zoom past defenders is exhilarating. 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. 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. What should a football game be like? "Different to last year" seems to be the only answer at the moment. The addition of loan players to Ultimate Team means at last every manager has the chance to get their hands on stars like Victor Moses, Oussami Assaidi and Josh McEachran.įIFA 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. Then think about how far we still seem to be defining from how a football game should feel to play. Consider how many gamers will have kicked a football compared to firing a gun. Slot in a few games of FIFA between Super Sunday matches and the transition is seamless.īut can you remember what the crowd looked like on PES5? Or how realistic the grass looked on FIFA 10? It seems strange that sport games are so often sold on their appearance when, unlike almost any other genre, its target audience has such a clear idea of the real-life experience the game is trying to recreate. While this may be authenticity only in the sense that it replicates the matchday experience as invented by Sky in 1992, the fluent televisual dialogue of replays, pop-backed montages and quick cuts add a real sense of drama. But the overwhelming impression is of the enormous amount of care taken by a team that has a fan's appreciation of the game. ![]() The new features and improvements are too numerous to describe comprehensively. :: Doom Eternal secrets locations list - where to find every hidden item on every level This is, lest we forget, the first fully-fledged next-gen release for the series, and you sense EA has decided the best way to catapult the series forward is to lob the proverbial kitchen sink into our living rooms, cramming in two or three years' worth of updates all in one go. The player models, though a little top heavy, have taken another huge stride towards photorealism, and the renewed match atmosphere effects - team sheets being read out, player emotions, licensed stadiums, authentic terrace chants, to name but a few - combine to create a real wow factor for the first few games you play. FIFA 15 is, in purely technical terms, stunningly impressive. Next-gen aesthetic improvements aside, is it any better a gameplay experience than any FIFA before it? More pertinently, is it even possible to say? Fully refurbished team management screens means substitutions are now almost three times as fun to make as last year. It's this conflict more than any other that dominates my thoughts after a week with FIFA 15. A game that improves on itself every year, but never really moves forward at all. A boxed product that (one suspects) makes most of its money from an online spin-off. A conservative, mega-budget series that radically changes its engine on an almost annual basis. It's perhaps fitting, then, that FIFA too is a franchise built on contradictions. A team game of predictable shapes and patterns that hinges on unpredictable individuality. ![]() A world that makes millionaires of its participants, yet through its veneration of supporters claims a special bond with the common man. It's a culture that expresses itself best through the kinships and rivalries of local communities, yet embraces globalism like no other pastime.
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