As sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, September brings the latest version of Electronic Art’s mega selling football simulation game FIFA. This time it is FIFA 15, which EA have promised to be the most realistic yet, a promise made in all previous years of course. This is the second FIFA title to be released on the Playstation 4 and with a full year to get to grips with the new power afforded by the new console, I am hoping for a leap forward over last year’s edition. When you first load up FIFA 15 you are greeted with the usual EA Sports logos and the very slick menu screens which are now synonymous with the various EA sports titles.
Reviewing FIFA tends to get harder as the years pass, especially when there are no new gameplay innovations or drastic blueprint alterations to shout about. Last year's entry felt like a step up purely because of the graphical and technical improvements that came courtesy of new hardware, but FIFA 15 is obviously unable to enjoy the same situation – unless this is your first foray into the beautiful game on the PlayStation 4. As such, it's rather difficult to really pin down what FIFA improves upon this time around, especially since it looks just about the same as last year's entry, despite sporting a few smoother animations and a number of slightly better looking player models. Perhaps the only somewhat obvious change from the previous instalment is that matches seem to have a quicker pace about them.
EA Canada is pairing the on-field emotion with a more lively and responsive crowd, which cheers with behavior that's authentic to particular clubs: The fans at Anfield, for example, will serenade Liverpool FC with "You'll Never Walk Alone." And the multiple commentary teams in the FIFA series have always done a good job of bringing the excitement at appropriate times. But in an interview with Polygon last week, FIFA 15 producer Santiago Jaramillo admitted that it remains difficult for game developers to match the excitement and significance of extraordinary moments like the Brazil-Germany game.
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Which is fair enough. But to push that idea further, the constraints of the controls and the simulation are to some extent simply things players need to, if not master, learn to work around. Once you know the idiosyncracies of FIFA15’s methods for selecting who it thinks you’re passing to, you can begin to manipulate those outcomes. It’s no longer football at that point, it’s FIFA. But it’s also a game with a much higher skill ceiling, and feels akin to learning context-sensitive block timing in a fighting game. In other words: games are always, at some deep and sometimes unreachable level, broken. Learning to deal with that schlubbyness is part of the fun, and perhaps no different than struggling to force my sagging carcass around a five-a-side football pitch for an hour.
After the disappointing season that was FIFA 14 I was worried that FIFA 15 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 ball physics and movement also saw very big changes. Shots and crosses look a lot more natural for instance. What this does is every shot and cross looks different every time instead of using the same animations. When on defense you’ll see that sometimes just standing in the right spot will disrupt an offensive. Counter-attacks are more prevalent in this year’s version and offer really butt-clenching moments, particularly after committing a bone-head play like a bad pass into three defenders.
Some of the veteran players of Stuff’s lunchtime FIFA tournaments have been frustrated by throw-ins for years so their overhaul in FIFA 15 is most welcome. Whereas before the lack of movement from your teammates meant you were often left with no choice but to throw the ball backwards or risk losing possession, FIFA 15 allows you to take control of the receiving player and move them around the pitch before commanding the taker to throw the ball in with a press of the pass button.
