FIFA 16 innovates across the entire pitch to deliver a balanced, authentic, and exciting football experience that lets you play your way, and compete at a higher level. You’ll have Confidence in Defending, take Control in Midfield, and you’ll produce more Moments of Magic than ever before. FIFA 16 – Play Beautiful. That will be included on the earlier consoles, too. Most of the same features that have been revealed for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC are included. One notable missing feature is Pro Clubs, a game mode that lets a group of friends control each member of a team, playing together.
The new mode is great fun to play, especially with the difficult decisions you have to make when you have several strong players to chose from. The massive downside to this mode however is it costs A LOT of in game currency to play. Your first shot at Draft Mode is free, but after that you need a whopping 15,000 coins to enter, or of course you can pay real money as is EA’s standard model. Such a high cost defeats the object of opening up the high quality players to all, and it very much puts you off playing with the new feature. I really enjoyed my shot at Draft Mode, but I don’t want to spend real money nor play nigh on thirty games of Ultimate Team before I can play it again. The decision to lock this game type up in this way just seems, foolish, unfair and tight on the part of EA, and it is a sad sight to see that the game has gone so far in this direction…
Despite this apprehension I always end up getting a copy because I love the sport and I enjoy having it as something to turn too when I just want to have one or two games as something quickly to play. In terms of difference in gameplay from 15 to 16, there isn’t really much difference that I can tell. There’s a better impact model on tackles and you can really feel when you have crunched someone and injured them or given them a knock. Which in a sick way is a really satisfying feeling to have. Fifa’s authenticity comes through in the way it looks and sounds too. I don’t think the series has ever been better visually, with the quality of graphics and attention to detail improving year on year. Crowd sounds are better than ever, and really differ from ground to ground. The broadcast-style presentation of matches is up to its usual standard – but this leads to the one production letdown of Martin Tyler and Alan Smith’s commentary being as tedious as always.
There is no doubt that FIFA 15 was the game that brought next generation gaming to the series. The first outing with the console launches, while improved, did not take too much advantage of the hardware but the second outing last year was one of the games of the year. So where was EA to go from here? They had crafted the best football game on the market, but little did we know that EA had some more tricks up its sleeve. Not only does FIFA 16 improve upon its predecessor in expected ways, it also has a few tricks up its sleeve, and two brand new modes that are sure to keep gamers happy with the franchise for yet another twelve months. They have again continued to capture all the premier league stadiums and now have captured more player game faces, as well as that they’ve grabbed the licensing for the German league (Bundesliga) to add more realism to and already license boosted title.
Having played every Fifa since 95 i can safely say this is one of the best ones up there, EA have captured so much, I've only rated it an 8.5 as the more EA look to squeeze as much money out of its consumers the worse of they look and the players may look to jump ship like they did last season and play PES which is already a great game. The FUT Draft is a tidy little game mode and the massive improvements to career mode has made this a great football sim.
