In some ways, I imagine writing about football games is a bit like writing about wine. Make a quick judgment, pluck arbitrarily from the glossary of established terms and - as long as you express yourself with conviction - most readers will be happy to follow your lead. One year FIFA is more "realistic", the next, PES is more "fluid". We may as well be talking about oaky bouquets and hints of pencil shavings, given the inexactness of such terms. For a long time, FIFA has been a topic of concern and contention. The recent scandals have brought the discussion of football into the lives of people who'd never engaged with the sport in their lives - and that's really important.

 

We've already discussed how resentful we feel towards FIFA 16, with PES 2016 becoming the next football sim purchase for our office. But what do fans of the franchise think of this? While MyClub may still be in its infancy compared to FUT, Konami seems acutely aware that if you don't go forward, you stagnate. Where before it was confusing, the menu systems are clearer, and easier to understand. In-depth factors like team chemistry are laid out in a language most will understand, and a concerted effort has clearly been made to make it more appealing. In many ways, MyClub is following FUT's lead, but it already feels less designed to take all your money, and more about genuinely building that special team.

 

EA Sport’s mammoth FIFA franchise is a yearly juggernaut that practically owns the digital soccer scene and its Ultimate Team mode has made it hard to beat. It’s often remarked how history likes to repeat itself however, and with Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer on the rise again, EA’s leading football title looks to be almost lagging behind its closest rival. With the latest Pro Evolution Soccer 15, Konami is making huge strides with its sim, offering top notch gameplay and sizzling graphics, meaning the Japanese dev has a football title out that can truly compete with EA’s - just like over a decade ago when PES4 left FIFA Football 2005 in the dust.

 

The official launch date of the game in the US is September 22, but the gaming world is already going crazy about it. Here’s why: For as long as I can remember, we have had the standing tackle, where you try and poke the ball away or the slide and hope you don’t get a red card or get left in the dust tackle. FIFA 16 will allow fake tackles. This will help create the illusion that you are about to go in for a tackle and have the attacker make a more rushed decision. Benzema is mostly used to set up Bale and Ronaldo to score goals. Muller did get twenty goals to Benzema’s twenty two but that does not explain the whole story.

 

If goals were the only criteria to rank attacking player than Ronaldo should have been ranked above Messi which leads us rather conveniently to our last point. Messi ranked a tier above Ronaldo was probably the only thing FIFA 16 staff got right. As well as being a generally good idea the decision to include women’s teams is no doubt an attempt to increase the series’ reach in the US. FIFA 15 was one of the best-selling games of last year in America, and outsold many of the country’s more traditional sports titles. As such the marketing for FIFA 16 is focusing on the US women’s team, with top players Sydney Leroux, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, and Megan Rapinoe providing authentic motion capture data and EA promising authentic likenesses for all the other players.

 

The women’s teams will be playable in several FIFA 16 game modes, including offline tournament Kick Off and ‘online friendly matches’. IF I had the money to waste, I would buy a couple million coins and you know - Build “THE” Dream Team. Sadly, life doesn’t work like that, and EA is gaining a huge profit margin from players purchasing coins. FIFA has become like an app, if you want more, PAY more, and it’s just not fair to consumers. I already purchase a new copy of FIFA each year, so why does EA want to suck more money out of my pockets? Greed! The franchise should make a standalone FUT game that way most of us won’t be fooled into spending more money. Just a suggestion, play Manager Mode, it’s much easier to build a dream squad if you start using Real Madrid.