FIFA 15 Review - Deja Vuvuzela

FIFA has always faced plenty of criticism from those who aren’t fans of the series or football in general. It is often said that the game is the “same every year” only with the addition of a few minor improvements, updates to team rosters and more relatively frivolous changes that do not justify EA continuing to churn out new entries annually. However, those who buy each new iteration recognize that while the game may not receive a yearly overhaul, its fundamentals are typically tinkered with enough to make the latest FIFA game immediately distinguishable from its predecessors. Unfortunately, FIFA 15 is the first installment in the series since FIFA 12 reinvented its formula that fails to push the franchise in any new, meaningful direction.

FIFA 15 puts a large amount of emphasis upon the intricacies of attacking play, with ball control being pushed to the forefront this time around meaning that players such as Ronaldo and Neymar, who have a knack for humiliating opponents, now feel more powerful and vital than ever. It’s continuously rewarding to weave through defenders with the ball still in your possession, even if being on the receiving end of such play can lean into frustration more often than in previous games. This is due to defending now being more realistic than ever before, with players tugging on each others’ shirts whilst chasing after the ball, the AI being unafraid to go in for tough, crucial challenges and an emphasis being placed upon physicality, with sturdier players being able to push and shrug opponents off of the ball.

Goalkeepers’ reactions are much more lifelike this time around.

Developer EA Canada has made a big deal out of FIFA 15‘s “next-gen goalkeepers,” and while they can still make some ludicrous errors as was the case in previous games, on the whole they’re more intelligent than ever before. More adept ‘keepers will fly through the air to reach a ball sailing into the top corner of the goal, they’ll spread out their bodies in order to cover more of the goal mouth when placed in a one-on-one situation with a striker and they’ll fight to contain loose balls inside the box.

They’re in no way infallible, though; taking a long-range, well-placed punt from outside the area will trick them, leaving them motionless as the ball sails into the net. While this kind of behavior will likely be met with choruses of “Why didn’t he jump for that?!” it certainly mimics the reactions of real-life ‘keepers when placed in similar situations, unable to correctly judge the velocity and angle of shots taken from improbable areas. It also makes for some impressive goals, which is something that is generally lacking in the game.

Though ball control has been heavily improved in FIFA 15, thus making skillful attacking play more important than ever, the spontaneity of goal-scoring has been dampened significantly. Long-range shooting is more or less useless unless you have a player in your team who is considerably capable of shooting from distance, and the proficiency of headers has been completely reversed since FIFA 14, meaning that crosses into the opponent’s box from the wing are more often than not a waste of time compared to their improbable rate of success in the previous game.

This means that you’ll typically find yourself and your opponents simply trying to work the ball as close to the goal as possible in order to tap in an easy goal, something which may be better representative of how football is played, but does not make for a more exciting game. Scoring in FIFA 15 is an example of realism surpassing fun, and while I managed to sink (and concede) a number of impressive goals, taking long-range and daring chances is nowhere near as enticing as it was in previous games in the series.

The spontaneity of goals you can score has been toned down, meaning most of your shots will likely take place within the penalty box. Boring.

The presentation of the game has been improved significantly, with animations on the PS4 version of the game being impressively seamless and almost uncannily life-like. Players will shove and barge each other around to get to the ball, pull on the shirts of their opponents and fall to the ground realistically when flattened by a crunching tackle. There are also a number of in-game cutscenes and replays, showing players scuffing the ground before taking a free kick, placing the ball near the corner flag when preparing to take a corner kick and running to retrieve the ball for a throw-in.

You’ll find yourself frequently skipping these breaks in play to return to the action, of course, but one of the most irritating issues with FIFA 14 was that attempting to skip replays prior to taking a set-piece/goal kick would often lead to you mistakenly kicking the ball following one too many button presses. These little replays and animations help to completely eradicate that issue. There’s also some neat little superfluous additions such as grass on the pitch showing wear and tear as time ticks away during a match, and players’ kits being visibly affected by rain and other such weather conditions.

However, when the camera zooms in on players during goal celebrations, the animations are still as awkwardly robotic as ever. Arms continue to pass through players’ bodies while they hug each other after a job well done, and their facial expressions are creepily static. It’s not a glaring issue, but it’s one that has troubled the overall presentation of the FIFA series for as long as I can remember, and a problem that continues to persist in this game.

Grass flies from off of the ground realistically when the ball is kicked, one of a few neat visual improvements made to the game.

Another big talking point for EA prior to the release of FIFA 15 was the in-game emotions of players, with them reacting realistically to the events taking place on the pitch. While this is a nice added touch, it isn’t as notable as I had expected, with only the odd angered expression from an irritated teammate when a striker had failed to hit the target again being an indicator of this new addition, alongside players from opposing teams shoving each other around after a foul has been committed (this actually happens far too frequently, leading to some hilariously awkward half-assed physical altercations between pint-sized midfielders and towering, intimidating defenders).

All-in-all, FIFA 15 has improved quite a few things in terms of the series’ gameplay, but has also added a few new flaws into the mix to boot. Despite this, at its core it is still a solid football sim, and as should be expected it is the most solid FIFA game to date in that respect. Unfortunately, it’s let down significant lack of effort put into its game modes.

Ultimate Team is always FIFA‘s biggest draw, though its largely been left untouched since FIFA 14.

The biggest draws for the FIFA series that keep fans gripped to each game prior to the annual release of the next one is its Ultimate Team, Pro Clubs and Career modes. Ultimate Team is EA’s cash cow, tasking players with buying/trading player cards to fit into their squad before taking on the online masses. However, it’s more or less exactly the same as last year’s effort, albeit with the addition of a “Concept Squad” feature that allows players to conceptualize a squad based upon a solitary player, or save the blueprint of an opponent’s team that they wish to emulate in the future. A number of third-party sites have allowed players to do this in the past, and EA implementing it directly into Ultimate Team is a bonus, though nothing to get too excited about.

There’s also the addition of loan players, which allow players to spend EA coins they’ve obtained from playing the game in order to purchase the likes of Gareth Bale and Robben for a limited amount of matches. This is a nice inclusion given that many of us will never earn enough gold coins to buy these players outright, though it did lead to me facing several teams that had loaned these players, thus making many matches feel repetitive as they inevitably based their whole attacking play around them.

The repetitive nature of the mode doesn’t end there, though, as the new focus upon working the ball into the penalty box means that pacey strikers are now more crucial to victory than ever, leading to several instances where I’d find myself playing more-or-less identical teams. This isn’t game-breaking, though, and the mode still remains fun, if very similar to its FIFA 14 incarnation.

On the other hand, Pro Clubs has greatly benefited from the game’s improved AI, as CPU players are now much less prone to making errors and can hold their own against opponents. Their new-found confidence when it comes to going in for tackles also made for some crucial challenges, with defenders lunging in for the ball and getting it cleanly, something which very rarely happened in previous iterations in the series thanks to the bumbling, club-footed nature of your non-human teammates. However, this mode is missing from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, a glaring omission which severely devalues the appeal of the game on last-gen consoles.

For those who prefer playing FIFA solo, the Career mode is largely unchanged from FIFA 14. The Global Transfer Network still offers great opportunities for scouting up-and-coming players, with scouts also needing a lot less hand-holding than before thanks to them automatically searching for the positions you need to be filled on your team. Aside from that, there’s nothing new here that’ll surprise you if you played FIFA 14.

Career mode will be immediately familiar to anyone who played FIFA 14, largely because it’s almost exactly the same this time around.

FIFA 15 is and was always going to be a no-brainer of a purchase for those who love the series, but this year is the first in which EA has noticeably rested upon its laurels. If it wasn’t a necessity for football fans to buy this new entry in order to get their hands on squad updates and to play with their friends, it would quite easily be a game they could skip across until EA created better reasons for them to jump on the bandwagon once again.

This is the most complete and refined version of FIFA yet, but considering its annual updates this is the bare minimum of what we’ve come to expect from the series. FIFA 15 doesn’t reinvent the wheel but rather it takes it for yet another spin, and while football fans will be kept entertained with the small amount of changes that have been made to the game this year, it’s certainly added more fuel to the fire for those who like to claim that EA put out the “same game every year.”