If you don’t come prepared with years of practice under your belt, it may be difficult to find your feet in the new edition of EA Sports’ football sim, and even if consider yourself a “master” in FIFA, you still need to relearn several elements. Fear not though, as we have decided to help out with a short guide that should offer a helping hand to anyone trying to tackle this year’s entry in the series.
The FIFA physics engine, having gone through a barren spell in the early 2000s when PES was regarded as the obvious choice, came back strong post-2010. So what about 2016? What does FIFA have to offer the masses, whose heads are being turned for the first time in years? The answer is very little. One of the most interesting things about this version of FIFA is how forgettable it is as a playing experience, and indeed so are the players within it.
This is a fundamental FIFA technique, and one that countless players forget or even fail to grasp, habitually releasing the left stick once they’ve set the strength of a pass. If the player under control then takes an extra touch, or receives a minor knock from an opponent, the delay will cause the pass to be played in the current direction that the left stick is held. In short: don’t switch off until the ball actually leaves a player’s feet.
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Football isn’t just about goals; it’s about heading, full-backs, sweepers, last ditch tackles, elbows and marking. So, before you start your FIFA 16 career mode it’s important you know who your gladiatorial ball-winners are. Who will keep Zlatan Ibrahimovic tucked away in his pocket for ninety minutes or put Neymar into row Z? When FIFA got released I couldn’t wait to play it and be better then all my friends again… right? Well we all know the game takes a few hours every year to get used to, this year there is a lot of good changes.
As for game modes I’ve never been a massive fan of Ultimate Team but it keeps the players playing and paying all year round and its hugely popular among a lot of fans. Lets be honest the idea of owning all the best players like Donald Trump is bitter sweet! There is of course Manager mode, Be a Pro and the rest like previous years. One of the most welcome components of draft mode is the option to play cooperatively with a friend, allowing you to share in the fantasy football-esque excitement of picking a team before taking on all comers and their own fantasy teams; whether they be AI or humans online.
All of this moves the focus away from pace, which, over the course of the year, FIFA 16 did reveal itself to be a little obsessed with. The game disproportionately rewarded nippier players and punished, well, pretty much everyone else. Pace and power are still as important as they are at the top of the real game - you only have to look at the physique Gareth Bale has developed since moving to Real Madrid for evidence of that - but it’s now a lot harder for players to get away from their markers in a one-on-one foot race.
In conclusion, building a cheap FIFA 16 Ultimate Team is a lot easier than you might have thought. It’s all about being savvy in your decisions and not wasting your cash. Sink some time into properly researching Ultimate Team and you’ll get more out of it.
