There’s no denying that FIFA 16 is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t quite the complete package yet. The key addition to this year’s game is the much touted emotional intelligence system that the developer has bestowed upon its digital players, a feature that can see player’s actions result in any one of 600 different potential reactions, and whilst this all sounds rather intriguing, in practice it just doesn’t quite work. For a start, in the time that I have spent with the game, I can’t recall seeing more than two different emotional reactions to on-field situations, unless one counts the moments when player’s plead their innocence to fouls or offside calls before the referee has even blown his whistle, which sometimes comes at the expense of a rapidly developing attack.
In fact, such moments can quickly turn the game in favor of the CPU as players effectively cease to concentrate on the game as opposed to pleading their case to a set of match officials who aren’t even listening. The vastly refined goalkeeper AI is also a tad patchy, with keepers reacting with cat like reflexes to almost every shot that a player can throw at them, pulling the most acrobatic and mesmerizing saves out of the bag, yet they are far more likely to be beaten by the weakest of efforts that simply trickle past them, but there can be no denying that their situational awareness on the whole has been vastly improved, and they race out of their goal as a good goalie should, when they should. In goalmouth scrambles though, goalkeepers can prove to be somewhat unreliable though, yet it does seem to make the game a more realistic interpretation of the game as a whole, even if it will have players ripping their hair out-but doesn’t the real game make us do that too?
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FIFA has always had an upper hand over its Konami rival simply because of the options outside the game. And with FIFA 16, player creation and Be a Pro pushes the franchise aggressively forward. Adding more to the already existing good vibe, FIFA 16 reintroduces some of the coolest artists of today in their tracklisting, Madeon returns with ‘Imperium’, Kasabian outshines everyone with ‘Stevie’ from their latest album 48:13 and FIFA 16 introduces the cool and emerging Nico and Vinz with their track ‘When the Day Comes’. FIFA 16 is the football game to pounce on if you’ve skipped FIFA 15, FIFA 16 is the ideal game to trade in if you already loved what you saw in FIFA 15. This isn’t a franchise that is meeting annual standards, this is a franchise that was once the undisputed king and is trying its best to meet gameplay innovations and showcase cinematic brilliances.
Man to man battles are maybe not as obvious in the game however. EA Sports boasted an unprecedented level of emotional and reactive behavior based on the way that the game was going and what had happened to a player so far. If you had missed several shots for example, you were meant to see an increased level of frustration in that player’s behavior. If you were tackled badly, a player is supposed to remember this later in the game, and potentially act more recklessly when they next meet this opponent. Whilst it does seem like the game tries to push these ideas in some ways, they are not as present and indeed effective as it may have sounded as though they would be. Perhaps EA just overplayed the level of influence this feature would have in FIFA 16, or perhaps it is simply something you have to play a lot more than a few days of the game to truly realize the effects of. Either way, it’s not quite the dramatic new feature which was described.
Fifa 16 still controls like a sports car. It’s both natural and rewarding when you bob and weave your way through a defense with clever dribbling. Taking a good first touch after a pass is still just as intuitive as ever. Passing is mostly crisp though occasionally I ended up passing to the wrong player due to a slightly over-charged press of the pass button. It’s harder to get a good shot off now, but that’s a nod to the improvement of the A.I. more than a knock on the controls. It takes a bit of work to learn how each shot works on a goalie, but as you learn the applications of each your game will grow exponentially.
