Certainly, this year’s game feels more like what you see on television each Saturday than it ever has before — more true simulation than arcade. That has its positives and negatives. It’s harder to score goals than used to be, and the game may be harder to pick up for new players, but experienced gamers and fans will appreciate the newfound resemblance to real football. In its third year on next generation consoles, plenty of kinks have been ironed out of the game. Graphically, it looks better than ever — with attention clearly paid to the different body types and styles of different players, differentiating the feel of playing with different players.
The good thing is these instances are far less frequent than the logical and cool moments of gameplay. I scored a fantastic goal with Robin van Persie that hit off the top of the goal and caromed down to fall just inside the line. However, this was not immediately clear in fast motion. No one makes the action on the pitch look quite like EA does. The graphics aren’t console quality, given what the PS4 and Xbox One can now do with player likenesses, but they’re impressive. And since FIFA has licenses with almost every pro league worth mentioning around the world, the number of real uniforms, badges and stadiums you can assign to your Ultimate Team is as impressive as usual.
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No matter which mode you prefer to play, it's the on-field product that ties FIFA titles together. Whether you're taking other players on in Pro Seasons, playing for your favorite club in Career Mode, or building a dream squad in Ultimate Team, the way the game plays on the pitch is inevitably at the core of the experience. EA has altered the mechanics in some subtle ways, and the most-positive changes are to the shooting. Players approach taking shots in a much more natural way, wrapping their feet around the ball to roll or curl it in at finer angles than were possible before. There's more room for finesse this time around, and it leads to more varied scoring chances and a wider variety of goals. Shooting is simply more fun, and you'll no doubt experience moments of joy when a deft finish puts the ball just beyond the keeper's reach and into the net.
But in the end, it’s still pretty difficult to recommend FIFA 16 to anyone who already owns FIFA 15, or even FIFA 14. You just simply won’t find anything dramatic enough in this year’s entry to make it feel like a whole new experience. Which just makes you wonder when will FIFA, and sports games in general, finally become services instead of annualized products. Unfortunately, it feels as if they gone too far in the opposite direction. Individual players do not feel as distinct as they did in FIFA 13 or 14 and hitting a long, lobbed pass invariably results in the loss of possession. A lot of the time it feels like the only way to eke out a result is through short, quick passing, but the moves seldom come across as genuinely fluid. The outcome is an over reliance on using two or three players in a triangular formation to pass your way out of trouble, or using the driven pass option which can cause the receiving player to lose control of the ball.
Finally, for the cash-rich time-rich (family poor) FIFA fan, there is the FIFA 16 Super Deluxe Edition. Of course you get the full game, but you can also count on 40 FIFA Ultimate Team Jumbo Premium Gold Packs (these delivered one a week for 40 consecutive weeks). For the Ultimate Tean fan there are five-match FUT Loan Player items of Lionel Messi, Sergio Agüero, and Thibaut Courtois. And you get the two celebrations. So if you are a mad FUT fan, money is no object, and you want to kick off the season with three of the world's best, you know what to do. This option costs ￡79 via the PlayStation Store.
Negatives do pop up, additional to the universal, linked problems of FIFA's mechanics. There's a distinct lack of teams - 16 in total - with no club level competitions offered. You can only take part in friendlies or a tournament, without even leagues thrown in. It's taken 22 years to get to a stage where women are in the game, but the full women’s game is hardly represented in there. That will certainly change - now they're there, there's little chance they'll be removed, so it's something to build upon. But for now, it's presented as little more than a sideshow and that can't help but disappoint, even with all the positives of the women's game actually featuring.
