FIFA 16 reminds me a little of a defending champion stacked with experience and soon-to-be-retired stalwarts. You know exactly what you’re going to get every week, and you can’t really expect anything new or innovate because, well, you don’t fix what isn’t broken. If you’re a fan of such a team, you embrace every moment because you never know when it’s all going to come crumbling down, or when a new, young and ambitious team is going to stream in and snatch victory from you. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, right? Fans of the FIFA franchise will like this year’s entry because, well, it plays its cards right. It goes through the motions, does what it does best and gets the job done. It’s not exciting or groundbreaking, but at least you know what to expect.
Yet FIFA 16 seems to know the sharks are circling, and so it ups the ante: this team will be spoken about for generations, and you better bring your A-Game to be part of the legacy. One being that EA have rated their cast of female stars individually and on their own merit. So an 85 rated female player, is not the same as an 85 rated male player. But within the framework of the women’s game and female biomechanics they are still an 85. And the same goes for all their other stats too. That's certainly the right way to do it as it preserves the women's games uniqueness, and it removes the opportunity for unfair comparison on both sides of the fence.
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Most interesting though is the way women’s football plays in FIFA 16, because due to the amount of work that’s gone in to the authenticity of player models, and the reams of new female specific animations, it actually feels quite fresh. Rather than just slimmed down male bodies running around with women’s heads on - which would have been catastrophic, on so many levels. For example, when defending, the layout will suggest to tackle or slide tackle and indicate what button or key to press to accomplish this. For new players, this is a fantastic feature that will help you get acclimated to the keyboard or controller scheme. For veteran or returning players, this feature is also very helpful more for the personal space bubble. I found myself keeping the trainer on only for the bubble as it greatly assisted with timing precision tackles and takeaways as well as aiming shots and passes.
Perhaps the one argument against this addition to the game that holds any kind of weight (if a very small amount) is the annoyance that EA have prioritized this particular element over improving several elements of the game that are still frustratingly sub-par. FIFA series vice-president David Rutter spoke of “the time and effort required for traveling around the world to scan faces and heads, record motion capture, etc,” as well as the fact that they had to “rebuild the animation rig” to account for physiological differences. Evidently, adding these teams in hasn’t just been a five minute job. But to be frank, we’ve had 23 years of FIFA games being incrementally developed year on year in which to get it right: and it’s probably fair to say that, based on past form, any annoying glitches that were present in the last few versions wouldn’t have been fixed with or without the time spent on this anyway.
But there’s an issue with this approach, and it’s that if this is all you focus on, you start to lose sight of the forest for the trees. A lot of this year’s FIFA reviews, for example, are doubling down on things like a small goalkeeping AI change and a new way to send faster passes. Those are important to note, sure, but are they that big of a deal when looking at the game as a whole? Because when I step back and look at FIFA 16 as a complete and individual video game released in the year 2015-not a vessel carrying bullet-point updates to FIFA 15 - I see a game that’s dated and stale. Lumbering under the weight of an aging engine that affects every aspect of gameplay, from rubbery animation to floaty ball physics to players that look like Adidas-draped balloons. EA can make all the little changes around the periphery they like, but at the end of the day, they’re just that: little changes.
But the more exciting solution could be that newly ascendant PES is enough to get EA worried. If its rival catches up quickly enough, then Fifa’s slowly improving upgrade cycle might get shaken up. You’ve got this far through a Fifa review; you’re going to buy the new Fifa. The game is still good, and the updates are just enough, so it’s worth doing so. But perhaps next year it will feel a little less begrudging.
