Once again, the English football season kicks off, and with it comes EA’s yearly cash cow. Much like Madden, FIFA is one of the publisher’s biggest earners, due in no small part to FIFA Ultimate Team. The first thing I noticed upon launching the game is how little has changed with the menu. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t so cluttered. There are several menus and sub-menus, and even sub, sub-menus to tackle. You can turn the on-pitch trainer on and off at the press of a button, and it’s never forced upon you outside of at the beginning of the game’s tutorial match. It’s not the most helpful thing in the world anyways, because it doesn’t highlight where your shots will go like NHL 16’s does. Shooting can be a bit tough, too, because it can be difficult to judge how hard to press the button or exactly where to aim at times.
That’s something that has been a bit of an issue with soccer games for a while now, although the last couple of PES games have shown improvements. FIFA 16’s camera angles also could have been a bit better, to be frank. My most frustrating gameplay issue is the defensive AI. Yes, they have improved it by making sure that the defenders stay in position. Yes, they have made strong defenders feel strong. However, FIFA 16’s biggest problem is that the game does too much for you. Defenders read the game too well. At first, almost all of my passes were being intercepted. I have no issue with this as long as it’s the human player doing it. However this is not the case. The AI has a tendency to intercept the ball perfectly. It is already encouraging online players to play very defensively and rely just on the counter attack! If you thought park the bus was a problem in FIFA 15, you haven’t seen anything yet. Some games feel great.
Sometimes I will come across an online opponent and it will seem as if the match has played out well, but most of the time, my matches were ruined because of the AI intercepting everything on behalf of my opponent. FIFA 16 supports the same types of play modes that it’s had for years, including online competitions, local play for as many players as you can muster up controllers for, and the slightly cash-grabbing FIFA Ultimate Team mode, which uses an IAP model to create your own personalised team. I can’t say I’ve ever been grabbed by the prospect of Ultimate Team, but it apparently does very well for EA from the FIFA faithful, and so it’s still present. If everything is as it ever was, what’s really changed with FIFA? In a word, speed.
The first thing I want to talk about is the training feature added in both player and manager career modes. This is not only really good fun but also brilliant for developing youth players into first team players. This has never been done before in FIFA and I’m very impressed with how it’s turned out. The FIFA Ultimate Team Draft is something which honestly doesn’t concern me. While it is a fun mode to play, offering a different perspective to FIFA, I personally don’t find it anything too special. The tackling in the game is scrappy and big players will have no problem shouldering their opponents to the floor with ease (bless you, Based God Romao). Slide tackles are no longer the 50/50 gamble they were and players can now recover from a missed tackle quicker with a tap of the button. Fighting for possession of the ball against opponents is also much scrappier than what I remember FIFA 15 being.
The changes make FIFA 16 more of a chess battle stretched across two halves. The pace, better defending, and emphasis on build-up play through the midfield create a new challenge that makes every goal and victory feel many times more rewarding. While EA has no competition when it comes to NHL and NFL games, they do face a major threat when it comes to soccer games, in the form of the widely successful and popular Pro Evolution Soccer series. Considering that they face heated competition, and the fact that this franchise is an extremely important one to EA (FIFA 15 was the best selling game in many European countries last year, including the UK), its rather disappointing that they’re willing to put out “just another yearly sports game”, rather than pushing the envelope in terms of innovation.
For players who haven’t touched a soccer game in ages, FIFA 16 will feel great. It’s solid from a presentation stand point, provides a good variety of games modes, and most importantly the game play is great all around. Rabid fans of the series will enjoy all the tiny tweaks and additions, but anyone looking for a truly new experience or innovation will be left disappointed.
