The fifa 16 AI has to respond faster to swift changes in movement
For the uninitiated, FIFA 16 may be the hardest entry in the series to get into. It still relies on familiar mechanics that even novice players would know, but an aggressive focus on defense and accountability make it a harder game to enjoy. It’s a hit and miss philosophy, but maybe that’s the point: FIFA 16 just wants you to try harder. This shift in focus to defence is most noticeable in how the AI plays. New animations and drastic changes to acceleration and deceleration curves mean the AI has to respond faster to swift changes in movement, which just didn’t happen last year. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still room for improvement when it comes to AI awareness, especially in the defensive end of the pitch, but there’s certainly faster overall responsiveness to a change in direction or turnover. Better space marking and “interception intelligence”mean you can actually trust your AI teammates to respond to an attack if you mistime a tackle, and I like that the balance of power behind the ball is so aggressively reliant on precision passing.
In response to all this there are offensive tools to make the midfield an even fight, if an asymmetrical one. No-touch dribbling adds another layer to the game’s skill system, enabling players to duck and feint over the ball, looking to send defenders the wrong way. This is pretty but so far, for me, not hugely effective; I rarely had enough space in-field to dance over the ball, and on the wings I went for reliable old step-overs. But more integral is the new precision passing system, which effectively introduces a hard, pinged pass that can be pulled off by holding R1 (RB). It’s clearly been designed as a foil to the stickier, interception-prone midfield, and it comes with an element of risk and skill. Lesser players are more likely to fumble these stinging passes, and judging angles, ability and distance adds a new dimension to the basics of FIFA’s play.
The gameplay is quite challenging. There is no separate touch mode and the game veers from on-screen controls to swipe gestures. Skill moves like dribble and player movements are much more elaborate. For instance, when you are moving a player from the halfway line to the penalty area, you can actually see the player running in a curve with his body tilted on one side. Tackling is much more difficult; there is a separate button for it. Sliding it up will perform the slide tackle, just holding it and taking the player closer will ensure a standing tackle. We should make mention of the inclusion of women's football, too. It's nice to see ladies' teams making an appearance, especially after the utterly enthralling recent World Cup in Canada.
There have been minor alterations to the gameplay in terms of how quickly things play when you're playing as a women's team but other than that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that all that's happened is that a few player models have been switched out and new commentary has been recorded. We absolutely welcome the inclusion in FIFA 16, but there's also something of a limited, novelty "look at what we included this year that we'll quietly forget about next time" nature about the whole thing. The sixteen teams can play against each other in friendlies or in one single World Cup-style tournament, but that's about it. Whether or not EA carries on as it should and expands things next time around is anybody's guess.
While I’m all for tirelessly tweaking to achieve that perfect balance, a lot of these adjustments end up going overboard. The aforementioned interception intelligence is a great example. I don’t remember players having an almost supernatural ability to predict ball trajectories in previous years. This time around, though, I’ve seen defenders turn into the Amazing Kreskin on a regular basis, magically predicting and preventing my through balls with scary regularity.
If EA’s golden-booted goose keeps following this back-of-the-box approach, where it only cares about adding more bullet points to its tried-and-true core, PES might take back the throne as king of virtual football. Like a war-weathered Snake on an operating table, Konami ripped PES apart and rebuilt it in the Fox Engine. It still has some demons, but it’s fighting them head-on. What matters is that the developers took risks to make their game better. EA knows what it takes to do this - because that’s how it made FIFA great again just a few seasons ago. It’s time to tap back into that innovation.
