EA giveth, and EA taketh away.
The all-format king is back for another instalment of football - or soccer, if you’re American - but there are so few changes to this year’s edition, if you’re an early Xbox One adopter in the UK, you’d be forgiven for wondering just why you should part with your cash for FIFA 15, when the chances are your free copy of FIFA 14 is still sitting on your console and receiving regular playtime.
It’s a difficult question to answer; FIFA 15 does boast a number of improvements over its predecessor, but this is still fundamentally the same game - when you’re making an annual game about a sport with mostly unchanging rules, it’s hard to reinvent the wheel in such a short time frame. FIFA 15 doesn’t even try.
The actual gameplay is largely the same, with only subtle changes to player animations introduced. What is new is what EA describes as “Emotional Intelligence”, which boasts over 600 new animations illustrating changes to a player’s behaviour depending on the ebb and flow of the game. So a player who misses a golden opportunity will 
fall to his knees in inconsolable fashion, and a player who’s been the victim of a nasty tackle will get up and confront the offending player which a bit of a shove. It’s only a cosmetic change, but there’s no doubting that it does add to overall realism and immersion of a match.
Overall, the graphics - thanks to the game running on EA’s Ignite engine on PS4, Xbox One and PC - are an improvement, and aside from a few Plastic Man player physics issues the mechanics are spot on, even if the referees are a little whistle-happy with some of the incidental collisions. Kits become realistically muddy as matches wear on, and the option to have tighter-fitting kits accurately reflects the modern styles in real life. But while the players on the field look great, there’s still plenty of work to be done with the crowd animations. Duplicate animations may have been reduced, but in any crowd shot there are always half a dozen spectators doing exactly the same thing - which kills the immersion instantly.
Much has been made by the publisher of the improvements to “dynamic match presentation”, with all 20 Premier League grounds now included. As we’ve come to expect from EA by now, the presentation is largely excellent. The soundtrack is superb once again, with FIFA games leading the way with menu music selection and utilizing a great mix of English and foreign language livensed tunes. And the atmosphere is fully replicated in all 20 Premiership grounds, with crowd chants unique to those clubs fully recognizable. However, the in-game commentary from Martin Tyler and Alan Smith lacks variety in comparison to that other EA annual sports frnahcise, Madden, with soundbites repeating very early into the experience.
As with Madden and NHL, FIFA 15 has a collectors mode called Ultimate Team. It’s almost identical here to previous versions. The only new features of note include using your EA Catalogue coins to loan a superstar for a few games, and the option to create a Concept Squad which acts as a wish list for the team you’d like, but can’t quite afford yet.
Online Pro Clubs is the jewel in the FIFA crown though. It’s the game mode where you create a player in your likeness (or in a lot of cases, Jimmy Hendrix’s likeness) and play as a member of a team of pros - either in a drop-in match with up to 9 other strangers, or by forming a club with your friends. Each player-made pro starts off with only average attributes, but can improve them over time by unlocking skill points through accomplishments such as scoring a certain number of goals or making a certain number of tackles.
You can also unlock boosts in the EA Catalogue by levelling up through playing all modes of FIFA. The offline Pro mode mimics the online mode, but the attributes do not transfer over. It adds a nice additional sense of progression, and you can easily become attached to a certain player over the course of their career.
The most frustrating part of Pro Clubs has always been that the computer controlled players in your team are complete liabilities to the point where it just puts you off playing. Unless one of you selects the unattractive option of controlling “Any” non-human players, Goalkeepers and defenders in particular do not behave like human-controlled players in the slightest. They randomly stop running when chasing an opponent, they take ill advised touches in dangerous areas and give away at least 1 clear-cut opportunity every game.
There’s a twisted logic here that would suggest that if CPU-controlled “Any” players were as skilled and reliable as human controlled players, then there’d be no incentive to fill your team with human players, thus defeating the object of Pro 
Clubs; but you’ll never have 11 human players online at the same time in your clubs. There’s also an argument that you could end up with 1 human player sacrificing their own pro by opting to control all “Any” players. Yes, the restriction reduces the chances of a defender making a brain fart in your own penalty area, but the fact remains that the “Any” players are in some cases rated 20 points lower than human players and so difficult to control that they’re a hindrance - and this doesn’t change the fact that you still have no control over the goalkeeper whatsoever.
As Jamie Carragher famously said recently, nobody grows up wanting to be Gary Neville - so having enough mates online who are happy to play all 11 positions including the back four is unrealistic for most teams, and the gap in quality between human pros and CPU pros needed to be bridged. In FIFA 15, it has to a degree, but it’s a bridge that is more M6 Toll than Golden Gate.
Improvements to the “Any” players’ touch and pass function is vastly improved. You now feel confident passing the ball, because you’re safe in the knowledge that only rarely will the player you pass it to do the wrong thing or give possession away cheaply. This makes a match far more realistic, because all players get touches of the ball and the chances of a more attractive passing game breaking out is greatly increased. In terms of making attacking play more enjoyable, this is a huge improvement. I can’t praise it enough.
However like Manchester United, while things may look great going forward there are still massive problems at the back. Goalkeepers are still a law unto themselves, and defenders still suffer from regular lapses which cost you games. Historically, goalkeeper indecisiveness has never been a major issue in FIFA because the captain could command the goalkeeper to come out and make a play. Curiously, EA has removed that option from FIFA 15, meaning you have to place greater reliance on an already deeply flawed mechanic. Given how immensely popular Pro Clubs is, I’m still utterly perplexed why EA continues to make the user experience so controller-smashingly frustrating. I have played close to 100 online and offline Pro Clubs games in the last few weeks and CPU controlled goalkeepers and defenders are still giving away at least 1 goal every other game through glaring and totally unrealistic errors. This is not a ratio that would ever been seen in real life, so why would this be the case in “the most realistic football sim to date”?
There are still no practice or training options for your club, nor the option to play friendlies against all CPU teams. This means you’re only ever improving your Pro in games, and experimenting with tactics on the fly with games that count towards the league. You can play friendlies with other clubs but only if you know another club who will play you, and happen to be online and ready when you send the request. Without a training mode, you are unable to practice things like corners, free kicks or penalties with your pro, which creates the bizarre “snake eating its own tail” scenario where you unlock accomplishments like free kick accuracy and power, by scoring free kicks…without any free kick accuracy and power attributes nor the practice to hone them. Ditto corners, ditto penalties. Again, given the emphasis EA has placed on feel and realism, football training continues to be a rather glaring omission. Practicing free kicks in the Arena as Ronaldo or Messi will not prepare you for when your Pro steps up to take one every once in a blue moon with totally different attributes and mechanics.
This year’s installment is more of a polish than a makeover then, but although the series continues to have some niggles which have yet to be ironed out, this year’s version is polished and enjoyable enough to ensure that FIFA continues to be the best footy sim out there. Early indications are that Pro Evo could be close to a return to form, so EA would be wise to take a more holistic approach to FIFA 16′s improvements, but for now FIFA remains top of the Premier League.
Dale Morgan
@spamdangled
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