FIFA 16 – optimism Vs. reality

When I was a lad, my parents bought me a copy of FIFA Football 2005 for Christmas. This was to be my first real experience with a football game and ten-year-old me thought it was fantastic, as I put myself into the game and dominated with Manchester United in career mode. Fast-forward E3 this year and FIFA is now the most popular sports video game in the world, period. Yet I sit her and wonder why that is. FIFA 16 was great when I first bought it, bringing me a couple of months worth of solid football joy, but as it nears the end of its life I can firmly assert what a lot of players I have encountered think. FIFA 16 was a bit rubbish. Yet I keep going back to in the hope that I can play a beautiful game of virtual football when in reality all that happens is lots of frustration.

Let’s talk about what we were promised at last year’s E3 when Pele told us how great FIFA 16 was going to be. Aside from the addition of international women’s teams which were welcome and offered a slower and slightly different approach to games, many of the so-called improvements were lacking. The trainer, while somewhat helpful for new and experienced players alike, was not contextual enough. The no-touch dribbling system that was talked up so much is too difficult for anyone I know to use effectively, requiring precise timing and the use of opposite triggers on controllers (L1 and R2 on PS4, for example) We were told that goalkeepers were fixed, which was an outright lie, and the defending, while more responsive, especially for the CPU, is still woeful in many situations.

I pose this question to you, my readers: Can you recall a single game that you have played in FIFA 16 were not one screwy thing has happened? I and my best friend play a lot of FIFA, and we constantly talk about this. Passes go astray despite aiming at the player you want. “It’s too reliant on how long you hold the pass down for with respect to where it goes,” my mate tells me. “there is a super obvious pass right there, but because you held it down for 3 bars rather than 2 it misses him.” aerial through-balls are almost impossible to pull off in FIFA 16 too, even with quality playmakers. “through-balls in the air were over-powered before, now in an attempt to reduce that, they are almost impossible to use, always being intercepted.” Then there are the cases where the game’s programming and algorithms cause frustrating (and sometimes hilarious) things to happen, like teammates running into each other or blocking your own shots. This applies to goalkeepers too, demonstrating that their supposed overhaul that began in FIFA 14 has been a huge disappointment over the last few years.

Manager mode has always been my bread and butter of FIFA games, as opposed to Ultimate Team (we’ll get to that in a bit). I love taking a lower league team, in this instance Cambridge United, to the top flight of football. This year we were treated to a vast improvement…player training sessions? Basically, EA took the mini-games from the loading sections before a match starts, slapped some UI on it and made the grades attained affect player attributes. Sorry, but this is nowhere near the level of development that should come from a yearly cycle. In fact, I would go so far as to say that manager mode hasn’t really developed in the last five years. “It’s just play/simulate a game and train players,” says my friend. Granted he started his career with Arsenal, so there wasn’t that much room for his team to grow. Remember when you used to be able to invest in training to increase your squad’s stamina? How about when you could increase your stadium capacity to generate ticket revenue that would go into your transfer budget? I want to see stadium customisation, a more dynamic transfer system, the ability to change a player’s preferred position. Unless news breaks that manager mode is receiving a huge overhaul, which I doubt, I probably won’t be picking up FIFA 17.

And now we come to my real pet hate of the FIFA franchise: Ultimate Team. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of building a fantastic squad of stars from scratch to take online and play competitively with. It is the execution of this that rubs me the wrong way. It all really comes down to microtransactions. ” you can’t build a sick team without spending real money,” my mate says. “And winning a tournament to get coins is almost impossible too, without a good team.” You might net 2,000 FIFA coins from one game, but if you want to buy Neymar, you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of FIFA coins. maybe you’ll get lucky with a pack opening, but these too cost in-game currency, which is not nearly sustainable enough from your match winnings, forcing players to spend real money. Then there are the caveats of player contracts, stat boost cards and the like which cost yet more money. Thankfully I have the sense to not participate in such trife, but millions of people play Ultimate Team, which generates so much money that EA have to focus on it. It’s a vicious cycle. Of course, there’s the new FUT Draft, but if you want to give that a go, you’re looking at 15,000 coins. Or a couple of quid in the UK. All for the privilege of playing a game mode.

I look forward to seeing the reception that FIFA 17 garners. Maybe they’ll deal with many of the existing gameplay issues, but, as is normally the case, they might create more problems than they fix. “The Journey” looks intriguing, but don’t be surprised if this is a test run to see if putting your own footballer in the mode would be worth it. I’d much rather play as myself than Alex Hunter, a name which belongs in the Call of Duty franchise. The Frostbite engine opens up a lot of possibilities for FIFA to explore as well. But if it’s anything like FIFA 16, get ready for another year of frustration.