If you can remain calm during the course of a FIFA match without swearing, face-palming, or leaping from the sofa in celebration, you've probably reached a state of nirvana the Dalai Lama would envy. And with FIFA 15 ($59.99), EA has made it harder than ever to achieve such a state. Every year, EA improves certain aspects of the game; just enough to challenge you and keep you interested, but not drastically enough to make you wonder if you bought Pro Evolution Soccer by mistake. That said, FIFA 15 forces you to adapt to the new gameplay, which can prove frustrating. As usual, EA's newest soccer title is cross-platform; it's also available on PlayStation 4($799.95 at Amazon), last-gen consoles, handhelds, and mobiles devices.
The View From Above
In the quest to perfect the digital rendition of the beautiful game, EA has made some aesthetic improvements that make FIFA 15 closer to the real thing as ever. You can now see the wear and tear that 22 football players normally inflict on a pitch during a 90+ minute period, like footprints and scuff marks from slide tackles. And now, you can add your team's footprints to all 20 Premiere League stadiums.
EA also added the camera wobble effect we often see on televised matches, created by tens of thousands of fans shaking the stadium in ecstasy when their team scores, which gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Other minor details include the spray of grass from a player's boot during a replay or highlight when he kicks the ball, and player kits become stained with grass and dirt. These details have no effect on the way the game plays, but they add to the realism.
From the default broadcast view, FIFA 15's player movements are slightly more fluid than the previous version, which is always welcome. However, close-ups portray some players in an absurdly muscular way, with shirt-stretching, burgeoning shoulder muscles. Football players are fit, but the player redesign is over the top.
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The main menu looks darker than it did in FIFA 14, and images on the option panels are of recognizable players rather than generic photos. There's also a Match Day Live tab that gives you news and updates on the team you support.
The Team Management menus have been redesigned to provide more information about a player's stats. The menus are easier to digest compared with the list of numbers next to player attributes we saw in previous FIFA titles. In FIFA 15, a circle graph shows you player qualities, and you can make fine adjustments to formations by selecting players and moving them exactly where you'd like them to be.
On the Pitch of Glory
EA has worked in player emotions, as they react to actual happenings on the pitch. For example, players congratulate their goalie on an epic save, and those who were on the wrong end of a bad tackle will react confrontationally to the opposing tackler. These emotional responses are said to have an effect on how affected players play, but I can't say that I sensed much of a difference, if any.
If you score a goal against the computer, the opposition becomes more determined and driven to come back with an equalizer. The opposite was true in FIFA 14, which punished you for conceding a goal by giving the opposition an adrenaline boost after scoring, while your team felt demoralized and relatively sluggish. (If you scored, however, your team would also get the adrenaline boost, too.)
One area that feels particularly different is Tactical Defending. Gone are the days when someone (like me) with shoddy defending skills could vaguely crowd or pressure an attacking player and take the ball away simply by getting close enough or running into them. You need to be far more precise with tackles, and FIFA 15 is forcing me to improve that particular aspect of my game, which is a good thing, but it feels much, much more difficult. Recognizing that some of us model our playing style after magisterial finishers like Cristiano Ronaldo rather than brick-wall-defenders like Vincent Kompany, EA offers the ability to select Legacy Defending, which enables the easier defending experience we grew accustomed to in previous FIFA titles.
Also, you can now defensively hoard the ball in corners and sidelines by making it very difficult for the opposition to obtain the ball in order to waste time, or cause you to accidentally tackle the ball out of play for a throw-in or corner.
Crossing the ball for a header into the goal was a cheap, yet rich source of my goals in previous FIFA games, but EA has made it nigh impossible in FIFA 15. But that's okay, because you can get too comfortable with that tactic. In FIFA 15, you'll have to be more creative, look further ahead, improve your shooting, come up the middle or corners of the box more often, and play some tiki-taka football (if you weren't already). This increased difficulty in scoring, along with the aforementioned camera wobble effect caused by a shaking stadium, makes the art of goal-scoring more special and more satisfying than ever before. However, it's still far too easy to make a massive, high through-ball pass to a center-forward for a cheap goal (looking at you, PM and MK).
Player strengths have also been amplified so that individual players with particularly good skills are more prominent. For example, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, one of the strongest players you can put on a pitch, is very physical and brutish, especially when you're trying to defend against him. I initially thought this was another overly exaggerated player facet, like the aforementioned Hulk-like player appearances. However, defending against players like Zlatan must be similarly difficult and frustrating in real life as it is in FIFA 15, therefore adding to the realism.
Annoyances and Conclusion
Oi! Ref!
The digital refereeing has always been a point of contention between me and FIFA games. It often ruins the realism EA worked so hard to implement in other areas. But like a good manager during the press conference after a bad match, I'll keep my mouth shut about the ref's questionable calls. At least, that's what I should be doing.
The ref still blows the final whistle in the middle of a dramatic, potentially match-winning/saving counter-attack in the last seconds of extra time, sometimes at the very moment I tap the shoot button for the last, possibly fateful strike of the match. I just watched a Manchester United vs West Ham match where the referee went one minute, 45 seconds beyond extra time before blowing the final whistle to allow for West Ham's counter-attack momentum. Once it was clear the momentum was gone, the game was over. I keep telling myself that EA will fix this in next year's game, but it never does.
While we may demand that referees be more accurate during real football matches, the FIFA video game referees are a little too accurate. How can we blame them? They're controlled by a computer, after all. But still, real life referees wouldn't catch that one millionth of a millimeter where your forward was offside. But perhaps that's EA's way of replicating the frustration players on the pitch feel towards offside calls.
Additionally, if any of your players are in an offside position while you pass or kick the ball forwards, it triggers a call for offside. This simply isn't the case in real Football, where as long as a player in an offside position doesn't touch the ball, the momentum of play isn't halted.
EA's Own Goal
Goal keepers were an issue in FIFA 14, and they've improved in FIFA 15. But still, too often during an intense, chaotic scramble between defenders and opposing forwards within the penalty box, the ball can be directly in front of a keeper, begging to be picked up to prevent a goal. Yet, the computer sometimes doesn't register that crucial moment as a keeper's responsibility, and he stands there gormlessly. This can become very frustrating, as even using the Y button on Xbox or Triangle button on PlayStation to pull the keeper off his line isn't responsive enough for such a pivotal moment.
Decisive Win, or Just a Tie?
Despite some old frustrations about the game that continue to haunt us, FIFA 15 is an improvement over the already excellent FIFA 14. It's more challenging, more realistic and even more emotional than previous titles, and it's more satisfying as a result.
Should you buy 15 if you have 14? Realistically, there's no need, as the majority of perceivable improvements are mostly superficial. However, those visual improvements add to the game's experience. Plus, if you're a fan of the franchise, you know you're getting the latest FIFA title, anyway.
For more, check out The 10 Best Xbox One Games.
EA has added several small enhancements to FIFA 15 that improves the look and feel of the game, but some minor annoyances still linger.
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