FIFA 15: Review - No No No Not In My Goal

Review 

September 23rd, 2014 By Dean Howard

This year's FIFA 15 is all about player intuition. EA has even gone as far as creating a new artificial intelligence system where players can now shout out in frustration, celebrate  a winning goal and throw tantrums just like real life players do in football.

The game is bursting with new content, features, next generation visuals and redeveloped goalies able to make quick realistic decisions on the fly.

The latest FIFA 15 looks and feels much more fluid than ever before.  Each of the 20 new premier league stadiums appear smooth, polished and bursting with energy.  From the buzz of the crowd to the sideline commentary reporting the action live as it happens.

Beyond all this exterior and polish there isn't anything new on offer when we get down to FIFA 15's actual gameplay. What has dramatically changed however is the goalies intelligence, which EA has focused on a lot this year.

Unlike previous versions in the series, goal keepers abilities to make spilt second decisions has always been a major drawback in the games competitiveness, so this year EA has fine tuned goal keepers to the point of becoming goal stopping supermen, which may sound great to those who long for a challenge but after several hours of goal less draws, these new keepers feel more like Clark Kent secretly playing keeper.

We have all seen matches where keepers are on fire.  No matter what a striker does they just can't get one past him, but that is definitely not every football match as EA would like us to believe with these ball stopping robots.

The good thing is that FIFA 15 plays at a much faster pace to the rather sluggish FIFA 14. Players are responsive in passing, chipping, lobbing and pulling off tricks on the pitch. Which is great when you have the ball but frustrating to defend against.

The additional changes are very welcomed but are neither good nor bad when compared to previous iterations of the series. It just feels different, like no one within the development team know what to do next on the series.

Unfortunately this lack of technological advancement within FIFA 15 isn't just limited to its gameplay. The UI and single player modes have seen very little changes from FIFA 14, almost to the point that you would wonder if it were the same game just a different number added to the loading screen.

EA's popular Ultimate Team is one of its biggest highlights and this year we see Ultimate Team expanding on the community aspects from an easier way to now buy, loan and sell players to building your dream team. Despite Ultimate Team being such a huge and lucrative venture for EA, they should be careful not to focus so much on this element that they lose their core fans who just want to play football.

Verdict

FIFA 15 isn't a bad game and those looking for a good sport title will not be disappointed. Visually it looks fantastic and plays at a much quicker arcade style pace to its predecessor,  but the series does lack a strong sense of direction and feels oddly familiar to what EA has already put out last year.


Score: 3/5