Thursday, January 1, 2015

FIFA 15 (for Xbox One)

FIFA 15 defending
FIFA 15 footprintsThe 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.
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.
FIFA 15 team management
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.

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