Lo3 Review a computer game

FIFA 14 Review

·      Price- £35.99

·      Publisher- EA

·      Developer- EA Canada

·      PEGI Rating- 3

EA have yet again pushed the boundaries of football games with their latest installment of the franchise with FIFA 14. With more leagues, more stadiums, more teams and more players, it is the biggest one yet. FIFA has long since been the reining champion of football games, barring a minor blip in the 2005-06 series, where PES took centre stage. From last year, this game has subtly come on leaps and bounds improving everything from player engines to the stadium atmosphere.

The player engine has been improved yet again, the tackles have more ferocity and realism, in comparison to last year when you could be tackled and end up doing a handstand by the goalposts. The new engine has given more freedom to the range of movement of players, meaning there is no longer turning at 45 degree angles only. Players this year feel slower, and more heavy, which straight after playing the older game, was actually quite off putting and strange. Yet after a few games, you will start to realise you can no longer bomb down the wing with the afterburners on with Theo Walcott, but will have to balance out play with your midfield players before releasing it to the wide men. With the greater range of passing and movement from the new player intelligence, it has given a new edge to crossing. With countless ways to cross, and attackers that seek the best positions in the box, you can ping balls into the box all day, and by cancelling the runs if you want, you can enable the attackers to bullet in headers all day.

The new real ball physics allows for a larger variety of shots, from the laces out dipping long shot, to the outside of the foot chip shot that seems to be all the rage at the minute. The new physics creates a wide choice of shot selection, this makes it harder for keepers and your opponents to deal with, but on the other hand, when uncomposed players are being pressured they are likely to lose their balance and are easily put off by defenders. This makes the game more life like. Strength of players is taken into account more too this year, so as to make the larger, usually slower defenders more realistic. This stops the nippy wingers from blazing down the pitch without being touched, so these long armed beanpole defenders can use the tactics they use in real life to pull these players back.

Obviously, being the world-renowned football game it is, FIFA does not have a story mode. Yet if you want to live the life as a footballer or manager, you can. Manager mode allows you to take control of your own football team. This mode means you can select your present day club football team and make every decision from who you want to select as your scout, to press conferences and interviews. Your aim is to complete the tasks set for you by the board of the club you manage. To make it a real challenge you select the difficulty of the teams you play against as well as the leniency of the board with regards to transfer and wage funds. These can be increased by winning competitions throughout the season like the Barclays Premier League, and also from selling players. You can take your club in any direction you choose. If you wanted to be an Arsene Wenger youth talent squad, you can sell your expensive over 25’s and replace them with the cheap, prosperous youth that you have sent your talent scouts out to find. Your players will get better from game experience, as playing games or loaning them out to teams where they get game time, their overalls will grow, making your players better and more expensive. Or you can choose a rich team if it suits you, max out your budget and get the current best players in the world to make a team that won’t be stopped for a few years. Also you can take control of a national team and take them to the World Cup Finals, selecting your best national squad with anyone you want from this country. It’s also a sneaky way of getting your youth players international experience, if your managing their country.

Be a Pro mode enables you to be a youth player from a team of your choice. It is about the only time in the game you feel like a real character, fighting for your place. You choose your height and weight as well as your facial characteristics and the position you play. Your starting attributes depend on your height and weight, as a small light player will be very agile and quick off the mark, but weaker than Mr Burns from the Simpsons. Like in real life, if you select a high profile team like Real Madrid, you won’t be good enough to play in their first team, so they will loan you out to lower leagues to get experience playing. You are set challenges from your club as to how many goals you should score if you’re a striker, how many tackles you should make as a defender, or even how many saves as a keeper. Your overall will increase with the accomplishments set for you, scoring 5 goals perhaps, gives you a +1 shooting boost, which increase with the size of the challenge. However, sometimes this can get tiresome, as you never really have chance to increase your Free Kick Accuracy, due to the fact you aren’t good enough to take them for the team you play for, and the accuracy only increases by scoring them, so free kicks seem to be out the window throughout the whole mode. But all in all it does work very well and gives a very rewarding experience in the game.  

There are a few ways of playing online on FIFA 14, one of them, being the huge Ultimate Team feature that has become vastly popular over the last few years. This allows you to build a team of any nation or league you want, or even create hybrid squads of a mix of leagues and nations. Players are obtained from packs, which are bought by coins from either selling starter players or playing matches, or can be purchased with FIFA points which cost anything from £2.99 to £89.99. The players are displayed as cards, with Pace, Shooting, Passing, Dribbling, Defending and Heading stats all displayed on them. Each pack contains either Bronze, Silver or Gold cards, and each card is a player, consumable, or club item. These consumables and club items allow you too change the position of a player, edit your stadium or kit etc. Building your team is easy, you find a formation you want, and the players who fit into the allocated positions. Players next to each other who have connections by nation, league or club have a stronger chemistry, so play better with one another

The android and iOS version uses the touch screen to its advantage, allowing the controls to be adjusted and moved around the screen, yet its graphics and low processing power means the smoothness of the game is lacking. The PS vita incorporates the use of its touch pad on the back for the shooting in the game, by tapping on a segment of the pad, you are able to place it in that section of the net. At first glance, the idea seems great, launching shots from impossible places, but actually, it takes some of the challenge away from the game. 3DS use double screen features to display both the map and the game screen, so more can be viewed at one time, making up for lack of graphics and processing power. Wii uses the wiimote and nunchuck to make the game more interactive, making you shake the controller to shoot and other things with movement, due to the fact graphics are not as good as they can be on other consoles. If you are to buy this game however, I recommend you get it for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 or Xbox One. Although the Wii might be superior for party games, and the 3DS for practicality, you simply cannot deny their superiority for this game. The sheer power of these consoles in comparison to the other consoles is mind boggling, and it creates stunning graphics and smoothness incomparable with other consoles. The game is best suited to these as it gives not only better gameplay and graphics, but also more variety in game modes and a greater online experience. Now, being brutally honest, the PS4 and Xbox One are slightly better than the PS3 and Xbox 360 for the game, due to the crispness of quality and faster loading of games, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend buying a next gen consoles just on these reasons, as the differences are only subtle.

For us football fans, £50 a year is reasonable, just to see if Ronaldo is better than Messi at last, or to see new transfers because you’re fed up of Bale being in a Spurs kit, or even just to see the ratings of those few players you like to watch. But hand on heart, I can say this year it was more than worth it. FIFA 13 was barely an improvement on FIFA 12, the hype was too much for what it was. The player engine failed miserably with people flying about the pitch. The near post over powered shots were more annoying than the sight of George W. Bush. And if I had a pound for every time someone scored from a corner against me in the 90^th minute, Roman Abramovic would look up to me like a god. All in all, FIFA 13 was a failure, with minor improvements on the previous game. Now FIFA 14 however is a triumph, putting the dismal FIFA 13 back into the dark ages. The sophisticated realism of it is sublime, the new career modes are a massive improvement, online divisions have more leagues to battle through, skill games are much improved and ultimate team, yet again, has gotten better.