Review: Fifa 14

Deafening crowd roars, rippling shirts and more animations than you can shake a goal post at. Fifa 14 on the PS4 is here; due to the lack of a competitor, can it cement it’s victory by default by showing us what a multiplatform, next generation experience can do?

It’s not long before you’re dumped into a match with names synonymous with football greatness. Instantly, the ‘production values’ are noticeably high, the pre-match intro screams broadcast, stadiums are fully realised with crowds that not only have actual depth but are placed in the correct stands. Fans will roar at each other and fill the stadium with opposing chants, ball boys will occasionally over eagerly help out and throw an extra ball on the field and throw-ins take place in cut-scene free, real time. Ball physics have improved over previous iterations, no longer does a wayward ball guarantee the opposition gains possession. Small, inconsequential animations such as rolling your feet over the ball happen automatically; though they have no real world effect, they all add to the overall impression of detail.

Pace isn’t the most important stat anymore, stronger players have a much higher capacity to fend off others whilst keeping the ball. Passing works well, if not with the immediacy you might expect, occasionally players might take an extra touch before offloading to a teammate which can be frustrating. Players can make ordered runs into space to receive an all to often, defence splitting, through ball. Headers are generally hit and miss, with at times attackers managing dubious feats one minute and the next, not even bothering to jump. Defending, once you’ve sussed it out, is a matter of pressing the attackers whilst keeping your formation intact, it’s just a pity it’s not explained very well.

Whilst the skill games are fairly intuitive and there is a practice mode to hone your set piece plays, the lack of a basic tutorial is rather baffling. Unlike previous iterations in the Fifa universe, you’ll struggle getting past the most basic defender in a one on one scenario. The AI can be infuriatingly adept at closing the distance and putting some serious pressure on the attacker. However, as usual, they’re incredibly susceptible to a not-to-well placed through ball. Fortunately for all the people that are either new, or have taken a break, difficulty can be tailored to your needs, as along with the several standard levels, there are also customisable tweaks to configure should you wish.

Despite the initial settings offer great playability as standard, you can also adjust the player and AI settings to create a tailored playstyle to suit you. The sliders can be adjusted to make differences as subtle or ostentatious as you like. Everything from the likelihood of wayward passes to the width of defenders and their ability to push up the wings can be altered to increase the believability of the game. Simply playing around with the sliders can yield trial and error results, yet there are many tutorials on the internet explaining what each of the somewhat vaguely named bars do; along with setups to create an altogether different feeling game.

In the past, Fifa launch titles have, on occasion, been a little lacklustre. Fifa 14 has made up the difference this time however. Despite lacking a local coop career mode and the bewildering occlusion of a tournament mode on the PS4 and Xbox One, other great things have taken their place. An all new engine bespoke for the next gen has been implemented along with new, more varied animations. Player collisions and rather their abilities to avoid collisions are spruced up and manage to wow in slow motion replays.

Ultimate Team has of course returned with an all new mechanic that rewards synergy with teammates. When considering your starting line-up, it may be best to swap a few players around to get the most potential out of your squad. For example, players who are of the same nationality, or even play for the same league team should be placed adjacent to one another to reap more of a benefit. Balancing this along with giving players their preferred role can become quite tactical, fortunately, there is an indicator bar that will show you how effective you’ve been. Another positive is that Ultimate Team will transfer across the console generation should you decide to upgrade.

The one major criticism I have of Fifa 14, is the complete lack of engagement if you are offline. The career mode, outside of playing matches is devoid of any personality, there are no press interviews or training games, just the arbitrary managerial decisions that dictate whether or not you’ll participate in the next match or not without any explanation regarding the outcome. The cycling news ticker that often highlights interesting posts to read, usually opens a list of unrelated topics, so when you do decide to click on an article you actually want to read, you must manually find it instead of it opening outright.

Presentation across the board is high if not sometimes unnecessary, the graphics and player animations due to the newly developed Ignite engine are fantastic; especially considering it’s release on pretty much every console you can think of. Team rosters and licences are of the usual upmost quality, even if the eyes of some players posses a certain haunt-like quality. The main menu is a little over done however, a slew of content is strewn somewhat haphazardly across a few pages in a Windows 8 style, with many tiles being links to online portions of the game.

Some singleplayer frustrations keep Fifa from becoming all it could be. Matches flow with purpose, beauty and poise yet the immersion values of being offline are too low. Without an online connection, you’ll be missing out on some of the better parts of Fifa 14: Ultimate Team and generally playing against other humans enthrals such a different experience, even if you do get thrashed game after game!