If anyone asks me what the definition of a love-hate relationship is, I immediately point them to the FIFA series. They are possibly the most annoying, frustrating and wonderful games I have played, so with the latest instalment hitting the shelves last month, it was only a matter of time before I finally opened my wallet for FIFA 14.
FIFA games are among the hardest to review. There’s been about twenty of these games. Anyone who is a fan of football has played at least one and, game play wise, not much has changed in the last few years. The graphics may be prettier and the players may control ‘more realistically’, which is code for ‘control like your trying to drive a car with no wheels’, but the mechanics are more or less identical. So I think the best way for me to handle this review is split it into two parts. The first will be reasons why you should NOT buy this game. The second part will be reasons why you should.
Why you should NOT buy FIFA 14
Let’s start with the glaring issue mentioned in the above paragraph. Not much has changed. This is essentially exactly the same game that was released last year and the year before. Sure, there’s a new coat of paint and they’ve actually made some players look like their real life counterpart, but there’s not even so much as a new mode for you to play around with. You have your general career modes, custom tournament mode as well as several online modes that I will rant about later. But the actual objective of getting the piece of leather into the back of the net and how you do it is almost exactly the same as its predecessor. EA tried to claim that they were shifting the focus from speed and pace to strength and height which is a load of rubbish. All you need to do is buy the fastest players you can find and no one will touch you, exactly like FIFA 13.
So let’s dissect the actual game play. Everything that made FIFA 13 bad is still there, annoyingly. The massive pauses between you pressing the button and the player actually doing something, the crappy first touch mechanics that only make your player knock the ball four feet in front of him, the game refusing to let you switch to the player closest to the ball as it assumes you want to take control of the bloke on the far side of the moon, all present and all just as frustrating as it was last year. The player control is still clunky and they constantly get tackled by their own team, or even more hilariously, instantly turn to rag dolls when they brush past each other. So why is all this here? For realism’s sake.
I am a massive advocate of fun over realism and that’s where FIFA 14/13/12 etc. fall down. We want to slip past five defenders before smashing the ball into the top corner from thirty yards, not smash our TVs up because our player didn’t realize you wanted to pass to the person two feet away. The last time I truly enjoyed a football game was FIFA 05 because it understood what it was. A football GAME. So many companies seem to have forgotten what that word means.
So what actually HAS been added to game play? Hardly anything, nothing of relevance. Even the animations and commentary are identical with just one or two new lines, such as them discussing a player thinking of retirement. They also have a new person introducing each match before handing over to the commentators which is the definition of complete and utter pointlessness. As I said, all the commentary lines are the same, so this person says, ‘Now we’re handing you over to Bob and Fred,” and the commentators continue with, “Hello, this is Bob and Fred.” We KNOW it’s Bob and Fred! Mr. Unimportant said that two seconds ago! People do not talk like this EA. It completely ruins the immersion for me.
Now, onto the massive fly in the ointment, the multiplayer. FIFA has, perhaps, the worst online community I have ever seen. Almost as bad as the likes of CoD and Halo. Every single person is there to screw you over in any way they can. There’s a mode where you get teamed up with ten strangers and play against eleven others, each person controlling a single player and good luck to you if you want to play that. The amount of people that just constantly score own goals, or goalkeepers that think they’re strikers is an absolutely joke.
And that’s not even the worst part of multiplayer. That is, in two words, Ultimate Team. The most offensive, insulting mode I have ever seen, designed exclusively to milk every penny they can out of their customers. You earn player cards with either coins or FIFA points. Points have to be bought with real world money while you earn about two hundred coins for playing a match. It costs five thousand coins to buy a gold pack, which contain the best players and you can then use them on your team. Until you earn enough coins, you are given a team made up of bronze players, them being the worst. That’s fine. It works in theory. However, in practice, if you don’t buy FIFA points you will quickly find that most other people have. There is nothing more annoying than trying to play a league match only to be pitted against an all gold team with your measly bronze players. It isn’t an automatic loss but the player with an all gold team has an unbelievable advantage. So basically, if you want to have a good experience on Ultimate Team you HAVE to spend real world money.
Well, that’s a lot of moaning out the way. I feel a bit better now, so let’s try and find some good points.
Why you SHOULD buy FIFA 14
I have a feeling the bad points are going to outweigh the good here. However, there is one reason why most football fans are going to end up buying FIFA 14. Because, what other choice do you have? There are no other football games. Sure, Pro Evolution Soccer has made a valiant attempt to compete, but FIFA always has the licences, a bigger marketing campaign and is generally superior in every way.
Plus, FIFA 14 is fun in its own way. Dodging around two players before sliding a perfect through ball to your striker to smash into the net is still as satisfying as ever and thrashing your arch rivals 4-0 gives you a warm feeling inside for the rest of the day. The frustration and annoyances make the feeling so much better when you actually manage to pull something off, as if you’re getting one over on the game as much as your opponents.
I still really enjoy the career mode as well, when it works anyway. Taking a player and watching them grow from a Sunday league player to a World Cup winner is a fantastic journey that hardly any other football games have come close to copying. Every effort has gone into making the world feel alive and busy with constant score updates during matches, inter squad disputes and the commentators mentioning past matches between the two teams. But again, all of this was present in FIFA 13 so what’s stopping you from just buying that game? The actual changes in this mode, other than a squad update, are superficial at best. The menus are nicer and smoother so you don’t get quite as annoyed waiting for the next match to start and the commentators now give more information about how players are performing but none of it actually enhances your experience. Just makes it more streamlined.
So, in summary, would I recommend this FIFA 14? I honestly don’t know. For all my ranting, I have clocked up a ridiculous amount of hours on it and any football fan will truly find some kind of enjoyment in the game. However, I don’t like what it represents. EA are now convinced all they need to do is release a new FIFA every year, update the squads, applying some new paint and then slap it with a £50 price tag. The aim seems to be for them to make as much money as possible for the least amount of effort and the fact that so many people buy this game is proof that it’s working. If you liked FIFA 13 and have some disposable income, you could do worse but I long for the day EA actually puts a little bit of effort back into this series.
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