FIFA 16 Review

“…FIFA 16 is a great transition game that will quench your thirst until the next one.”

It’s that time of year again! A new FIFA has been released, and I once again have the pleasure of letting you know what new features are on offer and what the game is all about.

The last game was quiet in terms of its new features, but this game has one of the franchise’s biggest updates in years to shout about – female teams. On the positive side of this, the players have all been modelled extremely well and have their own unique dynamics of play. The developers have clearly paid a lot of attention to the female side of the sport in designing this part of the game, and it is good to see that they didn’t simply throw female skins into the already built gameplay.

On the downside however, the female side of the game is minimal, and very much overshadowed by the male games. You could easily not notice the addition if you hadn’t heard that it was there, and this is largely down to the minimal game types on offer with the female teams. There isn’t enough content to offer seasons, manager mode or even ultimate team with female players, and this is disappointing. The quality of the female game is present, but now the FIFA team need to focus on quantity to make it a meaningful and fully recognised addition to their game.

Another new feature in this edition of FIFA is Draft Mode in Ultimate Team. Draft Mode gives you a selection of five players to pick from for each position on your team. These players are generally of the quality that would usually be hard to come by in the standard Ultimate Team game, and so it gives everyone the opportunity to play with a strong side against their random opponents on the internet. Once you have picked your squad your aim is to play and win as many games in a row as possible with them to earn increasingly bigger rewards. If you lose, you are out.

The new mode is great fun to play, especially with the difficult decisions you have to make when you have several strong players to chose from. The massive downside to this mode however is it costs A LOT of in game currency to play. Your first shot at Draft Mode is free, but after that you need a whopping 15,000 coins to enter, or of course you can pay real money as is EA’s standard model. Such a high cost defeats the object of opening up the high quality players to all, and it very much puts you off playing with the new feature. I really enjoyed my shot at Draft Mode, but I don’t want to spend real money nor play nigh on thirty games of Ultimate Team before I can play it again. The decision to lock this game type up in this way just seems, foolish, unfair and tight on the part of EA, and it is a sad sight to see that the game has gone so far in this direction…

There are a few other positives and negatives about FIFA 16, so let’s start with the good stuff. The gameplay feels and therefore looks much more fluid and realistic. The new no-touch dribble system works very well and makes a noticeable difference to gameplay. There is also a more refined user interface than the previous game which makes it easier to find what you are looking for and to get around. The game also looks great on next gen. This is my first transition to FIFA on the Xbox One, and I am very impressed. The player models still aren’t quite up to PES standards, but the game as a whole looks impressive and beautiful, and that just adds to the experience of play. On the other side of the coin, the only other real negative I could find was slow and buggy online play. This was not a problem my end, as other games have been playing perfectly fluidly, but this is the sort of issue which EA will no doubt already be looking at fixing.

For the largest part though, FIFA 16 sticks to the already proven and working model of its predecessors. It is very enjoyable and competitive and does justice to the sport on which it is based. Going on the new features of the game alone then, the female teams have been a great addition, and there is a lot of room for growth in this area for the next game. The Ultimate Team Draft Mode is a really good idea but locking players out as it does certainly loses the game as a whole points. Fluid gameplay enhanced by the no-touch dribble gameplay is strong, the updated user interface and the look of the game each get a thumbs up too, but the online gameplay needs a little technical attention. Another good addition to the FIFA franchise but one which works better as a base to improve upon for the next game than it does in its own right, FIFA 16 is a great transition game that will quench your thirst until the next one.

The Good:

• The addition of female squads to the game has been a positive decision which a lot of careful work has gone into creating the dynamics of.
• Ultimate Team Draft Mode adds another exciting gameplay option.
• More fluid gameplay, in part thanks to the new no-touch dribble system.
• A refined user interface makes it easier to get around the game.
• Beautiful graphics on next gen.

The Bad:

• The female side of the game is limited and overshadowed by the men’s.
• Ultimate Team Draft Mode locks players out with high costs to play.
• Online gameplay is buggy and needs some technical attention.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.