It's an annual ritual for football fans - ditch the copy of Fifa you've been playing for the better part of a year, and upgrade to the latest version. But is the latest instalment, Fifa 15, actually any good? Reviews seem to indicate that it could be the worst-rated main Fifa game since Fifa 08, before the series really shot into the mainstream. Fifa 15 currently sits at Metacritic scores of 81 and 84 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions respectively, although those are not likely to be the final tallies.
My FIFA 11 and 12 managerial careers was marked with strong strikers from central Africa and nippy wingers from South America, so being hampered to the few countries in FIFA's Global Scouting Network is a tad perplexing. On top of that, the entire scouting process feels laboured and the entire managerial mode feels largely stale, a byproduct of EA's intense focus on the FIFA Ultimate Team mode.
With FIFA 15 Ultimate Team, EA finally drops any pretense about what it’s mobile football game is supposed to be. In the transfer-crazed world of top level football, real life is getting more and more like Ultimate Team mode all the time, so we may as well just embrace that. FIFA 15 Ultimate Team starts you with a team of bronze-level players and tasks you with improving your team so you can hang with some of the best clubs in the world.
As well as this, the in-game UI gets a complete overhaul to appear just like it does in the Premier League broadcasts including upcoming matches, line ups and highlights. We cannot help but feel that this is EA rubbing the competitions nose in it that they have what is seen as the world's biggest league exclusively. It will be interesting to see if they apply the same to La Liga or Serie A etc next year.
This may seem superficial, but in a lot of important ways—its music, language, representation, and sense of joy—FIFA 15 is a more cosmopolitan and worldly sports game.
