I’ve played FIFA games casually and sporadically over the years, but within an hour of playing FIFA 14 on the PS4 I felt I was playing the best soccer game I had every played, on any platform. I’m not nearly of the hardcore ilk that many of FIFA’s annual buyers are, giving me a less credible angle to compare the PS4 version to the current-gen and last year’s versions too, not to mention PES. Still, I can recognize a great game when I play one, and given that FIFA 14 on PS4 is just as feature-rich as the current gen version, minus a tournament mode, it’s evident that EA Sports has done an impressive job with bringing FIFA to next-gen.
Let’s start with the basics. The installation process is practically transparent. The game loads up within seconds and you find yourself dropped into a FC Barcelona vs Real Madrid match, two of the most popular teams in the world. If you press the Option button, you can pause the game, but the full game won’t be accessible for a few more minutes as it installs in the background. Part of the pause screen menu shows you this is happening, and you will also get notified when the installation is complete. You can continue playing your match even after the installation is complete, or head to the very busy, but well organized Home screen from which players have numerous directions to go, be they customization options or one of many available game modes. One small gripe I noticed — every time you start the game, you have to select your language (in the case of English, you just have to press X), but the game won’t proceed with loading until you clear the language selection screen.
A quick word on the Dualshock4 features — the Touchpad itself isn’t used, but you can press the entire Touchpad down as a button to switch camera angles from your default camera view to End-to-End view. It’s a bit jarring to do so, and the first time I did was an accident. In the Be A Pro modes, according to the in-game control reference, pressing the Touchpad will switch you to the Goalkeeper, too. Other than that, I didn’t discover any differences in terms of available controls with this controller as would otherwise also be found with the Xbox 360 controller or Dualshock3.
With the next-gen sports games, EA Sports is also utilizing a new engine known as Ignite. The purpose of Ignite is not just physics or just animations, instead, it’s improvements in those as well as the AI’s ability to think on the fly and behave more like humans. Animations capabilities are said to be much improved and varied, something I definitely noticed and will touch on later. Furthermore, the online experience is supposed to be more robust. I didn’t experience any technical issues online, which is about all I can say to that. Other features for the PS4/X1 version that were provided by EA include AI that is more prone to avoiding unnecessary collisions, such as for those of us who tend to spam the slide tackle. Slide tackling, even on Semi-Pro skill, proved to be nigh uneffective in situations where it didn’t really make sound sense to use it. In other words, staying in front of your opponent and attempting standing tackles is a more realistic and productive approach. New shot and pass types are now possible with next-gen hardware as well, and, interestingly, multiple players can contest a ball in the air simultaneously whereas before, that wasn’t possible. Honestly, I don’t play the FIFA games enough year to year to be able to be able to account and speak to all of these new features.
That said, for the casual soccer gamer, myself included, the wealth of modes and features of FIFA 14 is more than you’ll ever use. For the more hardcore, likely including most of the 400-500 players online (a number I would see routinely when testing online functionality), all of these modes and features are going to be more interesting. That EA was able to include all of these for a launch title — except for tournament mode which is oddly omitted – isn’t a given, as the Wii U version of FIFA 13 was a significantly trimmed down version compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3 release. Anyway, FIFA also has an integral online component that pulls data from the EA servers for miscellaneous updates, including online Cups, Weekly Matches, and Ultimate Team updates. Players also earn experience and level up by playing, and these points are always visible in the menu in the upper right hand corner next to your favorite team’s logo and your ID. The points, called FCCs (Football Club Credits) can be used in the Catalogue to purchase dozens of different items, including new shoes, historical jerseys, additional goal celebration animations, online match bonuses (perks that give you +1 to your passing for example), a free pass on getting a draw in your season, and a variety of other things.
The wealth of features and modes I’ve referred to includes hundreds of licensed teams, dozens of licensed leagues, a create a player mode, career mode where you can be either a manager or player, online seasons mode with Friends that supports up to 11 vs 11, detailed squad editing, online friendlies, Ultimate Team, skills games, and more. The skills games are great for getting a handle on the mechanics and controls, which took more effort than I anticipated. The challenges go from the most basic dribbling into much more demanding skills, and within each skill game are three different levels, bronze through gold. Speaking of skills, you can view a detailed breakdown of the numerous Skill Moves from the menu; these include a star rating based on difficulty to execute, rated from two to five. As for team editing and player creation, I haven’t done anything with these modes, but I did step through all of the options. Within the options, you can tweak all kinds of settings to better suit your playing style. I thought it was pretty interesting that the penalty for handballs was disabled by default, on a side note. I left that as is, but increased Player 1’s sprint and acceleration from 50 to 55, and decreased my pass error a few points, too. Separately, you can adjust the CPU’s values on these and lots of other criteria, such as injury frequency.
Regardless of the mode of play you choose, expect an excellent presentation. Load times are brief, Martin Tyler and Alan Smith do a great job with the commentary, and the player animations are impressively diverse and fluid. I had the unusual circumstance of seeing a goalie and his teammate run into each other and the defender was upended by the goalie who was running and reaching down for the loose ball. It was pretty funny because it resulted in an own goal, but the animation of handling this type of unusual collision was surprisingly good. The keeper even through his hands out to his sides after the ball rolled past the goal line in that sort of “seriously!?” type of expression of disbelief. Far more common animations, such as passing, standing and sliding tackles, and shots on goal all looked great and natural, but there were two things I noted that didn’t quite look right. First, a CPU player executed an insane bicycle kick and the transition animation from the player jogging to leaping directly into the bicyle kick simply didn’t look natural, in realtime or in replay. Second, as halftime was ending, the bench players all set back down, in perfect unison, with the exact same time and exact same body posture — that’s just not natural. Those minor gripes aside, soccer is a finesse game, and I had not ever seen it captured in a videogame like I did here.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
