Thought I'd post up my thoughts after a couple of hours with the demo.
For those who remember me from the old forums, I was very critical of FIFA15 (and for good reason) and critical of EA as a whole.
But - credit where it's due - this is by far the biggest step forward in creating a more realistic and enjoyable football simulation.
Although I'm a pretty average player, I love football and so get very invested in the game, and will clock up probably 1,000 games or so in a year.
My biggest criticism in prior years, especially of FIFA15 was that - as an older FIFA player (I turn 30 next year) - I felt the game pandered far too much to the teenage market. Ridiculously fast gameplay, completely unrealistic effectiveness of skills, and many other factors which meant FIFA (and FUT, specifically) was an arcade game, and not a simulation.
Although we only have a small demo, and it's not easy to judge the ultimate experience based on offline-only gameplay, I'm very pleased with the improvements that have been made, and am genuinely excited about the full game.
These thoughts are based on playing offline draft, which as a FUT mode, should be reasonably representative of the online FUT gameplay (hopefully).
First things first - PACE. By far the worst thing about FIFA15 was the absolutely ridiculous dominance of pace, as an attribute. This has really been toned down to a level that feels just about right (i.e. pace can be a useful weapon if used sparingly and carefully, but it's absolutely not the main factor). There is not an incredible gulf between a 60 pace defender and a 90 pace attacker when the attacker has the ball at their feet, which is as it should be. You can no longer sprint at 100mph yet remarkably keep total perfect control of the ball.
Secondly, PASSING. What a pleasant difference to FIFA15! Gone are the 360-degree no-scope 60 yard passes with Kyle Walker which rain down on Ibarbo's toe like a homing missile. LB&Y passes frequently go amiss, and clearly will require correct timing and careful control of power to execute correctly.
As a facet of passing - CROSSING. I've seen a lot of comments about heading being "OP" and reminiscent of FIFA14. That's a laugh. All I can say is that these people must have pretty short memories. It's nothing like that. YES, when a cross is delivered to a guy in the box and he has a free header, or jumps taller than the defender, there is a good chance that it's going to result in a goal just like in real life. The difference is that unlike FIFA14, not all crosses drop perfectly onto the striker's head. Better passers of the ball will deliver more accurate crosses more reliably than poor crossers of the ball, so whereas Walcott might deliver 5/10 crosses successfully, Messi might deliver 7-8/10 successfully. No qualms with that.
SKILL MOVES - really pleased to see the effectiveness of these toned right down. FIFA15 was like FIFA street. You really shouldn't be able to travel two-thirds of the pitch using just body feints and roulettes, and thankfully it seems you no longer can! That's not to say you can't beat your man with a well timed skill move - as it should be - but thankfully (like pace) they're now just a weapon in the armoury and not as effective as they were.
SHOOTING definitely feels different - I can't quite put my finger on it just yet in terms of exactly what's changed, just that it's different. I've seen a lot of people say they can't generate any lift on shots and that every shot's a pea-roller - I can't say I've found that. I scored a few goals that rifled into the top corner, but also scored a few placed finesse shots. I've not really attempted many long shots as I never scored them very frequently in prior years so you get into habits of how you play.
Saving my favourite observations for last - DEFENDING is hugely different. The defensive AI both of your own players and that of the opposition is totally different. You actually feel like you can rely on players you are not directly controlling to do things well, like track runners and hold their shape. Very interested to see how this holds up in online play where the opponent is perhaps less predictable.
And finally STAMINA seems to have been massively overhauled. The first few games I played I noticed that after 60-70 minutes, I was often finding players in the red on the stamina gauge after only sprinting for a few seconds. Excellent news if you are going to get penalised for holding down R2 all game. Clearly I use it more than I should (I'm definitely guilty of almost permanently holding sprint whilst OFF the ball, as I have always felt I have to to keep up with the Ibarbo's and Doumbia's of the world, so a bit of a learning curve there for me).
Some more general/rambling observations...
- GK AI seems generally better. Still make random/strange decisions but they seem to deal much better with close-range shots, and in general it feels less predictable whether or not a shot is going to beat the keeper which is good.
- Players seem to hold their runs a LOT better and rarely seem to get caught offside. I played about 10 games I think and rarely remember ever getting caught offside. Perhaps not as realistic as other parts of the game but anything that lets the game flow better is a good thing I think.
- The pushing/pulling seems to have been toned down, there were a few times that I was mashing B to try and prevent an attacker getting goal side of me that in FIFA15 would have resulted in certain free kicks/penalties, but I rarely conceded fouls (i.e. the pulling/pushing not happening rather than it going unpunished)
- Players don't feel as 'unique' as they did before. There doesn't seem to be a lot of discernible difference between lower rated players, however you can definitely feel a difference with some of the top end players.
- In FIFA15 it felt like every pass went like a magnet to someone - whether that was where you aimed it or not, your team mate or not, it always seemed to lock on to someone. Now it seems like you can find little pockets of space, which was nice and led to some different looking gameplay.
- Some nice new first touch animations seem to be added, little flicks and different ways of controlling the ball which added to the variety of build up play.
- The more physical/all round type striker certainly seems like they will be more useful than the pace-only type striker with poor finishing. Of all the games I played, Dzeko was by far the most impressive striker I used, doing everything well.
- I played a few games with 3ATB formations which I thought would be good with more bodies in midfield, but I didn't really like any of them. Bizarrely I always felt like there was no outball trying to play out from defence, so I think 4ATB will be better for me.
- I was a bit disappointed at how easy it was to build almost perfect squads in draft. Almost every game I played had 97-100 chemistry, at one point I could have fielded a whole BBVA team on 100 chemistry which to me defeats the object. It could be that it's just because there are limited players in the demo, but if not, then I think most draft teams will end up just being single league teams which would be a shame.
- A bit disappointed that the commentary basically sounded exactly the same as FIFA15 save for about 1 line in 20 being different. Didn't feel that crowd noise was any different to last year. Again this all could be because there's limited content in the demo to keep the file size down?
- In general clear cut chances were a LOT harder to come by than in FIFA15, which I think is a good thing. I'm hoping there will be more 1-0/2-1/1-1 type games than the 5-4/7-5/4-4 type scorelines you see in FIFA15 regularly. Just feels so much more like real football somehow and not an arcade game.
Phew, think that's about it for my initial observations, of course a lot of whether this translates to an enjoyable full game is assuming that
a) the final build is going to be similar to the demo
b) online plays reasonably similar to offline
c) there aren't several gameplay altering patches
On the bright side, if online does turn into a dispiriting sweat fest, playing the CPU feels like it will be a lot more rewarding than in FIFA15. The improvements to defensive AI and the fact that it's harder to create chances mean that you have to make better decisions to create chances.
EDIT - for the record, I'm not saying everything is perfect by any stretch. There are definitely things that I feel can be improved and are not so great, but there will be 10 negative threads for every 1 positive, so I'm leaving those bits to others :mrgreen:
Oh and one more thing I forgot - one other thing I really like is that it seems harder to dispossess/be dispossessed than before. When attacking, the opposition defenders will stand off you rather than dive in and somehow 'magnet' the ball away like they did before. I felt like it gives you more time on the ball close to goal I thought, so you can be a bit more patient and not have to panic so much in the final third.
Klik om te vergroten...
