FIFA 16 Demo Review

In the FIFA 16 demo, you get to choose from Chelsea FC, Manchester City, Inter and a few others. The women’s teams included in the demo are USA and Germany. EA Sports wastes no time getting you into a game. After the demo finished loading, I was immediately thrown into playing an El Classico match between Barcelona and Real Madrid. After playing the first game, I immediately set up a second game with the women’s team, as I really wanted to test out the new feature added in by EA Sports, during this game I noticed they have added a new feature, which is the vanishing spray, it is almost exactly like real life, taking a few minutes to fade into the pitch and is still there even after the free kick had been taken, a very nice touch from EA Sports.

As always with the game’s opening, Martin Tyler and Alan Smith provide the commentary and it was nice to hear the duo get a little more in depth with some of the players, but this has been one of EA Sport’s cornerstones, so improving the commentary was unsurprising. However I am worried that after a few months after the official game has come out, how many time will we have heard the same facts about the same player? I feel it will be too many times.

As for the graphics – In my honest opinion the graphics have barely changed since FIFA 15, but this only the demo and not the final release of the game, so the graphics may be better on the final release of the game. One thing I did notice though was the cinematics of the game, they looked a lot more sharp and crisp than FIFA 15. On the other hand, player faces look fantastic and much more defined, also the addition of tattoos on the game, makes the game feel just that little bit more realistic, however I have only seen Lionel Messi with a tattoo so I am assuming he is the only player on the game with his real life tattoo. The stadiums, as always, look great and it seems that EA Sports has got the crowd shots appearing more realistic as opposed to the previous robotic movements. Some of the lighting is also better. 

One big improvement that I noticed is the slide-tackle animations.  EA Sports stated that they were trying to improve them so we wouldn’t see so many canned animations. They were correct but the collision detection for the demo is a mess.
 

In conclusion, I enjoyed the demo but there is no question about it that there is still some room for improvement such as the gameplay speed and that there should be a wider variety of stadiums to play in, also there are still some glaring issues with the AI that have still not been addressed.