Jordan Mason

Review of FIFA 15                   

FIFA 15 is in purely technical terms, stunningly impressive. The player models, though a little top heavy, have taken another huge stride towards photorealism, and the renewed match atmosphere effects - team sheets being read out, player emotions, licensed stadiums, authentic terrace chants, to name but a few - combine to create a real wow factor for the first few games you play.

This is, lest we forget, the first fully-fledged next-gen release for the series, and you sense EA has decided the best way to catapult the series forward is to lob the proverbial kitchen sink into our living rooms, cramming in two or three years' worth of updates all in one go.

The new features and improvements are too numerous to describe comprehensively. But the overwhelming impression is of the enormous amount of care taken by a team that has a fan's appreciation of the game. While this may be authenticity only in the sense that it replicates the matchday experience as invented by Sky in 1992. Slot in a few games of FIFA between Super Sunday matches and the transition is seamless.

But can you remember what the crowd looked like on PES5? Or how realistic the grass looked on FIFA 10? It seems strange that sport games are so often sold on their appearance when, unlike almost any other genre, its target audience has such a clear idea of the real-life experience the game is trying to recreate. Consider how many gamers will have kicked a football compared to firing a gun. Then think about how far we still seem to be defining from how a football game should feel to play.

FIFA 15's game engine is so different to last year that it lends the impression not just of development teams working completely independently of each other, but also of a series sorely lacking this sense clear sense of direction or identity. What should a football game be like? "Different to last year" seems to be the only answer at the moment.

Overall, I think FIFA 15 is the best virtual football game made to date, due to updated characteristics, new movement engines and updated goalkeeper behaviour.