FIFA 15 is another solid entry into the franchise and a game that does what the FIFA series does best – recreate the magic of spectacular football. Goalkeepers are more lifelike, but skilled players can still outwit them. There are just enough tactical options for you to indulge your inner geek, but ultimately the focus is on the gameplay itself. The Ultimate Team mode is a nice option where you can create your own star team. It isn’t the most detailed or realistic football simulation on the market, but it’s definitely the most fun. If you’re a football fan, you can’t go wrong with FIFA 15.

In the past, FIFA has produced many realistic, incredible graphics of players faces but some were not as good. With the technology available to them now, they are able to scan the player faces and produce them in graphic form and also in 3D. Over 200 faces from the 2013/14 Premier League season will be scanned as well as the recently promoted teams. They use the latest 3D scanning to capture a player’s likeness and make them the most realistic they can possibly be.



Fifa has announced so many new features some of which are minor changes but your will notice it while playing the game for the first time, like ball hitting the corner flags, cross bar/goal post shaking after a cracking shoot hit the post, players shirts getting muddy/dirty as the match wores on and players reacting to bad challenges, last minute goals and stuff like that. Which is pretty cool but has very short lifespan on the game. The major changes include all 20 premier league clubs licensed in FIFA 15 with 20 premier league clubs made exclusively to FIFA which will give career mode a new life. Over 200 faces of premier league players will be scanned and produced in the game and the screenshots suggest incredible likeness to real life counter parts.

Thanks to a new wrinkle added to the physics engine, FIFA 15 is filled with these instances. It's called Correct Contacts, and it should be the model for all sports video games moving forward. I've never played a more physically realistic sports game; the slides, the tackles, missed and made saves and seemingly inconsequential collisions are all lifelike. Just when you think there's going to be a body pass-through, the physics engine recognizes the contact and the player reacts accordingly. Take a look at this goal and follow along with all of the physical man-to-man contact, and you'll see. With the goalkeeper physics and A.I also redone, it's awesome to watch how Correct Contacts and the new keeper system work together. That's the technical stuff. More simplistically, the gameplay is just fun. That's especially the case when you're controlling one of the elite players in the game. Lionel Messi is a wizard—as he should be—in the game.

In every FIFA review to date I have always said that you should buy the current version if you don’t own the others, but for the first time I am unable to make this recommendation. If you don’t own a Vita FIFA and are looking for some portable football action then I strongly suggest you pick up FIFA 14, or even Football Manager Classic 2014 if you are after a more strategic management simulation. If the latest kits are that important to you and you have another system then I’d recommend buying it for that, as I cannot justify this purchase for you. With the removal of the multiplayer you cannot even say that first time FIFA buyers should pick up this version. Previous FIFA games on Vita are cheaper and have online. EA would have created less anger by not releasing this at all.