Here we are, another year another FIFA… Wait a minute, just had a sense of de ja vu…. Whenever the time comes upon for a new FIFA to release, I’m always apprehensive as to whether to buy the game or not. I get the same feeling with the Football Manager series as well, it’s almost like, how much can they update and improve the game, what can they surely improve on? One of these is FUT Draft, a new mode within the Ultimate Team area that incorporates deck-building and card-collecting elements with football management and of course playing football. Within Draft you assemble a squad of top players from choices that are provided and then try to guide them successfully through a series of matches with the aim of winning various rewards that can be used in regular Ultimate Team.
I’ve always found the fantasy football of FUT too gimmicky and an unnecessary distraction from the main simulation, but I’ve found myself drawn to it more this year and the Draft mode is fun as it allows you to mess around with different combinations of elite players that would usually be difficult to have in your team. So how much to play this incredible game mode you ask? Well it costs 15,000 coins or 300 Fifa points, you can play it online or offline for the same price. Sounds steep but if or when you win you can inquire 2 mega packs, an all gold player pack and a premium gold pack which can contain little gems or in my case, absolute crap. Apart from that FUT has not changed, although the TOTW players have a new look which I absolutely love.
The menu has has a colour revamp and works well, no lag, in game sound has a fresh new soundtrack which will get boring after a few months I promise but its new FIFA guys and girls…who cares. More skillful players appear to have slightly greater control over the ball. Rotate the left stick and you can really see David Silva shift the position of the ball with the outside of his boot. Defenders also move more realistically and are less likely to win the ball in the air if they turn their back on it, meaning positioning is crucial to dealing with danger. Sometimes it’s better to drop off and protect the space than challenge for every single ball.
Players might be more agile now but they also deal with danger more pragmatically, taking the safe option when in doubt and clearing a ball into touch rather than risking it falling to an opposition player in a dangerous area. More emphasis has been placed this year on the physical part of the game. Nowhere is this more apparent than when trying to defend. Defending is no longer about timing the push of the tackle (B) button, but more about getting your player in the way. In fact, pressing the B button should be almost entirely avoided now, lest you mistime it and end up leaving your player stranded while the opponent runs on by. I can understand where EA Sports are going with this idea, and the physics behind the system are solid, but for me it just doesn’t work.
Face to face defending becomes almost impossible. Perhaps if player switching worked in the way you anticipate it should work then the defending system would be so bad, but to me player switching is a mystery in FIFA 16. I’ve tried automatic, air ball only and fully manual switching, and in every setting the player switching seems to be completely random. The game thinks you want to switch to a certain player when really you wanted a different one entirely, even when trying to switch player using the right stick and moving it in the direction of the player you wanted to switch to. Not to mention that the selected player indicator is so small that it’s hard to tell which player IS selected and, as mentioned earlier, having the trainer indicator lag behind player switching just adds further to the headache. This, combined with the new defending controls, results in a lot of frustrating matches where you end up throwing away a perfectly good lead.
