REVIEW

FIFA 17 Review

by Ford James, October 20th, 2016

It’s often claimed that yearly sports games are no more than simple roster updates. Why would you pay for the same game again when it looks exactly the same as last year? Die hard sports games fans know this isn’t the case most years, but it’s more apparent this year with FIFA 17. The transition to the Frostbite engine, the same foundation used in Star Wars Battlefront and the recent Battlefield instalments, has been implemented and it shows; FIFA 17 looks absolutely gorgeous this time around. From the new lighting effects to the facial animations on players, I’d go as far as to say this is the best looking football game of all time – despite PES 2017 upping the game considerably as well (read our review here).

The Journey is the other huge addition to FIFA 17: the story of Alex Hunter as he and his boyhood friend Gareth Walker make the progression from schoolkids through to Premier League starters. It starts off with the pair at around 10 years old, playing a match for their school while Alex’s family look on then you’re given control of Alex to score the winning penalty at the end of the game. It jumps forward to present day where they’re both 17, having an exit trial at an academy then being offered contracts at Premier League clubs of your choice. Without spoiling the rest, it lasts for one full season, including a few pre-season games.

It feels like so much more could’ve been done with Alex’s story. Playing in games each year, or at each notable age as he goes from primary to secondary school, to college and then to the academy. By the end of The Journey, Alex is still just a boy and it doesn’t feel much like he has reached the end at all. Inspirations from Marcus Rashford’s current career seem prevalent, and as we all know he is nowhere near the end of his career – he’s shaping up to be the best English talent football has seen for years. Taking Alex Hunter through the ranks, to eventually winning the Ballon D’or and World Cup with England would be a fitting route for The Journey to go down but it falls a little flat ending after just one season. Especially since the only ‘reward’ at the end is Hunter’s card for the Ultimate Team mode and a few loan cards.

That’s not to say what they have produced is bad. I used to play a lot of football for my school between the ages of 12 – 16, before video games took over, and the elation conveyed by Alex when he scores the final penalty as a boy, when he’s in his room nervous about his trial at the academy – it reminds me of how I really used to feel, even though I never quite made it to that level. It’s cliché but The Journey really does draw you in quickly and impresses with the cutscenes and writing especially.

Disappointingly, The Journey doesn’t follow suit with the graphical improvements – outside of the actual matches that is. It’s rather pedantic as it’s a football game and it ultimately doesn’t really matter since the actual gameplay will always be considerably more important, but the cutscenes look like they’re pulled straight out of a late PlayStation 2 era game. There’s a severe lack of detail in the environments, and Alex Hunter & co.’s faces could be vastly improved. The same goes for the voice acting; it’s average at best but when it’s poor, such as the interviewer in the post-match interviews, it’s really poor. To say they pushed The Journey so much, you’d expect a little more quality from such a big company such as EA.

When it comes to being on the pitch, FIFA 17 hasn’t changed a whole lot from its predecessor. It’s just as fluid and easy to pick up and play, while the skill ceiling is still incredibly high for those budding FIFA pros. Passing has been improved tenfold, with players making more intelligent runs and latching onto threaded through balls like they’ve all taken stimulants since the release of FIFA 16. Unfortunately, pace seems to have reverted to the importance it used to have. For those who have been playing FIFA for years, you’ll remember just how ridiculous pace as a trait was in FIFA 12, especially in Ultimate Team. 17 takes an unfortunate U-turn back towards those dark days of old, with players like Aubameyang, Sterling and Bellerin being utterly insane.

FIFA 17 The Journey 0-0 ROT V NEW, 1st Half

This means that while the passing is much better, it’s directly countered by the fact that sprinting down the wings and taking heavy touches past full backs is more reliable. Compare it to PES 2017 which has focused wholly on the idea of retaining possession and creating a more realistic system, where one player can’t do absolutely everything as is often the case in FIFA. It feels geared toward attacking, route one football as opposed to methodical, strategic build up play. Offline is a little slower, often due to the AI’s tendency to play incredibly defensively and shield the ball wherever possible on any difficulty higher than professional.

Strength and physicality are now much more valuable traits than ever before, which is one fairly reliable way of shutting down pacey attackers, unless you’re left chasing in which case you can kiss goodbye any idea of catching them. Simply harrying a player with the ball while controlling someone with a higher physicality rating means they’ll easily be dispossessed. Holding down the X/A button to contain when an attacker is running at you is also very consistent, with imposing players holding their ground. As long as you time the standing tackle correctly, tall and solid defenders like Smalling, Zouma and Shawcross will rarely be beaten.

There’s a downside to the introduction of strength being so important: Injuries occur very easily. Every player has turned into a body double of Jack Wilshere, breaking their foot every other game. It’s simply unrealistic and frustrating. Nobody likes to keep a substitution left in every single game for the inevitable injury, even more so in Ultimate Team since it means you’ll need to let the player sit out anywhere between one and five matches, or apply a healing card – some of which sell for extortionate prices on the market due to this introduction of brittle bones.

It goes even further in Ultimate Team too. Since the whole idea of the mode is to build unique squads, the chemistry system means millions of possibilities are available and you can create whatever team you like. An Egyptian league/French national hybrid? By all means, if you can get the players to 10 chemistry each you’re in for a treat. The problem here is with so many players getting injured so regularly, you’re cornered into either spending a lot more coins on substitutes for the bench, or you have to make your second team include a lot of players with the same criteria. In previous games, I’d often have three or four squads with completely different leagues and nationalities and have my other squads on the bench to regain their fitness. This time around, doing that would require two squads with the same criteria just so you don’t lose out on overall chemistry when a player gets injured, as making substitutions in previous Ultimate Team modes was rare.

While passing and strength are two welcome improvements, EA Sports have absolutely butchered penalties. You can now control your run up with the left stick and change your starting position with the right. So you can decide when to stutter the run, what angle to approach the ball from and exactly where to place it. More control to the player, sounds great right? Somehow it isn’t, as it is far too easy to hit the shot wide as you control the run and aim with the left stick, and putting the right amount of power behind the ball requires far too small a window to consistently get it which means you often barely roll the ball forward and the keeper has an easy save. There was nothing wrong whatsoever with the way penalties were taken in previous games, so it’s baffling why they changed it.

Direct free kicks are taken in a similar way. You don’t control the run up, but you can change the positioning and you can add curl to the ball by pushing the left stick as you build up power. Again, there wasn’t anything wrong with free kicks previously but this new system works quite well, it just takes a long time to get used to. You can score some absolute beauties with the new system, such as outside of the foot curlers from 40 yards to the crossbar and in, whereas that was nearly impossible with the old system. Indirect, long range free kicks and corners now provide you with an alternate camera angle. Rather than being directly behind the player, you can take the set pieces from the same camera angle as the rest of the game and you’re provided with a yellow marker you can move which will show just whereabouts the ball is headed. Rather than the power deciding how much weight you put behind the ball, it decides whether the ball is looped up and over, or driven low and hard toward your marker. Got a tall, towering centre back in the middle of the box? Just tap the cross button to drop it onto his head, or vice versa if you have someone shorter waiting at the near post.

Long gone are the days of being able to smash it from range and just hope for the best. Well, you can try but the chances of it flying into the top corner seem a lot less likely. The overall quality of saves made has improved, although chips and finesse shots are very effective in the right circumstances. Players trap the ball a lot more successfully than before, with the stronger players being able to hold up and shield the ball while wingers make overlapping runs. Smaller details like the grass stains down the side of a players’ shirt and the sweat beads rolling down their face in cutscenes show the level of detail the Frostbite engine has enabled compared to previous instalments.

Pro Clubs is still the carnage it’s always been, with the overwhelming majority of players you meet online being incredibly small with a pink afro, the speed of Usain Bolt and the skills of Messi while the normal career mode has had some renovations. Your club objectives are now tailored to whoever you’re managing and you’re given more control other than simply trying to win every game, though that obviously helps. Squad building challenges are an innovative addition to Ultimate Team too, as you often accumulate a lot of useless bronze and silver players over the course of opening packs so this time around you’re given different criteria to hit in a squad. For example, you can only use players from three leagues, or the overall chemistry must be more than 80. You can then trade the squad in for rewards rather than just simply selling them on the market for minimum price.

There’s one big question everyone’s asking this year and that’s whether to buy FIFA or PES. But the answer isn’t quite that simple. They scratch different itches: FIFA is much more enjoyable online compared to PES, but if you’re looking for offline play then the AI and the modes available in PES are a lot better – provided you’re not too fussed about the lack of licenses in the English and German leagues of course. There’s still the odd moment in FIFA 17 where you feel like a goal was unfair, or the ref got the decision wrong with a foul, but they’re few and far between compared to the last few instalments. It’s by no means the perfect football game, but it’s the best FIFA we’ve had since FIFA 12 graced our systems.