FIFA 17 - Standard Edition (PS4)

Product Information

Another year, another FIFA review, although this time around, there's actually a reasonable amount of new stuff to talk about without having dig deep into the finer - and frankly quite boring - technicalities of tweaked gameplay mechanics. It’s sentimental, but appropriately so – football fans seem especially prone to outbursts of emotion, from full-blown weeping at relegations to misty-eyed reminiscences of “the good old days”. Especially for teams such as Barcelona or Arsenal, where passing forms part of their tactical DNA in real life, you can now string together larger number of passes with confidence without fear of an opponent relying purely on dribbling to attain glory. In one game, I played – if you’ll pardon my arrogance – an absolute blinder and bagged a hat-trick, but my team lost.

FIFA 17 (2016) | PS4 Game | Push Square FIFA 17 (2016) | PS4 Game | Push Square

Here we are three years later, and FIFA 17 is trying to recapture that visual leap by moving to the Frostbite engine, which is now the basis for almost all of publisher EA's properties. But they haven't, rather than fix the issues that have been annoying total football lovers since 12, they decided to try a distraction technique which, while at the moment seems to be working.During one narrow victory, I quite deliberately played the ball off a defender to earn a corner and relieve some of the pressure my team had been under; the manager’s comments after the game chided me for conceding possession.

FIFA 17 Review - IGN FIFA 17 Review - IGN

This year's FIFA is a change from the last and has taken some getting used to, but it's all for the better so far and I've not even touched the Journey mode yet! Essentially, The Journey is Player Career, except you're playing as a preset character with a voice and personality. This really is Fifa 101, but for new and fair weather players simply getting one touch of the ball and flying down the pitch with spring held down doesn’t equal goals and gold star performances. At the most basic point, The Journey is simply a career mode with some fancy acting and a simple story.If you only want the players that will actually climb to the heady heights of super, super stardom (in the game at least) then four players have a potential of 90, the aforementioned Alli, Ousmane Dembele from Dortmund, Renato Junior from Bayern or Anthony Martial from Manchester United. Hunter's grandfather is former English striker Jim Hunter, who scored 22 goals in the 1968–69 season. Almost all the best players, including those making a living for themselves in eSports, say to avoid sprint unless you really need it. Hunter’s more impressed by his achievements on the pitch than what they earn him off it, and there’s a particularly lovely moment where he gets his first full start and experiences a sudden rush of nervous pride at the realisation that he’s going to kick off the game.

FIFA 17 – PlayStation Controls – FIFPlay FIFA 17 – PlayStation Controls – FIFPlay

EA Sports attempts to take the sting out of that by having AI players occasionally make glaring mistakes, but the result is that the quality of the opposition veers from Barcelona to Barnet and back again in the space of a minute. Certain attributes affect everything from power to curve of the ball, so don’t try and curl the ball with a low curve rating (bring up your player’s stats at any time by holding R2/RT). Instead, play it safe until your player rating is eight or above, and elect to play for a smaller team in the bottom half of the league.

The last time Song 2 was in a FIFA game, David Beckham was on the cover and indoor matches were the main appeal. There’s a new FUT Champions mode, too, which tasks you with scoring enough points to qualify for a weekend league, success in which can earn you in-game prizes.

Fifa 17 tips and tricks | TechRadar Fifa 17 tips and tricks | TechRadar

Don’t aim to try out for a top tier Premier League club such as Man City or Man Utd as you’re going to be competing with some of the best players in the world to make the first team. It’s unintuitive and frankly a step down from Fifa 16’s well established system, but that doesn’t mean you can’t master this unruly beast. Another huge problem is that the goalkeeper is not defending at all, no matter what button I press he just stops and watch the ball going into the goal. Elsewhere, there’s such a sprawl of modes and features that it’s impossible to cover them all in detail - suffice to say that FIFA gets more comprehensive and overwhelming every year.Contrarily, PES is like a fiery independent singer, with minimal flash but much deeper soul where it counts most.