It might seem crazy to suggest that another gaming season has come to an end so prematurely especially with the release of FIFA 16: World Cup 2014 just a few short weeks ago but with gamings biggest convention, E3, just around the corner, it’s only a matter of time before all eyes turn to the next iteration of the next game in the franchise. This is where they just need a push in order to stretch play a create that defense splitting run, allowing you to play them in, or run into the space they have created by dragging the defenders away. In order to send your players on a run tap the left bumper TWICE (LB or L1). This will cause a nearby player to point forward to where he is heading and proceed to run towards goal.
Another option is a lot less effective and requires a bit more experience to get right consistently. In this position you might not be all alone, but it still wouldn’t be a good idea to move backward due to your advantageous position. If you know a second striker or wing player will be sprinting forward, and you are playing a big center-forward-type player, then you can simply slow down or even stop and shield the ball (left trigger) while you wait for your passing target to get in-line with the defensive line. The focus will be on you as you were the first, and only, player to approach the back line, so you might have a really wide open passing lane to play him through. Again, he’ll be approaching with a lot of speed so he can blow past defenders as well.
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However, when the camera zooms in on players during goal celebrations, the animations are still as awkwardly robotic as ever. Arms continue to pass through players' bodies while they hug each other after a job well done, and their facial expressions are creepily static. It's not a glaring issue, but it's one that has troubled the overall presentation of the FIFA series for as long as I can remember, and a problem that continues to persist in this game. Just the thought of the new Fifa installment is usually enough to make every football fan purr. And with EA’s efforts being fuelled into improving the games dynamism, interaction and presentation, Fifa has successfully used the release of next generation consoles to close the gap between video gaming and reality.
The refs in FIFA 16 are accurate as well. Goodbye Hayden Penny feather, hello Martin Atkinson and Michael Oliver. And the post transfer window rosters are spot on. Other enhancements to gameplay are corner tactics such as ‘near post’ or ‘crowd the keeper’, the ability to control the target player on throw-ins and the addition of the José Mourinho favorite ‘park the bus’ tactic. The ‘keeper can even urge his team up the pitch on goal kicks. The biggest difference, for someone who sinks as much time into Career Mode as myself at least, is the ability to save multiple team sheets. No longer do you have to manually rotate every single player in your starting eleven before every match because they’re still knackered from the one before. Now you can set up a first and a second eleven, or maybe a league team and a cup team.
Each one can have a different formation and tactics, too, so you can have one setup for when on the road to the big boys and one when at home in a must-win six-pointer. My moderate estimations predict the feature should save you at least 10,000 hours over the next 12 months. As I mentioned previously, you only have five training slots per week, so you’ll need to be very selective about who you want to focus your attention on. The game will remember your last training configuration too, enabling you to reload the same schedule from the previous week and run it again. That makes Player Training incredibly quick and easy to manage. Based on our time with it, to see genuine benefits you're going to need to train the same players consistently over a number of weeks, rather than chopping and changing all the time.
There was an instance where I got off a cross that ended up bouncing off the grass, and Kagawa then chose that moment to fly in and dive to head the ball into the net. It was a moment I certainly never witnessed in last year’s game, and it was a special moment of brilliance that did not feel cheap. As always, balance will be key here, but I like a lot of what’s going on in this area of the game so far. I did not talk about shooting very much because goalies are always a little wonky in these early builds. But I would say shooting from distance feels like it will be more important with chances in the box being a bit harder to come by so far.
