There are now two kinds of passes: your old, garden-variety button-tap, which has been made slower, and the Pass with Purpose, essentially a finesse pass (using R1) which fires the ball into to feet with a shinpad-rattling ferocity. Indeed, one of my favourite things about playing FIFA 16 has been how challenging I've found it, particularly for the first few hours.Īpart from the changes to players' relative speeds - all but killing off the through-ball as a cheap source of chances - the biggest change has been to passing, one that represents a more dramatic shift to midfield play than we've seen in a fair few years. While many of these changes seem to contradict gameplay aspects which were fundamental to FIFA 15, they aren't, in and of themselves, negative. Pass with Porpoise allows you to tap into a dolphin-like sonar frequency when spreading play. But with hundreds of hours of my life at stake, each year that optimism becomes just that little bit harder to tap into. I'd like to believe that these guys know what they're doing that the fact that my 92 pace striker won't be able to out-sprint a 42 pace defender for another 12 months is all part of a richer playing experience.

Because, particularly for a FIFA Ultimate Team devotee, the feeling that directionless and seemingly arbitrary changes are being made to the way FIFA plays each year is a troubling one. Which side you take is a question of faith. Alternatively: a perfectly balanced football game simply doesn't exist, and with each corrective redesign EA is orbiting in vain around a non-existent ideal. One: the developers at EA Canada have found the simplest way to make customers feel like their annual purchase is more than just a roster update. The way I see it, there are two possible explanations. But, particularly for someone that's written about each match engine for the last six years, the FIFA feedback loop feels very real. The last five years have seen the series make as much, if not more progress than any similar period in its history.

Availability: Also available on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Fifa 16 pc