FIFA 14 News – New Features

FIFA 14 is just around the corner looking to maintain the incredible success of the FIFA franchise over the past two decades. FIFA International Soccer started it all in 1993 and now twenty years later the world eagerly anticipates the latest installment in the popular series.

So what does FIFA 14 have in store for fans?

On the playing side Electronic Arts is giving us four new systems to get to grips with concerning actual gameplay:

Pure Shot
Protect the Ball
Real Ball Physics
Teammate Intelligence

On the management side of things career mode is being bolstered thanks to the innovative new scouting system in development:

Global Scouting Network

The Global scouting network will use a new system designed to cut down on interruptions and ultimately allow you to locate, acquire and train up promising talent that can one day grace your first team for a fraction of the cost of buying established world class players.

Gameplay

Pure Shot will enable the player to take realist shots at goal for the first time. The system is married to the other update – Real Ball physics and the two will work in tandem to make this possible.

EA are looking to eliminate the problems of FIFA 13 that suffered from players feet sliding, making scissor motions and stuttering all before taking a shot that wasn’t timed to the animation.

Now new animations will work in conjunction with the two new systems to deliver smart physics based shots that recreate the power blasters and finesse shots smashed into the net every weekend around the world.

What’s good enough for Messi, Rooney and co will now be good enough IN FIFA 14.

What this means is that players will move into position to take shots so that they hit their stride in perfect time and can then get full power and accurate timing behind the shot.

If a player is receiving a sloppy ball; one that’s under hit into their path or hit too strong so that it forces them wide of goal and their run trajectory, you can still take that instant snapshot, but you’ll find that the shot will suffer diminished accuracy and power. Although this could be overridden by the ability of the player – so Messi can bang them in from all angles and distances.

The new ball physics will make the above possible, so from FIFA 14 on you’ll get that real sense of weight, speed and power when you connect with a strike perfectly. Expect dipping volleys, slowly rising long range drives and floating spinning lob shots.

We’ve been assured that wind resistance and turbulence will also play a part, although how that will manifest in the game we’re currently unsure of.

The whole point of these updates is to capture the feeling of emotion in real football when you catch the shot just right and you see the ball nestle in the back of the net.

Emotion has little to do with the next update – Protect the Ball. This is all about ball retention a la Barcelona! Many games postulate about ball possession, but few deliver as the computer and human opponents still find it too easy to dispossess you from the ball.

Well, Protect the Ball will address this issue and the team at EA Canada have been on the ball as it were since the previous version trying to get this right.

Anybody who regularly watches European football; Champions League or Europa League will be familiar with the modern style of football and how important ball retention is for setting or dictating the tempo of a game. Barcelona play it to the nth degree, but more and more sides around Europe and the world are trying to get back to midfield domination.

EA plan to achieve this by allowing players to block off other players and their advances, as well as move in front of defenders whilst running with the ball. This latter movement is designed to deter the frustrating arm pull that many defenders perform on your player whilst you’re trying to get away.

Players with the ball will also now have the ability to step into opposing players in a bid to hold them off while they pick a pass. You’ll also see strikers jostling for position at corners and throw-ins, so that they can create space before receiving the ball with which they can then turn and shoot.

Not much is being revealed yet about the final new system – Teammate Intelligence, suffice to say it will be an improvement that ultimately affects defence and attack most acutely.

Defenders will judge defensive moves and tackles with split second timing and strikers will check their runs, by running along the line and hanging back on the shoulders of defenders to avoid offside decisions.

GIF: The funniest yet most disturbing FIFA 14 glitch you’ll see

Given the amount of detail that goes into games these days, there’s always bound to be a glitch or two but we never expectedto see one as funny, yet at the same time as disturbing, as this.

The game has only been out a few weeks so owners of FIFA ’14 are probably too busy making their way through career modes, familiarising themselves with the new moves and trying to force their friends into embarrassing FIFA apologies to notice, but it seems as if one helluva glitch has made its way into the most popular football game on the planet.

The good folks at 101 Great Goals happened upon a technical glitch in which a player (who appears to be Gareth Bale) is not only stopped by the goalkeeper, but pinned to the ground and dry-humped fairly aggressively until the ‘keeper gets the ball into his hands.

If you happen to have been offended by what you’ve seen above, you’re not the only one; just look at the reaction of the number five in the black and white shirt when he sees what’s going on.

There’ll be a few red faces in the EA Sports technical department over this one, we’d wager.

PES 2014 Review

PES 2014 is an odd beast, a strange hybrid of its straightforward arcade roots and the ever-growing complexity o
f the FIFA series. In some respects, this complexity is warranted; never has a PES gamelooked quite as realistic as 2014 does. And for the most part, it plays well too. But that realism comes at a price. For all the flashy animations and physics tweaks that have been added, some of what makes a game of PES so direct and so much fun has been lost. This is very much a case of two steps forward, one step back.

That much is clear as soon as you start passing the ball around. Where PES has always been about snappy passing and a feeling of direct control over players, 2014 adopts some of the automated nature of FIFA, but without the technical prowess to back it up. A lot of it is down to some lousy AI implementation, which means that passes often don't go to the player you want, because the game seemingly thinks it knows better than you. Then there's the addition of sloppy first touches, which theoretically offer a more realistic representation of how players perform in the real world, but leads to frustration when all that stands between you and a world-class strike is a well-placed pass.

Knocking down some of the assist settings helps to alleviate the messy AI somewhat, and if you're particularly dextrous, you can control players off the ball to. But the inconsistent AI rears its ugly head again when you're trying to set up goals, with players making runs down the pitch in all the wrong places, or failing to chase down the ball when you need them too. These frustrating moments aren't frequent enough to ruin the experience entirely, but when you find yourself yearning for another bash at last year's game, clearly something has gone awry.

When it does all come together, though, PES 2014 can be a wonderful thing. Zipping down the right wing to launch a well-placed cross, or ducking through the midfield with a killer through ball, is nicely fast-paced and, at times, edge-of-your-seat thrilling. Finishing those manoeuvres remains as tight as ever, with a real feeling of control as you expertly blast a shot past the keeper and into the top corner of the net. The excellent jockeying and tactical positioning in defence, the dribbling system, and the shot modifiers all make a welcome return, too, with improved player-contact animations seeing players fight for the ball--and lose it--in a much more compelling way than before.

Tying the on-pitch action together is the much-lauded Fox engine, which is also powering the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V. PES 2014 certainly looks a little sharper than previous PES games, but don't expect a huge graphical overhaul here. Instead, the focus is on player emotions, with new facial animations resulting in some uncanny representations of joy, despair, and frustration as keepers are beaten, posts are hit, and offsides render a once-beautiful goal meaningless. Sadly, the frame rate takes quite a hit during these moments, as well as during match buildup and replays, which is incredibly jarring against the otherwise smooth play on the pitch.

There's another emotionally charged feature in PES 2014 called Heart, which tracks and displays players' emotional states and changes their performance based on elements like how many shots they make on target or how much the crowd is getting behind the team. So, for example, if you're playing away, the lack of a home crowd to cheer the team on means they perform worse than at home. Unfortunately, it's tough to tell the difference between an emotionally uplifted team and one that's down in the dumps, making Heart a firm idea, but not an essential mechanic.

Elsewhere, PES 2014 remains way behind FIFA in terms of online and offline modes, as well as its overall presentation. Many of the modes remain unchanged from last year, including officially licensed tournaments such as the UEFA Champions League and South American Copa Libertadores tournaments. The new addition is League mode, although it too remains largely unchanged from the version in 2012. (It was not included in PES 13.) Master League Online and Become a Legend do see some tweaks, including the ability to pick from three different playable leagues in MLO, each with a different attacking and defending style, and the option to play as a keeper in Become a Legend and bark orders at your team from afar.

The objective in MLO has switched from trying to create a profit to concentrating on building the best team with a fixed budget. Other tweaks include the ability to manage national and international squads in the Master League, as well as use players created in Become a Legend in online matches. None of these tweaks make these dated modes any more compelling, and they absolutely pale in comparison to the likes of FIFA's huge online leagues, EA Sports Football Club, and Ultimate Team. In a feature that has been a long time coming, you can at least now play in full 11-vs.-11 matches online.

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