FIFA 17 - Standard Edition (PS4)

Product Information

If you've bought the Starter Pack, any Contract Cards will come with a 45 game counter that will deplete every time you have a match. Likewise, progressing far enough in cup competitions will probably bring in enough money to improve your club's financial outlook. As an annual release, it can be tough to imagine how FIFA will continue to keep itself at the top of the table. If there's but one real complaint that we can launch at FIFA 17, it's that the commentary is in serious need of a revamp. Tellingly, I found commentator Martin Tyler repeat his assertion that you don’t need to dominate the ball to win a game after every other game I played.

FIFA 17 Release Date Details - Electronic Arts FIFA 17 Release Date Details - Electronic Arts

I too had misgivings about The Journey – FIFA 17’s name for the story mode – when EA first announced it. While jostling with a defender, I found myself losing points for apparently conceding possession three times, but wasn’t rewarded for regaining it as I finally sprinted clear. It’s a valuable message for any youngsters playing the game, espousing the need for hard work to succeed.

Some are for the better (and some are for the worse), but one of the biggest changes is the way corners have been changed. You can just simulate these if you like, but getting top marks is often easier just by doing it yourself. It makes things much more realistic, but you’ll have to get used to getting knocked off the ball a lot more than in previous versions of FIFA. They might be difficult to win possession from, but they’re often easy to exploit with more direct play. Stepping into the goal-scoring shoes of talented teenage cockney Alex Hunter, you'll forge the young blood's legacy as he makes his way from playing football in the park to hammering home last minute winners in cup finals.

FIFA 17 - Wikipedia

Online play is as important as anything in a football game, and my experience so far has been steady. 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. Timothy Fosu-Mensah has a bright future ahead of him, breaking into Manchester United's first-team alongside fellow youth talent Marcus Rashford under the watchful eye of the flat-faced Louis Van Gaal last season. So rather than chasing Messi or Ronaldo, drop down a tier and collect together players with OVR between 78 and 85. A green line between two players signifies a great partnership, yellow a less effective one and red represents a poor combo.

Naturally, most of them look like grumpy older geezers, but it's a welcome addition nonetheless, and it means that you don't appear totally out of place next to existing Premier League coaches, who, by the way, are now fully modelled in-game. It was released in September 2016 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. In corners, you can now assign the corner kick to the game's AI and instead take control of a player in the box, giving you greater control of position and allowing you to set up for a header. 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.

FIFA 17 - Metacritic FIFA 17 - Metacritic

Penalties are given for the slightest touch in the box, and yellow (and red) cards are handed out seemingly for challenges that shouldn’t even warrant a stop in play. For FIFA 17, EA has switched engines to Frostbite and while this could have signalled huge change on the pitch, it doesn’t. During the finals of the 2009 youth football tournament between two young teams, one of which features Hunter and his best friend, Gareth Walker, after a penalty shoot-out in which either Hunter or Walker scores the winning penalty kick and the championship, a scout remarks about Alex Hunter's talent to Jim Hunter.

Small touches, but they come together to create a footie sim that anyone can pick up and learn, which has always been one of FIFA's greatest strengths. To pull one off, you first need to get yourself into the 18-yard box, then when you think you've got a clear path to the goal, hold down Circle or B to power up your shot. The post-match interviews, for instance, seem like they'd be a perfect fit for Career, both as a player and as a manager.