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Gameplay

FIFA has always been more of a tiki-taka game compared to Konami’s Pro-Evolution Soccer, where short, quick passes were superior to long balls, regardless of the quality of players you had. In last year’s game, crossing felt obsolete compared to driven passes or just cutting inside and shooting. Crossing has been revamped this year to make things more dangerous, and aerial duels in general feel more competitive. Defending is as rewarding as ever. Whether you pull off that perfectly timed slide tackle or you fly in to give someone the James McLean treatment, it feels great, even if it does earn you a yellow card. Shooting at long distance was extremely satisfying and suspiciously likely to result in a goal for players and AI alike when the game launched, but goalkeepers were tweaked in the first title update to fix the issue.

Presentation

Since the introduction of the Frostbite Engine last year, EA has been focused on bringing the atmosphere in-game to life. FIFA 18 improves on last year, crowds applause when you find a man in open space and loudly sigh when you misplace a simple forward pass. When you score, the crowd closest to you pile towards the edge of the stands. Although you still get the odd identical crowd member side-by-side, it feels like a far less common occurrence than in previous iterations. The animations of the top players are better than ever. The Ronaldos, Hazards and Sanchezes of the world look picture-perfect as they cut inside to smash the ball past your helpless goalkeeper and any dodgy collision physics that came with the Frostbite Engine last year seem to have been fixed.

FIFA can be criticised for its lack of stadiums. Although all twenty Premier League grounds are modelled and seven from the Football league, outside of England, the best you’ll find is five from the Bundesliga and a miserable two from La Liga Santander.

Career Mode

FIFA’s career mode, despite being my favourite game mode, has always felt a little lacklustre and disconnected, with everything happening through menus, emails and messages that haven’t changed in four years. However, some things have changed. You can now make bids while the transfer window is closed, so you can sneak that key deal under the radar in November and have him ready to go in January. Now, you no longer make bids on a single screen. Instead you play a mix of a mini game and a cutscene, first involving a meeting with the manager of the club you want to buy from. Where you argue over transfer fee, sell on clauses and buy out clauses. If you successfully agree a deal without the other manager walking out, you then move on to a meeting with the player and his agent. You agree squad role, wages and bonuses for appearances.

The whole thing can be a little bit uncanny valley, as there’s no audio and not that many variants of agent, so you may see a recurring face in your first three negotiations. It is a good effort to make the Career mode feel more alive, even if most of the interaction is still through the aforementioned emails.

Ultimate Team

Ultimate team returns to be the time- and money-sink of many a FIFA player. The meta-game has hardly changed since the mode’s introduction, but this year the addition of daily and weekly challenges helps to keep the coins ticking over and may help more players avoid the temptation to spend real world money to get the upper hand.

The new mode Squad Battles allows you to play against other players squads offline against AI, although I doubt you’ll ever struggle to find an online match, regardless of what platform you’re playing on.

The Journey

Most of the production onus has gone into the Journey. The story mode, although not something I enjoyed in last years edition, is growing on me. Alex Hunter returns to his parent club before seeking a move away from the Premier League to bigger and better things. It’s a mode that plays quite differently to Ultimate team and Career mode, complete will performances from the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Cristiano Ronaldo, and provides a welcome change of pace while still boiling down to playing FIFA. The Journey may keep those who feel the series was stale coming back for more.

I will always hold that the best stories you get in a sports game are the stories you make yourself, whether it’s scoring that last-minute winner in Ultimate team to seal promotion, or it’s taking Ireland to a World Cup final in Career Mode. That for me is where games like FIFA 18 shine. With the improvements to presentation an overall more enjoyable gameplay, those moments will feel better then ever.