Introduction:
So after many months of playing Fifa 17, I thought I would pop in and give an honest and totally unbiased review of this game, for my structure of the review I will start off with positives of the game (what it does right) and then work onto the negatives (what it does wrong), I will then give a personal opinion on the game followed by what they could have done to improve it, and finally I'll bullet point the positive and negative points, I plan to keep this review short as I can and directly to the point (Perhaps If I do this maybe EA will stumble upon this review, I doubt it though, there is the pity).
Positives -
It often seems like with every release of a new Fifa game we are treated to minor changes and bare noticeable graphic changes, to EA's credit with Fifa 17 the game had adopted an entire new Engine and this I do believe has added an overall better look on the graphics and it has added a new dimension the in-game physics.
The gameplay seems more fluent and responsive, Fifa 16 was a step in the wrong direction with it's very slow and methodical approach, Fifa 17 allows attacking players to flourish to an extent (If the momentum is in their favor).
The addition to a story mode for Fifa is long overdue and greatly received, whilst it may be a tad too short and linear of a storyline, this still gives us hope for the future and it's a new direction for Fifa which will hopefully continue, but with a higher level of detail and choice making.
The addition of new leagues, albeit this may not be the league/s that everyone wishes to have in the game It still gives people that are from other countries a chance to play as their home team, and finally the addition of some new player faces and adding in small little fine details such as tattoos and hair changes, whilst these are minuscule changes, these are still something which I'm sure everyone appreciates.
Negative -
Just a heads up, this will be likely a very long list.
Competitive scene, the lack of the competitive scene is utterly blatant, Fifa 17 and the recent games before it simply do not truly have a competitive nature, by this I mean what you're likely already thinking, call it what you want... scripting, momentum, chemistry, or whatever else meets the description, simply put, having these types of elements in a game which is meant to be competitive, it removes that level of skill of who is better and essentially puts the game on a roll of the dice, this is not what a pro/competitive game is like.
So off the bat, EA have clearly taken Fifa away from its original roots many years ago where it was a game which requires skill, tactics, and good workup play to win/score goals, this is a sad fact which cannot be denied, to further prove my point even pro Fifa players have slated Fifa for being basically a spin the wheel type of game.
Lack of changes to career mode, It's simply just not enough! I've heard some argue that you can't have the Fifa Manager element with Fifa 17, but I disagree, Fifa can have two elements to its career mode, one being a dumbed down mode which is basically as it is right now and the other being a more complex refined one where there are many more complicated decisions and processes to tackle such as financial decisions, promotion of youth, dealing with harder questions in press conferences, and so on the length of complexity of a career mode is infinite sadly EA are being lazy.
Lack of stadiums and player faces, EA have added new leagues, yet they don't add stadiums and the player faces to go along with it, this makes absolutely no sense to me, for example Rangers and Celtic have been in Fifa for many years, yet never have they had their league added to the game, Fifa is a game which never bothers with other leagues It is blatantly biased towards it's favouring to the BPL, I'd love to see them dispute this because they have little excuse for it, it's a clear case of laziness and selfish behaviour not caring about others.
Terrible player creation, the player creation tool is dreadful, It hasn't changed in many years all the generic/vanilla faces are just abysmal, whilst most of the time you won't notice this It still comes a moment when you have to look at the awful generic player faces that EA have kept for so many years.
Lack of MOD;s, they completely took them away, this relates to the above point, the only countermeasure we had to the awful player creation was by relying on talented users to put in the player faces which we were so badly missing, but yet again EA show their true side and remove a great feature.
Personal Opinion:
Whilst I enjoy the game in spells, very small playing spells, I cannot ignore the many problems the game has and I'm left pining for the years of when Fifa was truly based on skill, the best player wins and it's not a spin of the dice whilst having a game that is reliant on skill is a harsh pill to swallow for players who aren't as good as their opponent, It at the very least lets them know they need to improve on something, Fifa 17 leaves you in confusion and many times It's the game that is giving you the hard end of the stick oppose to you being the problem.
I feel like the change of engine was great, the graphics looked great from doing this and the gameplay was much better, but like said before the bad outweighs the good.
With that said the things I believe that would improve the game would be the following -
- Return to a truly competitive scene
- Have the option to monitor the momentum swing, give us an option/chance to bring it into the green
- Have the option of a pure competitive scenario, and a game which has many variables, which it is obvious... Fifa clearly has many variables which are being denied by very unprofessional figures, honesty goes a long way, after all, we're the ones buying your game, don't B.S. us
- Addition of highly in-depth career mode
- Included MOD support
Now with that, all said I will finally recap with the negatives and positives in bullet points, If you've read this far I thank you for doing so.
Positive Points -
- Improved Graphics
- Improved Engine
- Some new player faces
- Story mode added
Negative Points -
- Lack of options
- Mod support removed
- Competitive play not true
- Career mode still lacking/linear
- Not much addition to the player faces and stadiums
- Customization tools are still very generic