Five years is forever – a FIFA 14 review

Imagine you’re watching a clash between bitter rivals on TV, let’s say it’s the Seattle Sounders against that other team from Portland of which I don’t remember the name.

Mauro Rosales currently has the ball on the right: he tries to send it forward to Obafemi Martins, but a defender gets to it first. He messes with the first touch though, and the ball slips away. It’s Martins taking advantage of that: the Nigerian forward sprints towards the goal line, no-one being able to catch up with him. He sends in a cross which Eddie Johnson can’t reach by an inch or two, but there’s Brad Evans on the far post. The man from Phoenix strikes a perfect first-time shot that flies past Ricketts and goes in into the top corner where the keeper cannot reach it. It’s a goal for the Sounders! Hooray!

Imagine the stadium going berserk: it’s still early in the match, but the Sounders’ fans have just witnessed one of the most beautiful goals that could ever grace the Cascadia Clash. Wait, this hasn’t happened for real… Unfortunately, this is just a videogame.

One nil to the Sounders! This is definitely a good way to start a Cascadia Clash.

There’s a line, in a famous song by American hard rock band Guns n’ Roses, which says “Five years is forever”. It’s even more than forever when we talk about technology: what was cutting edge five years ago, is now on its way to retirement. Think about the so-called “current-gen consoles”. Well, they’ve never been cutting-edge have they?
There’s a game, though, released shortly before their launch and being also very well received back then, which (spoiler alert!) has aged way better than the consoles themselves. And this game’s name is FIFA 14.
Now, let’s take a step back and let’s see what I thought of the game when it got released for PC, five years ago:

“As soon as I finish a match in this demo I find myself wanting to play another. It’s kind of addictive. Need to get a retail copy of this as soon as I can.”
ale85bg about the FIFA 14 PC demo – Evo-Web, september 2013

“Finally slower, and you actually have to think before you do if you want to succeed. Well done, EA!”
ale85bg about the FIFA 14 PC demo – FIFA forums, october 2013

“I played this game so much in the last three days to the extent my hands are about to drop from the wrists.”
ale85bg about FIFA 14 PC – Evo-Web, october 2013

You see, I was already loving it (I’ll be talking about the PC version in this review but I can ensure that the Xbox One version is almost as good on the pitch and, of course, even better graphically): a very good gameplay, hundreds of teams, several modes to choose from… Not even the first patch (which added a little speed to the otherwise perfect game pace) managed to make me love it less.

FIFA 14 was a game which, after not liking FIFA 13 that much, I had been looking forward to big time, and it was definitely living up to the expectations.

Online seasons and tournaments among friends were a tough testing bench when I started playing it, and so were the co-op seasons, but they all soon became obsolete. All I wanted to play was FUT.
Countless were the early wake-ups in the morning to buy items that I would sell during the evening for profit, profit which I would then invest in building my “ultimate” team. Whether a team made of silver Dutch, Danish and Italian players (all with perfect chemistry, mind you) could be called “ultimate” is up for discussion, of course:

Ultimate? Well, not really. It for sure played well though... Look at that Palladino!

So far so good? Not really. After climbing through the lower divisions where matches were often too easy, suddenly instead of the enjoyment I started feeling a huge frustration. Upon reaching Division 4, I had already found myself fighting against hordes of doppelgangers fielding the same starting XI, playing the same style of football… Heck, even relying on the same exploits!
People using custom set-piece tactics which would allow them to completely block your keeper from leaving his line, laser-guided seventy-metre through balls straight from kick-off which would find the striker all alone against the keeper, manually causing lag, disconnecting when they were behind and giving you a loss. I was on the verge of letting it all go.

All the support I had from the forums back then were a bunch of “git gud or get rekt”, but there was a piece of advice that would drastically improve my enjoyment of the game: a fellow member told me to “go play Borussia Dortmund at World Class or Legendary, and come back online only when you manage to consistently defeat them”.

Fed up of losing time after time after time against people pressing the Hell out of me and continuously sending long balls to pacey strikers, I decided to follow that advice. To my surprise, I noticed that Dortmund played exactly as the average online user, they were different from any other AI-controlled team I had faced before. Out of curiosity, I started playing against different teams, of different leagues, and I saw that several of them actually had different playstyles. It was refreshing. Ironically enough, while EA were trying to suck the players into an ever-online, ever-connected experience, what saved FIFA 14 from the trash can were those offline matches.

Now that the FIFA 14 servers have closed for good and the offline modes are all we’re left to play with, it’s time to see what FIFA 14 still has to offer…

And it’s still pretty much. Bear with me as we find it out.

You can play an offline friendly with the team you’re supporting against their bitter rivals, or a random match, or maybe you can decide to play some Be a Pro.
You can’t access the 2014 World Cup content anymore on PC unfortunately (as it was FUT-only), but friendlies between the 31 World Cup contenders plus Italy (let’s face it, we were never going to be World Cup contenders even if our players actually were in Brazil) can still be played in the current-gen version of the game. Most of the teams competing in the 2014 World Cup will also sport updated kits for the occasion (I’m not sure about Bosnia though, as they seem to have their old one in the 2014 World Cup game).

And there’s still the Manager Career mode which, while not being as deep as the ones you’d see in FIFA Manager, still provides its fair share of fun provided that you put in some commitment. A good thing about it is the revamped scouting system, which is dubbed the ‘Global Transfer Network’: now you wouldn’t want to go out one morning and shop for players yourself, you’d rather want to send out a scout to a specific area looking for players you may find interesting and to report his findings back to you. A bad thing is that a feature that I loved of previous versions of the game (choosing the unlucky company that would become my sponsor for the season) isn’t here anymore.

This is FIFA 11: I'm sure Megan would've been glad to help us also this year...
Now, thanks to you, she won't be able to anymore.

As I already said, the best thing you’ll notice is that teams do really play differently from each other. This is the main advantage FIFA 14 still has over the games that came after it.

I’ve played a couple of matches as the Sounders against their bitter rivals, Portland (during one of which I recorded the goal you’ve seen at the beginning of this review), and I often saw the much hated Timbers go down the flanks and cross it in for a header, putting my centre-backs at risk each and every time.
Borussia Dortmund (the deadliest team I’ve faced till now) will gegenpress you like no tomorrow then try to get the ball upfront to Lewandowski with a through ball (possibly lofted) as soon as they have the chance, Barcelona would try to walk the ball into the net with short passes while other teams will dribble more (despite dribbling hardly really being AI’s attacking method of choice).
You shouldn’t expect each and every team in the game to have its own custom tactics of course: it’s most likely based on templates and the result is that you’ll find some teams which will feel very similar to each other, but during a career you’ll certainly see different teams having different behaviours (and that will help you not grow bored after three or four seasons, that’s for sure).

The same can’t really be said about the players. While you can probably tell, looking at their playstyle, a Dani Alves from a Raimondi (Raimondi has been Atalanta’s right back for years for the record, and you don’t really expect me to explain who Dani Alves is do you?) you wouldn’t really be able to tell a Raimondi from almost any other Italian right back.
Some players do stand out a little more, like Lewandowski for example, but I had the impression that the “average” players could really be swapped with each other and little-to-no difference would be noticed. Also, in some occasions these average players just wouldn’t do what you’d expect from them: I saw Antenucci (a forward then playing for Ternana, a Serie B team) go berserk and dribble past three of my Tenerife defenders in a way that would make Messi proud, for example, or Pelizzoli (Pescara’s keeper) pull a couple of superhuman saves against me once.

Apart from these (rare, I must say) occasions, FIFA 14 plays a good, credible football on the pitch. My main gripe with it (yeah, I’m grumpy) is that, being tackles too easy to perform and being the referees a little too much on the “lenient” side, you won’t see many free kicks or penalties. It is interesting to say that the matches I played for this review averaged between two and three fouls per side in the entire match (6 minutes per half, World Class difficulty. I won’t touch Legendary for now).
When I say “tackles are easy”, I definitely mean it. Not only sliding tackles are a little too easy, there’s even more: standing tackles are almost automatic. I’ve experienced it several times: getting close enough to the ball carrier, my player would often stick his leg out and try to recover the ball no-matter-what, without me having to press the “standing tackle” button.
Other than that, shots feel good and passes feel proper. This game doesn’t have the “driven pass” modifier yet as it got added only in FIFA 16 but passes are, all in all, powerful enough to travel from a side of the pitch to the other pretty comfortably (and you can adjust pass speed to your liking with sliders, anyway).
Keepers also look and feel credible, at times better than they are in more recent FIFA games despite EA bragging about “reworked goalkeepers that now play way better” in FIFA 15. They often react better than their FIFA 15 counterparts, and (despite EA stating that they’re less advanced) they still can pull off some spectacular saves like the more recent ones do. Near post goals like there’s no tomorrow in FIFA 15, anyone? You’d hardly see any of those in FIFA 14.

Off the pitch, things are mixed. While the current-gen version of FIFA 14 (the first iteration of the game based on the Ignite engine) lets you dive deep into a proper match experience, with cutscenes replaying previous goals and with a crowd that’s way more alive for example, the old-gen version of the game doesn’t shine as much.
Sometimes things can get a little dull, and we don’t have the chance to see cutscenes of the fans or of previous plays when the ball goes out. Cutscenes with the fans and the managers were present in the 2010 FIFA World Cup game for PS3 though, so I really can’t give a valid reason for EA not to keep them also in FIFA games released after that.

The game suffers from a small number of graphical glitches on some PCs too, like black skies during substitution cutscenes (no, it doesn’t happen only during the night) and goal-nets that in certain occasions (night and/or rainy, anyway it looks like it’s something happening when floodlights are on) become messy during replays.

Really, EA? Black skies at midday? Since 2010? You must be kidding me...

Despite the flaws (that any modern game has), there’s a thing that makes the PC version sit a step or two above all the others and it’s modding. Pretty much everyone knows Rinaldo and his tools (File Master, DB Master, UGC Master, and Creation Master which is the “sum” of them all): with them you can already do a lot of things, like adding licensed goalkeeper kits to the teams that have a generic one (Atalanta, I’m looking at you) or correct fake team names.
Have you grown tired of playing against V. Barcelos? You can turn it into Gil Vicente and add correct logos and kits for them. Are you a Morecambe fan but it hurts that your team doesn’t have a keeper kit? No problem! Thanks to people like Moswell, Michellima82, Emiliano Videla, Luca77 and many others you can really add any kit you want into the game.

That's true: Morecambe's 2013/14 GK kit is this good. And now you can have it.

Even more, have you ever imagined playing a fully licensed Serie B in FIFA? There’s a patch for that (thank you from the bottom of my heart, FIFAmania team, you lot will be missed by many). Have you ever wanted your team to play with different shorts if the default ones share the colour with the ones of the opposition, or your keeper to wear a different shirt if the default one clashes with the opponents’ kit? Now you can. There’s a lot of (fairly easy, to be honest) lua code to write if you want those things to happen automatically (basically you must tell the game “my team should use a different shirt when they play team X, team Y and team Z away from home” and it’s a line of code for every time your team should switch a kit), but it can be made thanks to Revolution Mod.
Have you ever wanted to have specific adboards for each team? Or more venues to play into? Yes, we can.

Atlético Madrid using their alternate shorts, playing against a fully-licensed Empoli? This could happen, thanks to modding.

What else can I say about this game? Even if the match experience is nowhere near the one you’d be greeted with in the Xbox One version of the game and it’s not as polished as FIFA 16, it’s in my opinion still the best FIFA to date. And if you’re a TL:DR person, here’s the good, the meh and the ugly for you to read:

THE GOOD

• Teams play differently from each other, this will help you run a Career Mode longer.
• The football portrayed by this game is definitely good.
• FUT (and the frustration attached to it) has disappeared from the game for good.
• Modding lets you turn this game into pretty much everything you want it to be. No, dinosaurs and dog-heads are not allowed here, sorry.

THE MEH

• Some attacking techniques (like lofted through balls and crosses) seem to work way more than they should.
• A couple of features present in previous EA Sports games (for example cutscenes with managers) have been removed for no reason.
• Tackling is too easy and referees are a little too lenient: you’ll hardly see matches with plenty of fouls.

THE UGLY

• The game has some graphical glitches that are there since 2010 at least.
• Sometimes players seem to go into hero mode and do something that they shouldn’t be able to do (making you feel somehow cheated).
• On the other hand, your players will at times look and feel weaker, kinda complacent, especially after a good run of results.

Score: 8.5/10

In my opinion, this is still the best FIFA game to date. Play it on PC and you’ll have modding, play it on Xbox One or PS4 and you’ll have the Ignite engine with all its bells and whistles. Either way, it’ll be a fun and pleasant experience.
Now that the online modes have been discontinued, this game is really showing its best side letting you have a varied and rewarding experience (even more if you train yourself to use manual controls, a thing I haven’t yet fully mastered myself). There must be a reason if this is the game with the most hours played I have in my library (currently approaching the ‘2000’ mark for the PC version, and counting) and the reason is that this game offers moments of pure brilliance, well-tailored into a solid overall gameplay.