FIFA 17 - Standard Edition (PS4)

Fifa has really developed into an amazing game over the years. Although many didn't enjoy Fifa 16, I personally found it to be one of the best versions of the game to date. With Fifa 17 I have struggled a bit (as we usually do within the first few months!) Below I will break the game down into different areas. Overall Gameplay - In Fifa 17 we are introduced to the Frostbite engine and you can definitely feel the difference in gameplay to previous years. They bring a lot more to life and the players look more realistic (well some of them). A few things I have noticed is the increase in delayed passes and shots, mainly online which can be frustrating when you are one on one with the GK and he recovers the ball! Also they've changed the penalty, free kick and corner kicks so you'll definitely want to get in ours of practice as its not as easy as it used to be to score, especially with the shooting as you can be surprised at how soft or strong your shot may be - at the moment most goals I concede are on the counter and its the same type of finesse shots lol. Graphics As mentioned above EA have given FIFA the Frostbite engine treatment which other games such as battlefield use and it really makes a difference. I must say I really enjoy how realistic some of the players now look, especially my home team Manchester United. I'm yet to use the face scanner but from seeing friends who have used it, its really accurate but you need the FIFA 17 app to take your picture. Game Modes - The Journey: In the Journey we follow the story of Alex Hunter, a 17 year old boy who's Grandfather was a legend at Man United and he's now following in his footsteps. In the new mode you play 1 full season which requires you to play through trials, choose one of the 20 Premier League teams and then during the season go away to the Championship for a Loan before coming back to your chosen team. I won't ruin the end but some things I've noticed are that the social media tweets can be quite repetitive and after a while you stop being told to achieve certain targets and to avoid getting subbed you need to at least score an average of 7.0. Even if you get subbed sometimes your team can still win like 3-0 with 5 minutes to go lol. I hope EA doesn't make us wait another year to continue this story and they release an update or DLC to continue the rest of Alex's journey. Once complete you review an Alex Hunter card for your FUT team so make sure you train hard and get a high rating. Career Mode The career mode in FIFA 17 now allows you to choose how your manager will look from a range of faces and ethnic backgrounds. You also have more tartgets which can be spread over a few seasons including shirt sales, club revenue and profit to name a few. I've only played a few games but it seems to be quite exciting at the moment. FUT FUT is back once again and to be honest this year is my first time playing it. I enjoy the mode and there's loads of squad building challenges and a new mode called FUT Champions where the mid week aim is to win 4 games in a row to qualify for the weekend tournament. Should you qualify and do really well you will have the opportunity to win some mega packs and lots of coins which will go a long way to helping you boost up your squad. Be warned! This is very tough as you are playing some of the best players in your region but its worth the effort if you qualify. Overall In conclusion FIFA 17 is a great game that builds upon its previous and offers a new exciting challenge. Some aspects that still need to be upgraded over the year for me are definitely the response in passes, shooting etc and an extension of Extra time as sometimes its finished within 10 seconds even though you have 5 minutes. Otherwise I will give FIFA 17 8.5/10

Great pury

I have been into FIFA for years now, always eagerly awaiting the next edition in the series to take my own squad online to play against others. This year was no different and although there haven't been many big changes to the game announced, it really does feel like an upgrade over its predecessor. The introduction of the Frostbite engine is the first noticeable change. I admit I'm enjoying playing the game on this engine as it feels more fluent and natural on the pitch, however it is not without its flaws. The game has its fair share of glitches, mostly comical, which involve characters finding themselves in very comical situations indeed. Mostly it isn't game breaking though and can usually be laughed off. The ultimate team returns again and with the introduction of squad building challenges which provide you with unique rewards such as untradable rare players, it adds more depth to your experience. The Journey is something that EA have been advertising a lot in the build up to its release however it really isn't living up to the hype and after a short while you really just want to race to the end to get your trophy and move on to other game modes. Overall it's a brilliant game which you can easily spend hours on. Definitely would recommend.

I'm not a fan of football games............But the new Story mode 'The Journey' might just change that! I am one of those people who buy Fifa every single year hoping that this is the year that EA will include a feature that will stop me from selling the game a week after launch, but thanks to the lack of features and generic football simualted gameplay we are acustomed too, I have ended up selling each fifa game a week after launch for the past 5 years. Each year after going through the skills games and playing a few pro club matches online with friends, I would found that I had no real desire to continue playing, its already bad enough Im not a hardcore fan but the lack of features and unique modes like 5v5, 3v3 or elimintation etc made these games even more difficult to carry on playing. BUT THANKFULLY THIS YEAR EA FINALLY LISTENED TO THE FANS and included a indepth, enlighting and very well done story mode called 'THE JOURNEY' that follows a promising and very talented young player into the world of professional football. You get to train before matches, build a moral with your manager to get more time on the pitch, get to choose from a range of sponosrship deals and endorsments but before anything like every professional player today, you start or end your journey by showing your worth in the exit trials which ultimately determines whether clubs will give you a chance or not, you get to choose your most important dialogue options and create a firery or chilled persona for your character that may work for or against your career. How you perform in training; in games; and what you say all determines how the story unfolds for your character alex hunter. Another point is you get the option before every match to either control the whole team or to only use the main character (I love that option). My main and only real gripe with this game is how your performance can sometimes have no affect on the progression of the story, I scored 11 goals in my first 5 games in the premiership (not including the other 7 i scored with other players) and those acheivements were not really taken into consideration once targets were met. In each game your manager gives you 3 tasks to acheive during the game, which are normally to play well, score 1 goal and to either win or stop the opponents from scoring anymore goals, 15 games later and I havent failed a task yet and still was only rewarded with attributes and experience, my amazing acheievements on the pitch were underminded and your opponents difficulty can change randomly during a match for plot convince. I think everyone will agree that if I am scoring 2-3 goals each match as well as assisting goals, I dont feel I should be getting treated like i havent scored anything but I have to admit that once I was transfered to a championship team, my performance was dually noted and was treated like a superstar, and this made me realise that maybe this is a realistic and factual representation of the business, but it is a point I must make as I feel many gamers like myself who play other types of games like RPG'S, FPS's and fighters that arent huge football fans will be quicker to judge and stop playing as this is a new feature EA are exploring with their sports games but many of their customers have seens this done before and accomplished better. I would personally have liked my performance to better impact the story as I was doing above and beyond what I was asked too, because it seems like spectacular performance is not recognised or over looked once you meet your requirements, the game takes no notice of anything else beyond certain points, but besides that I very happy with this game. There has never been a better time to get into fifa, with female teams, a good story mode, improved character motion physics and less input delay, I dont think there has ever been a better time to dive into fifa, so if you like football in any capacity and you're dilberating whther try the game out, I would defiently suggest giving it a try, there is finally enough content and unique features to give you busy, I can almsot guarntee there is at least one mode or feature that will keep you entertained for a while and if you are a huge fan of the sport and you dont own ths game yet, then I truly dont understand what you are waiting for.

I love this game already. It has solved a conundrum for many years now in FIFA: the fact that shielding was either OP or pointless and that for some bizzare reason, more power on your shots meant more height. In 2016, EA has finally solved this, you now have the abilty to shield the ball effectively with a target man to build up play and wait for supporting runs, meaning there will be more variety in the online gameplay, rather than everyone just playing ultra agressive and pressing high. It is finally possible to keep the ball now. Also, double tapping shoot finally gives you a low driven shot I've wanted since I started playing FIFA as a kid on '04. Ultimate Team is better than ever too, with hopefully the death to coin sellers, FUT Champions. EA is finally rewarding those who choose to get good at the game! Also considering it's the first year of the Frostbite engine, I have to give props to EA for developing as solid a game as they have. Being faced with a new engine ain't easy folks. PES is really good too, but FIFA wins because of the game modes and it's just so damn pretty. Superficial yes, but football is supposed to be so. Essential if you love FIFA.

There haven't been any games before that I've started to play and instantly hated. This is a first. Last year was the first time I'd ventured away from FIFA since 2011 because they kept spitting out the same game with no improvements to the game play. I bought the game expecting big things, the frostbite engine was the selling point. It took 45 minutes to download the day 1 patch, I guess it's because everyone was trying at the same time. Anyway once I sat through that and spent 5 minutes going through the various screens I was finally chucked into the charity shield game, I played for a few game minutes and thought it felt disjointed and laggy so I quit out of that and went into the menus. Everything was incredibly slow, the transitions between screens, the loading between screens, never had this issue on any game before where it looked like it was going in slow motion. I redeemed my code for the FUT packs in the playstation store and then went into FUT to start my FUT journey once more. I had the same super slow motion transition issue between screens. Massively infuriating. Anyway lets fast forward as I am rambling, got my team, formation etc setup and went into the first game against the computer in a tournament, needed a gold pack to help sort out my team as my "prize" player was Tom Huddlestone who is slower than the game itself! Having played PES2017 I had a benchmark that I was comparing it to, which might be a biased view because if you've not played PES then you have no benchmark other than previous Fifa games. It was again horrible to play, passing was limp, control on all players was abysmal, including Eden Hazard (loanee) got to around 40 minutes in the game and decided I'd had enough, it was driving me insane and no game has ever done that to me after 5 minutes of actual game play, even No Man's Sky entertained me for an hour before I binned it off. Sorry EA this is a big fail.

I pre ordered fifa 17 and was happy to see i had received a prime membership discount as well as the pre order bonus of 5 draft packs and some kits for ultimate team. The game play looks very good and much more lifelike than previous fifa games with player movement and physics of the game runs very well on the new frostbite engine used by the battlefield franchise. If you are an experienced fifa player you may struggle to adapt to this new style of play but as with every fifa each year if you put in the hours of playing you will get used to it and learn to love the game as everyone does each year. The introduction of squad builder challenges is a great addition to ultimate team and provides a way to make use of all the unwanted players usually discarded. However the specifications for specific players has effected the market where low rated players who usually wouldnt sell on the market are becoming extinct or costing their maximum allowable price which makes some challenges not worth it in terms of the outlay of coins compared to the reward provided.

I got back in to FIFA with 14 when I first bought my PS4 and really enjoyed it. Then along came FIFA15 and I suddenly found myself losing games by 4+ goals. Fine, a quick online search gave enough tips for me to change my game around and I was able to float around divisions 3-5 most of the time (yeah, I'm not great at it!). I decided to skip FIFA16 completely but I missed it so pre-ordered FIFA17 so my comparison is with FIFA15. The graphics have certainly improved and I can see the game play has slowed down quite a bit, allowing a more realistic passing game IMO. I'm going through all the skill games again to try and get up to speed but there are some serious niggles that bother me: Lag. I know it's not my connection. I'm more than capable of monitoring the quality of my link. Nothing else is affected. It means that I get booted from games and during some games (about 25-50%), the game play stutters so badly, it is impossible to get any flow going. Set pieces. Corners and penalties in particular. The former don't play realistically and the latter are much more difficult now. Players doing stupid things. I've scored two own goals by a defender from six yards where they just clattered the ball in with no attempt to control it. I've never seen a player do this outfield which is annoying. Animations. Goalkeepers diving for balls sometimes look really awkward (like they have a broom handle up their jacksy). Talking of keepers, they seem to make the most ridiculous saves, sometimes making 3 or 4 on the bounce at different sides of the goal. Additions. Journey mode? What a half baked idea. Perhaps it is because I only play online seasons so this mode doesn't really attract me but I don't really get it. Sadly, I buy FIFA for the 'realism' of the stadiums and teams but I think I'll wait until release next year and compare FIFA18 with PES and possibly jump ship. Just not enough really this year to justify another £40. If the stuttering turns out to be teething issues, I might hopefully get a more enjoyable experience shortly but I'm not holding my breath. EA don't appear to be the most responsive company to their customer's complaints.