With arguably the greatest sporting event in the world just weeks away, Betfair have kindly sent Tech on the Go a copy of Electronic Art’s new FIFA videogame to review.
The World Cup is upon us again and this time, it will be hosted by arguably the most well known international football team, Brazil.
Even if Brazil are not the powerhouse they once were with Ronaldo and other football legends, they are still favorites to win the tournament.
EA Sports has released their standalone edition of the FIFA World Cup Brazil and it looks to be another enjoyable experience, without the grind or realism FIFA 14 brought to the table and dropped down a notch on the quality to keep it running on Xbox 360 and PS3.
The game modes on FIFA World Cup Brazil are what we would expect, a FIFA World Cup where the player chooses their team and fights it through the group stages into the finals, there is also a Road to World Cup where the player can follow the team from the qualifying stages into the finals.
Other game modes include Captain Your Country, where the player will take control of one to four players on a team and lead that team to victory in the World Cup. Story of Qualifying and Story of Finals both put the player in a challenge matchup, where they need to change the outcome of a game in a set amount of time.
Gameplay definitely feels more arcady than FIFA 14, the defense physics are not imported from the annual title and we are missing some of the features that make FIFA 14 more realistic and precise.
That being said, we do not mind the arcade nature of FIFA World Cup Brazil, hardcore fans of the franchise may feel they are being cheesed because it is a standalone title and shouldn’t be taken seriously, but by not taking it seriously it offers a new informal play style, where scoring 10 goals is not unlikely.
Difficulty and challenge are still available in FIFA World Cup Brazil, winning the cup as Brazil might not be hard task, but bumping the difficulty level up and playing as Zimbabwe might create a different type of game style, in order to make sure the better teams don’t score.
EA Sports has added a few new goal and celebration interactions, including managers and scenes from the home country, watching on the big screen. This sort of immersion is ruined by the poor quality on the crowd, but it is still nice to see more than one scene after a goal.
The immersion factor is taking outside of the game, with a Radio Talk Show on the menu. This is quite annoying in our experience, but for players really into football and the World Cup it might add valuable depth to the game.
EA Sports has littered this title with screens, getting into a game cannot just be one click away, first it will show teams in form and then the Talk Show screen, both taking two seconds to load. It just makes jumping into a game quickly a hard task.
Servers appear to work fine, although the amount of actual multiplayer is surprisingly small. EA Sports should really think about adding World Cup multiplayer, where 32 players can join in a cup and battle it out against one another for the title.
Overall, FIFA World Cup Brazil is a surprisingly fun experience, loading times and graphical quality might be poor, but the gameplay is exciting and less about realism, more about scoring as many goals as possible in the ninety minutes, something a more casual football fan will approve.
>> Buy the FiFa World Cup game from Amazon for the Xbox 360 or the PS3 from £32.00
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