![]() ![]() I chose Manchester United as my club and never once cleared the performance rating expected of me. Part of the issue is that the arc of your journey is pre-defined: you are destined to climb the ladder towards being a football great, no matter what the reality of your performance on the pitch. They're also too infrequent, relegated to post-match interviews where the questions and answers quickly start repeating or very occasional moments during cutscenes. The 'Fiery' choices really are total dick things to say, all swagger and braggadocio with none of the fun of Commander Shepard punching people in the face. ![]() Stats bonuses or no, it doesn't feel like you have a lot of room to develop Alex Hunter as a character. Having your manager like you increases the chance of you being on the first team, rather than on the bench in the reserves, which proved useful to me during stretches when my performance on the pitch ought to have seen me sold to Leyton Orient for six packs of Monster Munch Pickled Onion. Followers are important because the more you gain, the more sponsorship deals you accrue, and the more money you make - though why that matters I am not sure, given there's nothing to spend the money on. Your dialogue choices fall into three camps: Fiery, which wins you social media followers, makes your manager dislike you, and makes you sound like a prick Cool, which loses you followers, makes the manager like you, and makes you sound like a sweet young man and Balanced, which sometimes increases followers, sometimes catches your manager's fancy, and sometimes does both. The larger problem is how you interact with the story. It's only a shame that it doesn't put anything else in their place by Christmas it felt as if the plot had dried up, leaving long stretches of nothing but football as per any other mode. The cutscenes are well acted and well voiced but the set-up is pure cliché: your grandfather is a former footballing great your dad is absent, a failed footballer himself, and thus a source of motivation as you attempt to win his approval your best friend is an aspiring footballer whose success goes to his head and your agent looks and sounds as if he's about to sell your soul.ĭespite the sports movie tropes, I found myself rooting for Hunter: there's a warmth to a lot of scenes - the quantity of fistbumps aside - and the game resists most of the seemingly-inevitable dramas signaled by the above. You follow protagonist Alex Hunter from a 17-year-old going through his exit trials at a club of your choice, to battling for a first-team spot, being sent out on loan and through to the end of your first season. The Journey is an effort to lend a little of that personal context to playing on your own. Real football is already as much about storylines as scores, and the best experiences I've ever had with FIFA have been when there were long-running rivalries between me and friends as we sat beside one another in front of the screen. ![]() It's an exciting addition and no doubt compelling even if it's also a bit shit.įIFA isn't the first game to add story to its sports - NBA2k has been doing it for years in the M圜areer mode - but conceptually it's a great way to make the matches in between more interesting. The latest iteration of EA's football giant boasts a new, glossy mode called The Journey in which you take control of Alex Hunter, watch his ascent through his first season in the Premier League in mo-capped cutscenes, and make occasional decisions via a BioWare-style dialogue wheel. Some years a new FIFA game arrives with barely anything to write about bar balance adjustments that might form a monthly patch in many other games. ![]()
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