FIFA 18 (Console Versions)

Guys, the additions to career mode are breathtaking.

A perfect example of adding a little, wrapping it up in some cosmetic changes and making it look a lot.

Cut scenes for transfer will get irritating, but you can delegate transfer to skip all the fuss which is great.

Problem for me is that for years now CM "improvements" have largely been window dressing that doesn't really deepen the mode. It's nice that they're going all out on the transfer window, but the meat of a career mode is what happens between the windows.

I think defending is a bit awkward. You can let your defenders defend but the AI can be left to pass the ball around your penalty area casually, maybe if there was some more aggression many of those shots wouldn't even happen I feel. But going for the ball is also risky. Maybe I don't know how to defend well in 18 yet.

With the demo I thought even some passes didn't look good, that is the animation didn't match up with how the ball was supposed to be hit, which can up the tempo a lot. Especially one touch passes-shots. Wish every player on the pitch took an extra touch more often. It's as if the game prefers to react fast to a button press/decision to pass/shoot rather than play an animation that makes sense. I would hate it if it's because of online, where people prefer instant reactions to their input. If this is fixed the game will be near perfect.

Those one touch pass/shots are one my biggest annoyances. It's a legacy issue that FIFA is much better at now but it drives me nuts still when you see one of those rapid one-touch 180-turn shot/passes. Looks terrible and horribly unrealistic. And I think you're right - my guess is they're still in the game because so many people demand instant reactions by their players, no matter the context.
 
My comment is that I really enjoyed the 3 matches I played last night on the Origin Access.

There is so much subtlety in this year's FIFA that after playing the samey PES is so refreshing.

Positioning. Feel like I don't have to control all 10 players anymore. The human reactions of see the ball get the ball are there. The defenders gets past the halfway line to meet the forward. Do you know how long I've been waiting for that very fundamental concept to happen in FIFA? On default nonetheless. There is a sense of compressed, building of numbers, on both sides. You know the type of team you are playing if you just take a quick look at their CTT's. I played a heavy crossing team in the Div 3 Bundesliga, and it was true to form, they crossed at every opportunity - but played very narrow defensively. Liverpool plays very wide, and very aggressive, while Everton played down the middle to Sigurdsson and Rooney, but had the backing of Baines to prevent Ritchie from doing anything.

Ball physics. Yes, FIFA has decent ball physics. One little blemish would be the driven passing, but even then it's not terrible. Will be looking at reducing it though as it does "freeze" the defending players. at times. Noticed on short passes, even if overhit, they don't fly out of bounds. However, cross field ball, with a lesser skilled player brings in a lot of risk/reward. The ball doesn't just dip dramatically like in years past though. It floats for a decent amount of time. On manual, the pass speed needs a tad extra holding as I felt like I had underhit some passes, and resorted to using manual through pass as my choice. I used L1 cross a bit, and it was just a floating cross, that really posed no threat. Regular crossing felt fine. Shooting felt good, possibly a tad too floaty in some instances, so a slight bump in shot speed may be needed.

Physicality. You can't just glide by players like last year. There is a strong sense of physical match ups off, and on the ball. The players get in between the ball and player very well. Shielding is more contextual than ever. You no longer see the terrible False9 forward just shield the entire time, and noone able to get the ball off.

Fatigue. I felt like the fatigue kicked in at different times of the match, primarily later of course, but the effect of the fatigue seemed to result in some poor decision making by CPU - or just poor execution. Wide open passes going off the mark, more physicality, less direct passing. Was a very nice touch.

Player ID. Star players stand out. Wijnaldum alone stood out for me the most because of all the things he does in the middle of the pitch. He would distribute the ball as much as he could, but when faced up, he would try to dribble past, or fake me out with his Cruyff turns. On the user side Napoli's Koulibaly was an absolute beast for me. He was so reliable and such a force that I felt so confident in defending with him. He wasn't the fastest player, but his size and strength were sublime. The 3rd div Bundesliga opponent had a stand out, tall, striker, who just held the ball up. Again, not using cliche shielding like FIFA 17, but more so holding the ball to either set someone up. He had a decent shot on him too, but I managed to hold onto the win.

Atmosphere. Incredible reactions from the crowd. You can feel they are truly watching the match. The standout from last night's stream was how the home side of the Div 3 Bundesliga team was cheering on every good tackle, interception and terrible passing by me. It was exactly how real matches sound, it was a brilliant thing. That's what I'm talking about with FIFA's subtlety this year. The pan over to the crowd is also a very nice touch because that just engrosses you even more.

Areas to improve. So far, there doesn't seem a whole lot. However, some stand outs are wonky shooting animations. What is positive is that the CPU chooses to shoot from anywhere - the problem is they shoot a lot, and in some cases the animations don't make sense due to warping and terrible foot planting. The stream I'll post below shows so much of this, and having 25 sim enthusiasts on the stream with me did not let this go unnoticed. I also feel the shooting speed is floaty, and kind of strange at times. Raising shot speed up did show some much better physics, and goalkeeper animations. Speaking of goalkeeper animations, they are still not that good. They stretch out so much, that they forget to shuffle their feet. The best animations I saw was from Reina as he seemed to react more naturally and didn't try to fly with full extension every time. Eitherway, there are a lot of the same animations from 17 in the goalkeeping department. Drilled/driven passing will start to become an eyesore if the defending players don't have time to react, and/or the first touches aren't somewhat altered relevant to the skill level.

Overall. I am completely impressed and dumfounded that this is FIFA. Yes, the frostbite engine still has some rough edges in terms of lighting. However, there is some subtlety to the lighting as well with floodlights shining on the player's face, and you can see the sweat glistening, and or rain for that matter. It makes the close up replays/cutscenes that much better. The ball size is just a hair too small for me, especially after playing PES, but it's not as bad as 17. Like I said though, FIFA isa welcomed change of pace and a breath of fresh air so far. Some of the touches in Career Mode as well will help with being engrossed. I do hope that the areas such as wonky shooting animations can be fixed, but done without breaking the incredible display that is appearing right now.

Here is the twitch stream from last night. Sorry for some audio/video sync issues. My rig may be needing an upgrade soon:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/176806188

Well well well... a positive early impression - who would've thought with all the pessimism and negative early reactions!

Can't wait to hear more Matt. How would you compare the Early Access version to the demo's gameplay?
 
I would love to play both games, but i simply can't handle the differences in controls and gameplay.
It takes me like an hour to adjust my brain to the game i'm playing and since i don't play long sessions it doesn't make much sense to play both. Am i the only one?
 
My comment is that I really enjoyed the 3 matches I played last night on the Origin Access.

There is so much subtlety in this year's FIFA that after playing the samey PES is so refreshing.

Positioning. Feel like I don't have to control all 10 players anymore. The human reactions of see the ball get the ball are there. The defenders gets past the halfway line to meet the forward. Do you know how long I've been waiting for that very fundamental concept to happen in FIFA? On default nonetheless. There is a sense of compressed, building of numbers, on both sides. You know the type of team you are playing if you just take a quick look at their CTT's. I played a heavy crossing team in the Div 3 Bundesliga, and it was true to form, they crossed at every opportunity - but played very narrow defensively. Liverpool plays very wide, and very aggressive, while Everton played down the middle to Sigurdsson and Rooney, but had the backing of Baines to prevent Ritchie from doing anything.

Ball physics. Yes, FIFA has decent ball physics. One little blemish would be the driven passing, but even then it's not terrible. Will be looking at reducing it though as it does "freeze" the defending players. at times. Noticed on short passes, even if overhit, they don't fly out of bounds. However, cross field ball, with a lesser skilled player brings in a lot of risk/reward. The ball doesn't just dip dramatically like in years past though. It floats for a decent amount of time. On manual, the pass speed needs a tad extra holding as I felt like I had underhit some passes, and resorted to using manual through pass as my choice. I used L1 cross a bit, and it was just a floating cross, that really posed no threat. Regular crossing felt fine. Shooting felt good, possibly a tad too floaty in some instances, so a slight bump in shot speed may be needed.

Physicality. You can't just glide by players like last year. There is a strong sense of physical match ups off, and on the ball. The players get in between the ball and player very well. Shielding is more contextual than ever. You no longer see the terrible False9 forward just shield the entire time, and noone able to get the ball off.

Fatigue. I felt like the fatigue kicked in at different times of the match, primarily later of course, but the effect of the fatigue seemed to result in some poor decision making by CPU - or just poor execution. Wide open passes going off the mark, more physicality, less direct passing. Was a very nice touch.

Player ID. Star players stand out. Wijnaldum alone stood out for me the most because of all the things he does in the middle of the pitch. He would distribute the ball as much as he could, but when faced up, he would try to dribble past, or fake me out with his Cruyff turns. On the user side Napoli's Koulibaly was an absolute beast for me. He was so reliable and such a force that I felt so confident in defending with him. He wasn't the fastest player, but his size and strength were sublime. The 3rd div Bundesliga opponent had a stand out, tall, striker, who just held the ball up. Again, not using cliche shielding like FIFA 17, but more so holding the ball to either set someone up. He had a decent shot on him too, but I managed to hold onto the win.

Atmosphere. Incredible reactions from the crowd. You can feel they are truly watching the match. The standout from last night's stream was how the home side of the Div 3 Bundesliga team was cheering on every good tackle, interception and terrible passing by me. It was exactly how real matches sound, it was a brilliant thing. That's what I'm talking about with FIFA's subtlety this year. The pan over to the crowd is also a very nice touch because that just engrosses you even more.

Areas to improve. So far, there doesn't seem a whole lot. However, some stand outs are wonky shooting animations. What is positive is that the CPU chooses to shoot from anywhere - the problem is they shoot a lot, and in some cases the animations don't make sense due to warping and terrible foot planting. The stream I'll post below shows so much of this, and having 25 sim enthusiasts on the stream with me did not let this go unnoticed. I also feel the shooting speed is floaty, and kind of strange at times. Raising shot speed up did show some much better physics, and goalkeeper animations. Speaking of goalkeeper animations, they are still not that good. They stretch out so much, that they forget to shuffle their feet. The best animations I saw was from Reina as he seemed to react more naturally and didn't try to fly with full extension every time. Eitherway, there are a lot of the same animations from 17 in the goalkeeping department. Drilled/driven passing will start to become an eyesore if the defending players don't have time to react, and/or the first touches aren't somewhat altered relevant to the skill level.

Overall. I am completely impressed and dumfounded that this is FIFA. Yes, the frostbite engine still has some rough edges in terms of lighting. However, there is some subtlety to the lighting as well with floodlights shining on the player's face, and you can see the sweat glistening, and or rain for that matter. It makes the close up replays/cutscenes that much better. The ball size is just a hair too small for me, especially after playing PES, but it's not as bad as 17. Like I said though, FIFA isa welcomed change of pace and a breath of fresh air so far. Some of the touches in Career Mode as well will help with being engrossed. I do hope that the areas such as wonky shooting animations can be fixed, but done without breaking the incredible display that is appearing right now.

Here is the twitch stream from last night. Sorry for some audio/video sync issues. My rig may be needing an upgrade soon:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/176806188

Excellent post! :) What kind of settings are you using (level of assistance and difficulty)?
 
I would love to play both games, but i simply can't handle the differences in controls and gameplay.
It takes me like an hour to adjust my brain to the game i'm playing and since i don't play long sessions it doesn't make much sense to play both. Am i the only one?
no I'm the same , I only get maybe a couple of hours per week on average and I can't flip between the two...going from PES to fifa is really difficult as FIFA feels far more methodical but once I get into fifa it feels really good whereas 2 games of PES is enough. I won't keep PES this year , as I've said before if PES is patched and improved I may get it after Xmas when it's 15 quid
 
I played for about four hours last night and was blown away, using Everton I was finding the preseason tournament relatively easy on world class p till the final then got beat, got beat by Stoke first game of the season, lost against Man City, won against Chelsea quite luckily and got hammered 3-0 against Spurs.

Only slider changes I made was dropping my acceleration and top speed to 49.

Seen lots of sliced shots and the physical side is brilliant, if you try a first time headed or volleyed pass under pressure it doesn't reach its target unlike previous years.

Variety of goals I'm seeing is unreal, the presentation feels alive and vibrant, commentary mentions a player that scored in a previous game and lots of little touches.

So far it's one of the best games I've played.
 
Awesome post @Matt10 very encouraging to hear, can't wait to play the game properly on Tuesday when the full version unlocks, will start with The Journey as we'll be waiting for the FOW and other stuff to be resolved in CM :)
 
Thanks for the lengthy and detailed feedback @Matt10

I will buy FIFA on Friday because I need my Premier League and co op seasons fix! You have sold it to me.
 
Can someone actually tell me if it's true that all Skybet team play like Real Madrid/Barca on their prime with 95% passing accuracy? I see that on a lot of videos online.
 
Can someone actually tell me if it's true that all Skybet team play like Real Madrid/Barca on their prime with 95% passing accuracy? I see that on a lot of videos online.

I normally play with Exeter and so far the League 2 games I have played every team has played like Barcelona.

I have only seen variation in play when playing with the big teams.
 
could it be the case when all the transfers are updated the team style patch will be added then when all teams have corrected players?



 
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Rashford goal using right stick to flick the ball in the air over the defender ..apologies for the pause mid way not sure what happened
 
Man, NBA LIVE 18 has a player career mode called "The One," but we're still stuck with the God damn Journey. In LIVE's gamemode, you can create your own custom character, scan your face into the game via your phone, there are RPG-lite mechanics, story beats, and you progress through the ranks of the street and the league. Why can't we have something similar to that in FIFA? I don't want to play as Alex Hunter, I want to play as myself. I couldn't give two shits about him!
 
Nice move and finish

But notice how after the pause, The defender to the right retreats allowing you a free shot on goal. These scripted defending mechanisms which I call (parting of the defensive sea) is a serious problem on all fifa modes, Artificially loosening up the game specially in 45th and 90th minutes of games.

Edit: we used to be able to scan a game face on fifa 16 now we can't....why? Lol
 
Nice move and finish

But notice how after the pause, The defender to the right retreats allowing you a free shot on goal. These scripted defending mechanisms which I call (parting of the defensive sea) is a serious problem on all fifa modes, Artificially loosening up the game specially in 45th and 90th minutes of games.

Edit: we used to be able to scan a game face on fifa 16 now we can't....why? Lol

Yup, we used to have that ability. Ever since they switched to the Frostbite Engine, it's been missing.
 
A friend of mine has ea Access and he has been playing a career mode on legendary...

He is scoring 2 or 3 goals every single match, blowing away the opposition

Ea have made it easier to score this year according him to appease the Ultimate Team kids

I genuinely worried for this series now
 
A friend of mine has ea Access and he has been playing a career mode on legendary...

He is scoring 2 or 3 goals every single match, blowing away the opposition

Ea have made it easier to score this year according him to appease the Ultimate Team kids

I genuinely worried for this series now

Does your friend play on manual?

On full-manual, slightly adjusted sliders (user and CPU shot accuracy, CPU pass accuracy, keepers, and a few other tweaks), I'm most certainly not blowing the CPU away on Legendary. I'm having a good mix of results. If I played assisted, I'd dominate as well. Big deal.

I will agree that shooting is overpowered and/or keepers are under powered. That is for certain. I turned up the keeper slider for both the CPU and User and toned down the shots for CPU. Granted, this won't help you online.

Speaking online, if you wanted to get thrashed by the cheesiest/most difficult AI you'll ever played against, go to Squad Battles in FUT and play on Ultimate difficulty.Man, I tried playing against a CPU team that had R9, Messi, Ronnie, etc on manual. I had never seen anything like it. I got dumpstered. I even switched to fully assisted and they still worked me.
 
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Does your friend play on manual?

On full-manual, slightly adjusted sliders (user and CPU shot accuracy, CPU pass accuracy, keepers, and a few other tweaks), I'm most certainly not blowing the CPU away on Legendary. I'm having a good mix of results. If I played assisted, I'd dominate as well. Big deal.

I will agree that shooting is overpowered and/or keepers are under powered. That is for certain. I turned up the keeper slider for both the CPU and User and toned down the shots for CPU. Granted, this won't help you online.

Speaking online, if you wanted to get thrashed by the cheesiest/most difficult AI you'll ever played against, go to Squad Battles in FUT and play on Ultimate difficulty.Man, I tried playing against a CPU team that had R9, Messi, Ronnie, etc on manual. I had never seen anything like it. I got dumpstered. I even switched to fully assisted and they still worked me.
So that's the answer to the game being too easy? Throw everything on Manual?

We never had to do that with previous FIFA or pes games in single player.

I personally don't want to mess around with sliders and manual settings. I want to play the game out of the box and it to challenge me.
 
Tbh the full manual argument on both games isn't really sensible. I can't have Iniesta in my team and see him fail to perform simple passes because I'm manually handicapped,While accrington pass the ball around like Barca.

Sliders are good but again you'll find yourself adjusting them every game because you want to tailor the opposition to the occasion such as home/away ,cup game or their Actual real life strategy. Shooting is a problem as well, every game I see six or seven shots off the woodwork!

Individuality and stats have to be the driver behind this, What's next, Put an outfield player in goal to make it more challenging?
 
Lovely videos.

What camera do you use? That's default isn't it?

Anyone else find that when you switch to Tele Broadcast, you can see much more of the pitch, but it makes the game so much quicker?
Thank you. Yes it's the standard view, I love it.
The game speed is perfect, i hope i will always like that.
I'm waiting for my retail game to start Carrier Mode
 
Thank you so so much for posting these videos - really appreciate you took the time to do that for us. Are you still enjoying the game?


This is what I'm desperate to see, and if I can make it so this is the case against the AI... I'll be absolutely delighted.
You're welcome.
Yes, I really enjoy to play this FIFA 18. The gameplay is different that PES 2018, but when the speed is on slow, it's magic with the goods ajustements (manual or semi)
You can miss a simply pass, you can make really nice actions. I fell proud when I've have made a class defensiv move.
Sorry for the videos when the game look like crap but it's my 5 first games on it, I try to make differents things. Sometimes it's ok, sometimes it 's horrible.
I will upload news stuff tonight!!
 
So that's the answer to the game being too easy? Throw everything on Manual?

We never had to do that with previous FIFA or pes games in single player.

I personally don't want to mess around with sliders and manual settings. I want to play the game out of the box and it to challenge me.

Yes, that's my answer to the game being too easy. For any seasoned FIFA player, assisted is piss easy and it always has been. Simple as that. I mean, using a more difficult and player-skill driven control scheme to challenge yourself is a reasonable suggestion, no?

And before people interject with (some already have), "stats have no impact on manual," I've found that they still play a significant role. Shit passers still feel like shit passers even on manual. Shooting a bit less so, which is why I'd suggest semi-assisted for that.

Did someone just compare using manual controls to putting an outfield player in goal? Nice leap of logic there, big guy. Not even a remotely apt comparison. If people don't want to take a few hours to get used to a control scheme that isn't completely automated and simplistic, that's fine, but don't complain that it's too easy. Also, you believe it's unacceptable that you mess up a 10-yard pass, but it's perfectly reasonable for every player to 180 LB+Y 50-yard pass it right to your attacker with little effort? Very selective. How is manual any less "individualistic" than a control scheme where every action is trivialized?

Oh, and I haven't adjusted my FIFA 17 sliders in 6 months or so. People act as if we're all in constant search of the "perfect" slider and therefore, it detracts from the overall experience. I found a decent set of sliders many moons ago and I've used them ever since. Not exactly a massive effort on my end.

From an online perspective, I 100% agree. When you can customize the offline aspect to a pretty decent extent, a lot of the difficulty complaints become moot.
 
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Yes, that's my answer to the game being too easy. FIFA is piss easy on assisted and it always has been. Simple as that. I mean, using a more difficult and realistic control scheme to challenge yourself is a reasonable suggestion, no?

And before people say (some already have) stats still completely play a role
even on manual. They 100% do.

Also, did someone just compare using manual controls to putting an outfield player in goal? Nice leap of logic there, big guy. Not even a remotely apt comparison. If people don't want to take a few hours to get used to a control scheme that isn't completely automated and simplistic, that's fine, but don't complain that it's too easy. Also, you believe it's unacceptable that you mess up a 10-yard pass, but it's perfectly reasonable for every player to 180 LB+Y 50-yard pass it right to your attacker with little effort? Very selective.

Oh, and I haven't adjusted my FIFA 17 sliders in 6 months or so. People act as if we're all in constant search of the "perfect" slider and therefore it detracts from the experience. Nope, I found a decent set of sliders many moons ago and I've used them ever since. Not exactly a massive effort on my end.

Thing is, there's absolutely nothing inherently more realistic about manual than assisted. Gameplay may ultimately play out more realistic for the user, but all you're doing is increasing passing difficulty by taking away the assistance. It's increased challenge, not increased realism; in other words, someone who is amazing at manual can do the exact same things that you can do with assisted. Obviously no one, or at least not many, are that good, but the point is valid.

In fact, depending upon one's skill level, manual can lead to decreased realism. If I suck at aiming, then the likes of Iniesta and the best passers of the ball are going to be unrealistic to play with in that they won't be near as effective. Yes, stats play a role with manual, but they often become secondary to skill on the stick, especially in tight situations.

And also, not everyone wants the challenge of the game to largely be dictated by how well you can aim with the stick. There's a lot more to a football game than that. Playing manual does nothing for how easy it can be to dribble at times, or exploit space, or pull defenders out of position.

This goes for both games but "playing manual" is a piss poor solution for poor programming.
 
New videos on EA Access : this game is damned great!!
Portugal - Argentina
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/d66447aa-91ec-4f01-bf74-7ec2386c53ae
Arsenal - Chelsea
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/cf954815-df6f-4ad7-8b1e-ef7e14fe6ce9
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/b1b97a67-364a-4de1-85eb-adcbc8c59faf
England - Netherland
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/a1f2dcdf-38a5-4de0-b6a6-b8ebf787e081
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/cf954815-df6f-4ad7-8b1e-ef7e14fe6ce9
Bayern - Napoli
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/26ee6b9f-3bc3-4a51-adaa-946605477b60
Lazio - Dortmund
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/cd51e9b4-f99d-4a79-b6b3-fe77c6abcd59
http://xboxclips.com/Saturator/9f6bc457-67a9-4899-8a9c-1630e9fe2b3f

My best game so far is between Chelsea, it'was really awesome. Lacazette is really a dangerous striker, player id is on the game. You feel when you have in your hand a good player, it's hard to describe but when you have Hazard, Keane, Messi, CR7, Ribery, you know you can do some miracles.
The atmosphere is incredible, in Old Trafford, Allianz Arena, Parc des Princes.
I want the full version now, i dont' want to sleep!!
 
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A friend of mine has ea Access and he has been playing a career mode on legendary...

He is scoring 2 or 3 goals every single match, blowing away the opposition

Ea have made it easier to score this year according him to appease the Ultimate Team kids

I genuinely worried for this series now

Tell your mate he is a god amongst men
 
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