The exciting promise in FIFA 17 is guaranteed value

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The exciting promise in FIFA 17 is guaranteed value

2016-03-23 10:00:30

Formations and tactics in FIFA 17 are more important than many initially consider. Players will often complain that their team sits back too far on the pitch, that their forwards are always straying offside, or that there's not enough attacking runs in behind the opposition defense. All of this can actually be attributed to the FIFA 17 team's tactics. Spend a bit of time adjusting the formation of your team, and consider what mentality you want them to express on the pitch.

Do this and you will surely notice improvements in the way they play FIFA 17, and it should better reflect your own personal style. Goals feel harder to score, and much more emphasis is placed on the need to pick the right pass, and not force a move. However, the FIFA 17 defenses are almost too organized, and you might find yourself involved in more 0-0 draws than previously. This sounds like a positive when offering a challenge, but when it’s nothing but lateral passes between two central midfielders it can get tedious.

Defending is largely overlooked when it comes to the football gaming world yet if you can master the art of a perfectly executed slide tackle or expertly monitor the run of a pacy forward then you’re onto a winner. If you really want to play a passing game, a zoomed-out camera view is practically a requisite. Not everyone will be able to cope with the distant but tactically excellent overview offered by the Co-op camera (especially during the new ‘cataract mode’ foggy weather conditions), but you can still choose a custom zoom level for your preferred option to provide a slightly wider view of proceedings.

If you plan to play for several seasons, you should start to consider the future of your club as soon as possible. FIFA 17 has two options to find promising players. The first comes down to the normal scouting system that allows you to search specifically for young prospects, but that doesn't mean that all the solutions are of the required quality. Each player has a note indicated by the scout, either in relation to their status at the club or their contract duration, for example.

The most promising, however, are often marked with two notes, “high potential” or “exciting promise.” The first means that at this point in his career, he is a reasonable player with the potential to become a great player, with training and regular playing time. The exciting promise in FIFA 17 is guaranteed value, and can be a valid alternative straight away and has the potential to be one of the world's top players.

Again, though, this all ties back into the sense that FIFA 17 is trying to operate with realism in mind. Because pacey wingers and strikers aren't as reliable, and because defending is more about positioning and forcing errors than it is about straight up tackles, matches tend to be scrappier affairs where much of the action happens in the middle of the pitch - and this is where personal preference is going to become a defining factor.

What I can't say is whether it reflects a meaningful representation of women’s football - I shamefully haven't seen enough of the sport to say. But in the different gaits of the FIFA 17 players, and the nature of the matches themselves, it feels like much more than a mere graphical re-skin has taken place - this isn't just regular FIFA with ponytails.

Higher rated players are gifted to you far more frequently than in the standard Ultimate Team mode, and right from the off, it's clear that this is an addition which is built for those who want increased rewards for their time spent grinding for coins - the currency that's used to buy randomized packs of players.