The World Cup is the biggest sport-related event in the world and EA Sports could not pass the opportunity to launch a brand new video game to get you in the mood.
2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is a game with a clear, simple and uplifting narrative proposition for the gamer: choose your favorite nation, or who you think will win the world cup, Brazil, England….? and then get through the qualifying process before taking the entire team to South America in order to try to beat the best 32 other outfits from the entire world and get the most important trophy in international football.
A new feature is Captain Your Country, this involves choosing a player that you think can take your team all the way to glory.
Compared to FIFA 14, the game favors the attacking sides and especially players who are able to deliver bursts of speed and then a well-placed shot on goal.
Long-range efforts seem to be going into the net more than they did before and many matches have a tendency to end with a lot of scored goals. This makes sense considering that the World Cup is seen as a showcase of the best teams in the world, but in real life, managers tend to be a little more conservative and use solid defensive setups, which is hard to do in 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil.
So has it been improved compared to the previous title, FIFA 14? in a nutshell yes, when it comes to the way defenders deal with lobbed balls and long-range crosses, but it seems that the EA Sports team wants gamers to score a lot, execute as many celebrations as possible and generally experience a great big spectacle than slog through very tactics-heavy matches.
There are plenty of game-modes to ensure that this is a game you can play for a long time. To start, you can play a World Cup Finals campaign, but Road to the World Cup has all the authentic qualification formats, with friendlies, playoffs, and EA Sports Talk Radio, featuring the Men in Blazers and Ian Darke and Andy Goldstein, to keep you entertained as you march towards Brazil with any of the 203 FIFA-sanctioned teams in the game.
“The graphics are great and the stadiums are gorgeous.”
Because they were limited to just the World Cup venues, EA has really gone all-out with the detail. When the pre-game introductions start you can really get a good look at these majestic stadiums rendered down to the tiniest detail. The players and animations are copied directly from their ‘FIFA 14′ counterparts so on a whole they are excellent.
The only downside is the abominable frame rate which to be fair is not nearly as much of an issue in the default camera mode. However, I have yet to meet a competitive ‘FIFA’ player who doesn’t use the same camera that I do so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
The soundtrack for the game features an entirely different mix then that one in ‘FIFA 14.’ New music was added with many songs infused with a Brazilian-themed performed by such artists as Tinie Tempah and Switchfoot.
Additionally, “We Are One (Ole Ola)” by Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte, the official song of the 2014 World Cup is used in the game’s opening cut-scene. Like I said, EA does not skimp on the licensing and when money is no object…..
The one major change is the inclusion of EA Sports Talk Radio. It features game-related commentary by Andy Goldstein, Ian Darke and “The Men in Blazers” (Michael Davies and Roger Bennett) and is culled from over 50 hours of recorded audio. The commentary dynamically adapts to your campaign and is a significant upgrade on the old commentary in ‘FIFA 14.’ Unfortunately, this feature only works in the three campaign modes “Road to the FIFA World Cup”, “Road to Rio de Janeiro” and “Captain your Country”.
The Story of Qualifying is a throwback to the qualifying campaign with scenarios taken from the real-life events. As much as the World Cup is about the glamour teams in the Finals, it’s about the minnows in tiny stadiums reaching for their World Cup dream. This mode takes you along that journey. A bonus: For big teams like England, Germany, and the USA, there are scenarios from every single qualifier.
Winning the World Cup or getting one player from the B-side to the position of captain can be very satisfying in 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil.
The ‘FIFA’ engine is fun and arcadey without being outlandish and the presentation as always is top notch. The faults lay in the fact that its predecessor is a much more polished and content laden game. ‘FIFA 14′ has a lot of the top national teams that 99% of the gamers out there will choose in ’2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil’ plus all the club teams and the popular Ultimate Team card game.
If you are hosting a ‘FIFA’ watching party and need something to warm up your crowd this could do the trick. At the very least its pre-match introduction videos gave me the same sense of anticipation as the real games, which is really all the game was meant to do
