hange is something that happens all too often in the FIFA series. It’s usually for the worse, when controls drop out or promising directions go unfulfilled. Hopefully this aimlessness will stop after this year, as developer EA Canada has finally taken the step forward that we’ve been begging them to for all these years with the new ball physics.

Because the ball is treated as a separate entity than the players, it creates much more realistic and unpredictable situations on the pitch. Because the ball is no longer just a magnet to be attracted to players’ feet, you can use your imagination more in constructing an attack. Although the free ball physics improve your ability to put the ball into open space, its positive effect on the game is tempered by the fact that who actually gets possession of the ball is often pre-determined. So you may be running to the ball and think you’re going to gain possession, but a late-arriving player may easily get the ball instead. This dichotomy between a free-moving ball and players who sometimes lack their own freedom can be jarring. When you take into account the game’s bad AI (which makes playing defense an uphill battle), you can actually say that the ball is smarter than the players themselves.

Add in the fact that this game features a paltry six international leagues (as opposed to the over 20 of some past FIFAs), the double-team defensive feature still doesn’t work, players’ collision fields are too large, the AI shows very little movement in the box on your corner kicks, and that shots and passes have little accuracy, and you’ll find that this game has taken steps back which counter its promising progress – not unlike the American national squad. We hope this is a way forward for the FIFA franchise, but you never know, next year they might just ditch everything and start from scratch – again.