When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works

Home / Reviews / Game reviews / Electronic Arts / FIFA 15 / FIFA 15 review

FIFA 15 review

Has The Best World Cup Ever™ inspired the best football game ever, or is FIFA 15 on a post-Brazil comedown?

World football tends to move in cycles – and as the FIFA games attempt to replicate the sport as closely as possible, EA’s annual soccer sim must also move on.

If FIFA 14 was Barcelona’s tiki-taka, death by 1000 passes, FIFA 15 is Germany’s more explosive World-Cup-winning evolution of it. Like Spain at Euro 2012, FIFA 14‘s patient style was considered boring by some. In its quest for realism it had lost some of the breathless excitement that makes football such an absorbing game – and that’s the focus of FIFA 15.

READ MORE: Kill your productivity – Stuff’s top 30 free browser games

Heavy metal football

Heavy metal football

FIFA 15 feels like it’s been in a few extra training sessions to sharpen up. Its reactions are faster and it’s found an extra yard of pace since last season. It maintains the realism but injects a bit more ‘heavy metal’ as Jurgen Klopp would call it. Players seem more responsive to movements of the left stick, with a last-minute nudge to either side often enough to beat a defender or draw the foul when running at speed and if the momentum is with you. With the right player it’s also more effective from a standstill, shifting the player’s weight one way and then bursting the other past the defender.

Profile image of Tom Wiggins Tom Wiggins Contributor

About

Stuff's other Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.

Areas of expertise

Gaming (OK, mainly just FIFA), weird Alexa skills, USB sticks