This isn’t a review of the game itself – I haven’t managed to give it a try yet, as a combination of final exams and a dying laptop mean it’ll have to wait. As soon as I do get a chance to try it out, I’ll let you know my thoughts. This article, therefore, is based on my thoughts surrounding the implications of the game and what messages it sends out to FIFA players new and old.
EA’s free-to-play edition of FIFA 14, FIFA World, has now been out in open beta for just over a week. To play it, you just need to download it through EA’s Origin marketplace.
The game features two main modes – Ultimate Team and Leagues Mode, where you chose a team and try to get it promoted up through online leagues (a bit like Seasons mode on FIFA 14). It’s also got 16,000 real players, 600 teams and over 30 leagues.
The question is: is it any good?
The elusive review
Reviews are hard to come by. As in, really hard to come by; I couldn’t find a single one from any of the major gaming outlets and websites. But check the comments on those sites that did announce the open beta a week ago, and they aren’t exactly flattering…
“OMG, i’ve just test it, and, OMG, it’s so baaaaaaaaaaaaad. Don’t expect to have a gaming experience that’s close to FIFA 14” says PHVL over at Polygon.
“Game is terrible, just tried it. Frame rate is poor, limited skill moves. They added the old control scheme for skill moves whereby you have to hold L2. It is simply a money generator. Graphics are dated. Don’t even bother!” warns Narxes at Gamespot.
That’s not a whole lot of love for FIFA World
To be fair, it’s a free game, and you’d expect it to be a little rough around the edges. EA aren’t about to undercut themselves by giving away a game so good that you don’t need to go out and actually buy FIFA 14.
And in that respect EA have lowered the graphical requirements of the game, claiming it has “HD console gameplay” that can run on “almost any PC” or an “average spec” laptop (I’ll post the recommended specs at the end of this post). Kinda amusing that they’re using console graphics as a selling point to PC gamers. But anyway, does this make it a democratisation of the game, so to speak?
Or is it, as Narxes thinks, simply a money generator?
For what it’s worth, I get the impression it’s both – an attempt to bring the game to more people and enable more people to play it, and at the same time a way to lure people into the gigantic slush fund that is Ultimate Team.
The (slightly worrying) implications of FIFA World
As a free game, FIFA World is a view into the world of FIFA 14 (and the FIFA series as a whole) for those who have never played it before. The image it projects is therefore a statement to the uninitiated of what FIFA is all about.
It’s no surprise that Ultimate Team has been included. FIFA’s most popular mode is a massive money-spinner for EA, and combining it with the lure of a free FIFA game seems like the perfect way for EA to tempt new users into the franchise and, more specifically, Ultimate Team itself. People who were reluctant to try the game mode (or perhaps the FIFA series) are now likely to give it a try, with a good proportion of them likely to spend real money on buying packs for the first time. Shrewd business from EA, but certainly a little questionable.
The other unsurprising fact is that there’s no career mode. It doesn’t make any additional money for EA (unlike the Ultimate Team cash cow) and clearly is not EA’s priority when it comes to the FIFA series. If career mode doesn’t feature at all in a free game that is designed to entice new players into the FIFA series, what does it say about EA’s long term commitment to the game mode? A new breed of FIFA players (albeit probably a small breed) will be getting their first taste of FIFA perhaps without even knowing that career mode exists.
The good news for many players is that single player tournaments are back following a barrage of fan dismay at their exclusion from FIFA 14. But even here the Ultimate Team links don’t end. There are 14 tournaments to choose from, each with varying rewards, difficulties and requirements. The tournaments have names like ‘Starter Cup’ and ‘Midlands Invitational’. You’re rewarded with coins if you win. Sound familiar?
Everything seems geared towards getting people to play Ultimate Team and, as a result, spending their real money on more in-game purchases and EA products. Just look at the EA page explaining how the tournament mode works – in the first image on the page, two out of the four in-game tiles (including the largest one) are adverts for Ultimate Team.
Ultimate Team dominates FIFA World. Image: EA Sports
A glimpse into the future of FIFA?
I don’t hate Ultimate Team; I play it myself (as you may have seen from a recent tweet of mine). It’s good fun if you don’t get carried away. But it’s depressing to see everything else in FIFA trampled under its all-powerful, money generating foot. It’s clearly EA’s priority (and why wouldn’t it be, given how much money it makes?), so much so that you can’t get away from it. For career mode fans like us, to not even get a career preview in a free FIFA game is disheartening news, but it’s not exactly surprising.
Is this a window into the future world of FIFA? Perhaps. What’s a little more certain is that they should probably have just called FIFA World ‘Ultimate Team Lite’; it would have been closer to the truth.
Here are those FIFA World recommended specs for PC:
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz / Athlon II X4 600e @ 2.2GHz
- OS: Windows XP SP3 2GB / Windows Vista / Windows 7 4GB
- RAM: 2GB
- Graphics card: DirectX 9.0c, Shader 3.0, GeForce 8800 GT / Radeon HD 3870
- Disk space: 3.96GB (1.96 for the initial download)
- Required Internet connection: 1Mbit/s download, 256kbit/s upload
Have you tried FIFA World yet? What did you think of it – was it as bad as the commentors have claimed, or did you think it was good for a free game? Share you thoughts in the comments below.
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