Review: Free, FIFA 14 for Android and iOS is not worth the download - Digital Look

There is a trend in today’s gaming market trying to offer free games to consumers. It would be very nice, if not for the fact that the games are not actually free. The business model, dubbed “freemium”, brings extremely limited versions of games, almost “unplayable”, intending to allow the user to download freely, but force him to pay if he wants to do anything different in the game . It is the case of FIFA 14 for Android and iOS.

After download for free, you are surprised by a nice animation and the phrase “EA Sports, it’s in the game.” You soon feel ready to have an experience worthy of Fifa, but it is not what happens. Frustration is what follows.

First of all, to participate in a “quick game”, you need to pay. The value of U.S. $ 10 is not too high for a game like this, but it could soon be charged to download the app, as it’s almost impossible to do anything within the game.

This way, you can not choose with which teams play, not his opponents. If you want to play, you must respect the limits of the “game of the week” which is a list of predefined confrontes by EA. If you want to choose the teams that will play in the game, you can play only penalty disputes.

The only way the game is actually released Ultimate Team, a kind of card game with real football players. The format is interesting for those interested, although the appeal is restricted by bureaucratising a little game. Many prefer to just play. The reason being is that EA released invoice much money on microtransactions within this game mode.

It does not bother as much as the gameplay of FIFA for phones and tablets. There is a reason why games like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope and Fruit Ninja are successful: they were made thinking on touch screens. It is hard to imagine any of these games having success in other media. The case of FIFA 14 is the exact opposite, the game is made to play with a joystick in hand. When trying to use it in touchscreen mode often your hand covers the screen, preventing the full view of the field, something essential for a football game.

The game even responds well to commands from the player, but they are just so intuitive that you will probably grieve enough to understand them. And the game knows that failure, so that the tutorials of how to accomplish some task are always popping up on the screen.

It is the compliment to the graphics, which obviously does not make front version for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 , much less the new generation of consoles, but show that more and more mobile platforms are approaching a level of power that allows for games increasingly heavy and convoluted. In a powerful smartphone, the animations are extremely fluid.