FIFA 14 vs Pro Evo 2014

FIFA 14 vs Pro Evo 2014: Which Football Game Should You Get?

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There are two football games on the market. The vast majority of people will only buy one of them. So which one should you buy?

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FIFA 13 vs Pro Evo 2013: Which Football Game Should You Get?

There are two great football games on the market this week. Most fans will only buy one. It's a tough call. Read…

Last year, it was a tough call. This year, it is not.

Instead of reviewing each game separately, I'm going to compare each of them with regards to the important stuff. See where each one shines with regards to the competition. That way, even if you don't want to heed my final advice, you can at least break each game down and see which one is the right game for you.

Some things to note before we begin. FIFA 14 feels in many ways to be a "best of" album. Don't expect too many changes or improvements. The next generation of consoles has required a new generation of sports games, and I excuse EA if they've had to spend most of their time and money on the Xbox One/PS4 versions of the game.

Pro Evo, meanwhile, is all-new, thanks to a shift to Konami's in-house Fox Engine. In many ways, it feels like a next-gen game on current-gen systems. In other ways, though...

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VISUALS

FIFA 14: Have you played FIFA 10? 11? 12? 13? This basically looks the same. A creaking engine bids farewell, and not a moment too soon. In 2013 the cartoon player models and twitchy animation is starting to look very dated, and no amount of fancy pre-game intros can change that.

PES 2014: It is, for the most part, beautiful. A new engine does wonders. Player models for big stars look terrifyingly realistic, kits are detailed, crowds are alive and stadiums look wonderful. The animation is butter-smooth (UPDATE: I played it on PC, but I'm hearing of frequent stutters on console). If you squint, you'll think you're playing a next-gen game a few months early.

Winner: PES 2014.

ON THE PITCH

FIFA 14: See above. Not many changes this year to a tried and tested formula. A new shooting system works a lot better than you think it will, providing more satisfying efforts and more varied - and realistic - trajectories. Aside from that, though, it's your standard arsenal of quick passes, skill moves and the first-touch stick.

PES 2014: Hrm. In the middle of the park, it's perfect. Smooth animations and a "heavy" feel to the players lead to physical contests and a more realistic competition for possession. The fact the ball is totally separate from the player's feet also leads to great contact between players. In attack, though, it completely falls apart. The game's too slow for the intricate attacking moves you need to score on anything other than the counter; both shooting and passing sometimes feel like they take an eternity to let loose.

Winner: FIFA 14

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

FIFA 14: You know what? Mostly the same as last year's. There's a pattern emerging here. Through-balls felt smarter though, which was a nice change from the last few years.

PES 2014: Perhaps the biggest problem with Konami's effort. Passes routinely go to the wrong player. The AI will select the wrong defender at a crucial moment. Defending in the box is a comedy routine. Certain throughballs will ALWAYS go out of bounds. For a series that used to be the smarter one, it's a real disappointment.

Winner: FIFA 14

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LICENSING

FIFA 14: The usual array of domestic licenses, including the all-important Premier League, make this the game to get if you need to be playing as the real stars in their real kits. The state of national team licensing needs to be sorted out, though; it feels like every year less and less of them are fully licenses, replaced by replica teams in awful fake jerseys.

PES 2014: Yes, it has the Champions League. And some other major European leagues, like Spain and Italy. But the fact the Premier League and Bundesliga aren't there will kill this game for many. Its national team licensing is as bad as FIFA's.

Winner: FIFA 14

COMMENTARY

FIFA 14: Sure, there are plenty of recycled lines, given we've had the same commentary team for a few years now, but there were also a surprising number of new ones as well. The best part? I heard Martin Tyler tell the same silly anecdote about Norwich twice, only he recorded it in two different ways.

PES 2014: An embarrassment. The worst commentary in modern sports gaming somehow got worse, thanks to the addition of a system where the game tries to create organic sentences by mixing team names with canned lines, but comes off sounding like Stephen Hawking after six pints.

Winner: FIFA 14

MENUS

FIFA 14: Surprisingly, it got a complete overhaul. And it's awesome. The best menu in sports video games. Rather than a bewildering array of buttons, it's grouped more like the Xbox 360 dashboard (with a dash of Google Now), everything laid out in giant contextual tiles. It works perfectly, making getting through career modes a breeze. Well done, EA.

PES 2014: Shocking. The PS2 would be ashamed of this menu system. It somehow got substantially worse than last year's, which wasn't great to start with. It looks like something a JRPG from 1997 would have used. It's not intuitive, is slow, and leaves many important features buried where you'll need to check the internet to find them. God help you if you're going to be spending 100 hours in career mode...

Winner: FIFA 14

CAREER MODES

FIFA 14: Some slight improvements in terms of communicating your progress and standing, but largely unchanged from last year. Manager mode is fine, but player careers need some tweaking; I was playing for England before I was starting for...Bolton.

PES 2014: Another area where Pro Evo didn't just fail to improve, but took a step back. Master League and career mode have been stripped of equipment and press conferences, and I quit my first player career after sitting for twenty minutes cycling through the menu without ever getting picked for a game.

Winner: FIFA 14

MULTIPLAYER

Note: I reviewed Pro Evo on PC, where multiplayer is practically non-existent. I didn't think it fair to compare the two because of this, but note that a lot of stuff above, like teammate AI and menus, makes as big an impact on multiplayer as it does in singleplayer.

OVERALL

Winner: FIFA 14.

FIFA 14 wins in a landslide, helped by a number of own goals from Konami. Despite an ageing engine and lack of many real updates other than a new menu, FIFA 14 feels like a refinement, a final perfection of current-generation football games.

Pro Evo, on the other hand, seems to have put all its eggs in the basket marked "New Engine". While it's visually stunning, and in some ways plays a more beautiful game of football, it's undone by several fundamental issues both on the park and off. The fact many peripheral aspects of the game have even regressed doesn't help the game's cause.

FIFA vendetta.

By Thomas Morgan Published Friday, 29 November 2013

Achieving the rare feat of platform parity on both PS3 and 360, the FIFA series now takes its first dive onto the succeeding consoles, taking advantage of the spec upgrade with EA Canada's brand new Ignite Engine. On the Xbox One and PS4 versions we're promised more than just a resolution increase - the new technology also brings a sharp increase in player animations, smarter AI, and fully polygonal 3D crowds to replace the sprite-work of previous games. But with this visual upheaval, and the rush to be there for day one of the console launches, has the series' history of platform parity been maintained for the new generation?
To start things off, it's clear from the get-go that the fundamentals of FIFA's design haven't changed, and that the Ignite Engine essentially re-uses the same rendering techniques for player models, alongside plenty of motion capture data we've seen before. This extends to the gameplay, meaning those familiar with FIFA 14's slower accelerating players and balance in favour of lobbed balls will very much be at home with these next-gen offerings. However, eye-opening changes are in effect here - if not always evident under the skin so much as in terms of the gloss spread over the top.
By far the most eye-catching upgrade is the bump up from 720p to a full 1080p native resolution, which we can confirm is common to both Xbox One and PS4. Like seeing any sports broadcast making the move to HD, the boost in pixel definition adds greatly to the spectacle, and increasingly we find we can pick out players by eye rather than resorting to the call-outs from the commentary. This crisp 1080p presentation is something we've only enjoyed on the PC versions of the series so far - though curiously this format has no support for the revised Ignite Engine so far.
Simply bringing a 1080p picture to the table isn't always enough, however, when the goal is to squeeze out the best image quality possible. This is especially true of sports games, where the camera is withdrawn from the characters in control more than most, and for which jagged edges can still be a distraction at full HD. Thankfully, EA Canada has managed to leverage a 2x pass of multi-sample anti aliasing (MSAA) into both versions of the game - something of a rarity in console development these days. This is an approach which addresses edges on geometry early on in the rendering pipeline, avoiding the need to soften the entire image with cheaper post-processing methods.

"By far the most eye-catching upgrade is the bump up from 720p to full 1080p, common to both Xbox One and PS4. Like seeing any sports broadcast making the move to HD, the boost in pixel definition adds greatly to the spectacle."

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of FIFA 14 compared. Use the 1080p option and full-screen playback for the best viewing experience.

High quality download: Host/Mirror (right-click, save as)
This choice of AA ties in nicely with the introduction of fully realised 3D crowds on Xbox One and PS4, where previously the 360 version - with its likewise 2x MSAA - produces an ugly shimmer effect while panning past spite-based crowds. Although this is essentially an aesthetic tweak, seeing these spectators pack the stadium aisles in their hundreds is an impressive technical feat given the seating capacities of some grounds. Getting the camera too close inevitably shows shortcomings, but their ability to switch animations according to the on-pitch action helps add to the game's atmosphere - and some even flinch as a wayward shot rockets towards them.
But most of our attention is be held by the on-pitch action, where players have seen a suitable upgrade in their own right, mostly boiling down to the addition of cloth simulation and improved skin shaders. The former sticks out especially, allowing for an elastic stretch around the torso of players like Gareth Bale, while most other kits sag and crease up with each stride. If there is a criticism here, it's that shorts swing like pendulums when players are running full-pelt, looking rather bizarre in replays.

Texture filtering is also improved over current-gen, meaning insignia and grass are no longer blurred, and the Barcelona crests spread around the Nou Camp appear crisp and defined. There's also a more generous use of grass when the camera draws closer to ground level for penalty shoot-outs, which stand out thanks to the resolution bump, avoiding the rather flat texturing of the current-gen versions.

Select a thumbnail to launch comparison tool.

As for contrasts between the Xbox One and PS4 releases go, there's very little to distinguish the two on visual grounds. To developer EA Canada's credit, there are only a few odd visual glitches noticed here, such as a flickering referee during one of our exhibition games. Otherwise, putting the games side by side reveals a slight gamma variance that gives the Xbox One a more vivid colour palette, despite brightness settings being level on each.
Save for this one discrepancy, the results are largely identical. Given that the PS4 has enjoyed a clear technical advantage in recent games like Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty: Ghosts, it's a surprise that these two releases are so difficult to distinguish. But with this in mind, we turn to our performance tests to see whether both platforms hold true to the 60fps standard of current-gen versions.
For games played from the default viewpoint, we're pleased to find a pure 60fps experience unfolds on both Xbox One and PS4, with nary a dropped frame during match-ups at Anfield, Wembley or Nou Camp. True to series tradition, it is perhaps a slight disappointment that playing with the Pro camera forces the game to lock at 30fps - and likewise for penalties, corners, replays and goal celebrations. However, for the stretches of play where controller response counts most, the frame-rate is perfectly optimised on each platform.

"As performance metrics stabilise at either a clean 30 or 60fps, we're left short on ways to truly distinguish the two next-gen versions on any technical level."

Performance analysis of FIFA 14 shows a next-gen leap without losing sight of its priorities. It's a flawless 60fps on both Xbox One and PS4 for the default camera view, but still locks to 30fps for replays and set-pieces.

FIFA 14: the Digital Foundry verdict

As performance metrics stabilise at either a clean 30 or 60fps, we're left short on ways to truly distinguish the two next-gen versions on any technical level. That being the case, it's worth noting the Xbox One version does offer a minor advantage in content with its exclusive Ultimate Team "Legends," opening up access to classic players like Pelé, Lineker and Zola. It's perhaps not the most essential feature given the rarity of these cards, and the potential expenditure on packs to seek them out, but it's a clear point in favour of the Xbox One release.
Speaking of content, certain modes are stripped back compared to the PS3 and 360 editions - Be a Pro and Tournament options, for example. Getting the game out in a reasonable time-frame likely took precedence this year, but on the plus side, the honed focus does mean the Ignite Engine lands on both feet to give the definitive on-pitch experience.
In all, putting aside nit-picks in gamma that suggest a slight black push on the Xbox One, both releases are a match in every other conceivable sense. The 1080p presentation backed up by 2xMSAA is sumptuous to behold, and sidesteps the upscaling and post-processing seen in other games that tend to spoil all the hard work. As a result, FIFA 14 easily ranks as the most crisply presented next-gen game released yet, and for time time being, a solid showcase of the next-gen difference to any passer-by.

FIFA 14 PS4 review – footballing superstar sparkles on long-awaited next-gen debut

If there’s a single word that summarises EA Canada’s first crack at next-gen football with FIFA 14, it’s ‘intricacy’. The big-money transfer to PS4 United has seen this long-standing franchise change in ways too numerous to count, but it’s the subtle touches on and off the park which really stand out.Passing that’s just that one iota more delicate. Movement that earns you, and your team-mates, a critical extra split second to fire over a cross or curl in an effort on goal. And an attention to detail that borders on surgical when it comes to all the trappings surrounding the beautiful game.

FIFA 14 PS4 review

It’s critical to state that this is still the FIFA you’ve known and loved for a number of years. For all the noise its developer made regarding the ‘brand new’ Ignite Engine, a sense of familiarity pervades from the second you’re thrown into a Real vs Barca derby in order to learn the ropes. Except if you’ve so much as dabbled with current-gen FIFA, these ropes feel more like silk scarves draped by angels, with the same liquid-smooth gameplay and TV-style presentation making itself known from the get-go. It’s as comfortable a transition from PS3 as you could have wished for, and within seconds you know you can never go back.

FIFA 14 PS4 review. Subscribe for more PS3 & PS4 videos.

That’s just the beginning. The more you play, the more the game evolves into a nigh-on perfect footballing dream – not quite on par with doing unspeakable things to Penny Race after a Melchester Rovers cup final win, but very, very close. The most crucial of those subtle tweaks is additional time on the ball, brought about chiefly by a raft of new animations, such as a player shuffling his feet around an underhit pass from behind and turning to face forwards in one fluid movement. Instead of waiting an instant for your man to gain control, then, that extra moment becomes time where you can think about what to do next – and as a result, you no longer feel constantly rushed to get a shot away or offload to a team-mate.

Not that those are your only two choices when in possession. Now, ball retention – for instance, when protecting a lead or mimicking the slow build-up play of a Roberto Martinez side – isn’t only possible by ping-ponging the thing all over the shop in the hope of keeping it away from opponents. Instead, properly-implemented physicality – Gareth Barry holding off a challenging midfielder rather than letting him whip the ball away with next-to-no-effort every single time – coupled with that more intricate movement enables you to play at your own pace, even in a crowded midfield. Speed still matters, but power and control are just as vital. Which is as it should be.

Naturally, everything mentioned here is contextual and attribute-based – you’re unlikely to see Jermain Defoe holding off Vincent Kompany down by the corner flag for more than a couple of seconds – but that only adds to the authenticity, and therefore the magic. Play as Arsenal and you can mimic their smooth attacking play so realistically you’ll believe you’re Arsene Wenger and develop an instinctive blindless to every foul committed; take control of Chelsea, with that strapping spine of Terry, Lampard and Eto’o, and you really feel the benefits of the newfound physicality. Getting its teams and players to feel unique is the one area where EA has struggled to outclass Konami in recent years, but PS4 changes that. Here every squad feels different, every match a one-off.

This huge development isn’t borne out of on-field tweaks alone. EA Canada has also gone to great lengths to make next-gen FIFA feel like real football by exhaustively researching every aspect of both the stadium experience and the tellybox equivalent. That means, for starters, the end of cut-scenes when you make a substitution or win a corner – instead, everything happens in real time once the ball goes out of play.

Force the keeper to tip a shot over and you see your corner taker slowly jog over to place the ball in readiness for the kick, while centre backs amble forwards and the opposition sets up to defend it – all from a multitude of broadcast-style camera angles. Earn a penalty and you see the other team debate with the ref while your designated spotman prepares himself for the forthcoming pop at goal. Same for Freddy Fourth-Official readying electronic subs boards, goalies retrieving the ball for place kicks, and so on. All of this can be skipped, but it’s so refreshing to experience a football videogame as if it were a real life contest – and again, to have the sensation that you’re constantly being rushed through matches removed.

Astonishingly, that’s just one facet of PS4 FIFA’s improved presentation. You also see home and away fans seated in the correct part of every stadium, and celebrate appropriately after each goal; working, correctly placed scoreboards; replays of key moments (complete with Tyler and Smith discussing them) throughout matches; ball boys chucking extras onto the pitch from time to time; and lots, lots more. I’ve evangelised MLB: The Show for details like this for years. Now, EA Canada can absolutely consider itself on a par with Sony San Diego where attention to detail is concerned. And the main beneficiary of that is, well, you.

“Not quite on par with doing unspeakable things to Penny Race after a Melchester Rovers cup final win, but very, very close”

These changes combine in a direct gameplay sense via a new, default camera angle. It still manages to cram in around a third of the pitch at any one time, but is lower and steeper than you’re used to – providing a more intimate view of your individual players than on PS3 (which is a good thing, given the improved sense of control) and enabling a significant portion of the crowd opposite onto the screen too. That may sound like a purely aesthetic tweak on paper, but in practise it turns an away game at Exeter City, with the home fans on top of you in a tiny, cramped ground, into a genuinely nerve-wracking experience. Nicely done – again – from the Canuck developer. (Spotting a theme yet?)

I’ve not delved into Ultimate Team and Career here because they’re essentially identical to the PS3 version. Swifter menus make for an overall more user-friendly experience, but those critical of the new scouting system in Career will continue to find it heavy going. (And only that fan-splitting mechanic prevents this earning a double digit score.) It is worth noting that you can carry over UT (and Seasons) data from PS3 to PS4, so your all-gold, all-blond, all-surnames-beginning-with-Van Eredivisie side can make the leap to next-gen with you.

And it’s a leap you need to make the second you acquire that half-matte, half-shiny black box. FIFA 14 is one of the few launch games to have evolved in ways that aren’t solely graphics-based, and every one of its changes brings clear, distinguishable improvement. This is an essential day one purchase and – quite literally – the football game you’ve waited generations for.