If you’re playing with a single Jo圜on you’re missing out on a second stick, a D-Pad and two shoulder buttons, which means things like on-the-fly tactics, threaded through balls and finesse shots are no longer possible. The ability to crack out those Jo圜on controllers and play some two-player matches anytime and anywhere is also a welcome one, although the game’s simplified a bit in this form. Although its (slightly less silky-smooth) cutscenes and other close-up moments reveal that the character models are a good deal less detailed than their Xbox One and PS4 counterparts, squint a bit during normal gameplay and you’d genuinely struggle to tell the difference. It runs smoother than a greased-up jazz musician too, with a full 60 frames per second in both docked and handheld mode making for a silky performance and the general feel that you’re playing a high quality product. It actually works well as long as you aren’t a stickler for intricate animation detail, you’re going to have fun here. The pace is slightly faster and player animations and physics aren’t quite as fluid, lending the game an ever-so-slightly more arcade feel (but not to any major degree). However, because it’s not running on the Frostbite engine, FIFA 18 on Switch doesn’t play exactly like the other current-gen versions. No more Wii Remote flicking, slow-mo Matrix moves or any of that other rubbish Nintendo-owning football fans have had to put up with over the years. Right stick skill moves, finesse shots, driven lobs, threaded through balls, you name it – every expert-level technique you can pull off in other versions of the game is here too. The full array of abilities is available in this version, due to the Jo圜on Grip (and Pro Controller) offering enough buttons to cope with it. Fans of the FIFA series will immediately be able to get to grips with the game as soon as they start playing, because at its core this is ‘proper’ FIFA, not the odd bespoke versions on Wii and 3DS back in the day. To be blunt, FIFA 18 on Switch is a fantastic game and a brilliant technical achievement. We’re calling nonsense on that: and we’ll explain why in a bit.įirst though, let’s judge the game on its own merits. The reason, according to a Eurogamer interview with one of the game’s producers, is that having every feature in there "might be too much" for someone new to Ultimate Team. This time, while the Switch version finally has the much-loved Ultimate Team mode the Wii U game omitted, fans will be curious about the fact that none of the new Ultimate Team features in this year’s Xbox One and PS4 version are in there. Now here we are with FIFA 18 on Switch, the first FIFA game on a Nintendo home console for half a decade, and the spin machine’s out in full force again. More recently, FIFA's much-hyped story mode, dubbed "The Journey", made its debut in FIFA 17 but was only available on the Xbox One and PS4 versions: Xbox 360 and PS3 owners missed out because those editions didn’t run on the swanky new Frostbite game engine and according to its creative director, "without Frostbite a story this immersive doesn't happen". EA then decided not to make any more FIFA games for Wii U, citing "disappointing commercial results" despite "featuring FIFA's award-winning HD gameplay and innovative new ways to play" (as opposed to being because all the best modes were, you know, totally missing). The game was heavily criticised for this, and gamers stayed away as a result. Nintendo fans need only cast their minds back to the launch of FIFA 13 on Wii U: it was essentially FIFA 12 with major modes – most notably the massively popular Ultimate Team – completely removed. The FIFA series has been a good example of this for a number of years. It must be difficult for publishers and developers to turn a negative into a positive, but sometimes the excuses are so odd our eyebrows can’t help ascending skyward.
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