FIFA? PES? Against Modern Football Games

Ally Moncrieff slams down his controller to tell the world what’s gone wrong with football games on his TFN debut…

In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes. If Benjamin Franklin had been around today he could have added ‘an annual update to the FIFA and PES series of football games’ to his most famous phrase. Not quite as profound maybe, but no less accurate.

The nature of certainty means that this year is no different, there will of course be a FIFA 15 and a PES 15. A quick glance through the early press releases and it is clear both franchises are offering variations on the same theme, that theme of course being increased realism. And herein lies the problem with modern football games.

The best games sell themselves as a form of escapism, that is the very essence of their appeal. It’s why the release of Grand Theft Auto has people queuing outside Game in the middle of the night and the release of Truck Simulator does not. The finest video game series of all is Nintendo’s Mario Bros, Mario and his brother Luigi are plumbers by trade, if instead of rescuing Princesses and warping down pipes in the Mushroom Kingdom the game concentrated on two overweight lads installing a combi boiler and piping the odd radiator, it’s hard to imagine it would have enjoyed quite the same level of success. Continue reading

The TFN Fifa Personality Test

David Wild takes you through the FIFA Personality Test…

This is largely reposted from a blog piece that I wrote previously last October for The Daily Touch.

We have a theory here at TFN that FIFA brings out a lot of your inner personality. Gaming in general gives any person the medium to behave exactly as he wants in a world with relatively few consequences. Whether it’s GTA V, Fable or Fifa, where there’s an element of free roam there is going to be the opportunity for the game to bring out some of your innate virtues and unleash some of your inner demons.

Fifa’s relatively broad canvas of creativity and the variations in playing style and in-game behaviour that it gives us may bring with it that chance for us to finally live out our fooballing fantasies.

We can stamp an imprint of ourselves on play and behave as if we were the spoiled millionaire of our dreams. Not in as broad ranging a way as something like a souped up New Star Soccer would perhaps allow (EA Games please take note) but nevertheless the structured freedom of play gives us scope to get creative with how we go about things.

Bearing this in mind there are certain archetypal personality types that can be seen over and over again in the Fifa world. Just as people can sometimes be seen as ‘introverted’ or ‘passionate’ in real life, so their Fifa personality can be dissected to reveal some interesting insights into their true character.

We invite you then, our loyal readers, to take our personality test and discover which of the Fifa personality types you think you best fits your own style. Be warned, we may not invite you to Fifa 14 release night if you reveal yourself as a number 5 or a number 7. Continue reading