FIFA World Cup 2014 announced – Malibu Stacy has a new hat!
You might think that ‘annualising’ and having a new version of a franchise come out every single year is a bit much – but EA have long been the masters of this discipline. And now they’ve just announced yet another addition to the series: FIFA World Cup 2014.
Astonishingly, this looks like it could be the 12th football game they’ve released in merely the last ten years – with this year seeing both FIFA 14 and World Cup 2014, and 2010 seeing similar. That’s on average more than one near identical title a year.
The new game is set to hit on April 15th for both Xbox 360 and PS3 and EA are promising “multiple improvements and innovations” over FIFA 14, which was released only last September – and terrifyingly, one of the big achievements is “100 new animations”. Hold the front page!
Here’s a full run-down of the new features, as described by EA:
- World Class Control – all-new control system which includes additional dribbles and flicks. New passing animations, including both ground and outside of the foot curling passes, will open the door to more attacking options.
- Set Piece Tactics – Use the D-pad to command your teammates and strike fear from set pieces and corners.
- New Penalty Kicks – New save animations and shot tuning puts players in control of their nation’s fate. Keepers can throw off kick-takers by performing different animations including wobbly-knees, matador, and shoot-it-there points.
- Over-the-Back Headers – Now defenders can leap over attacking players to clear the ball to safety.
- adidas® Ball Physics — EA SPORTS and adidas® partner to deliver the most realistic ball physics system on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
- adidas® micoach Training – Complete adidas micoach training sessions to boost in-game attributes for individual players on your team. Choose from six different attribute boosts and 18 different drills to improve your players’ performance during the tournament.
This talking of dribbling and ball physics is all well and good (hey, no sniggering at the back), but apparently the game will most importantly feature 203 national football teams that took part in qualifying for the cup and has suitably “patriotic presentation” complete with flags for added World Cup realism.
So that’s FIFA World Cup 2014. Sure, it might sound like it’d work better as downloadable content for FIFA 14… and maybe we should worry about a game that is obviously going to have been both rushed for a fixed deadline (the actual real life World Cup)… and maybe we should ask whether people really should be expected to pay forty quid for a quick re-skin… but… but… Malibu Stacy has a new hat!
