FIFA 15 on the PS Vita is a minimum effort game for the platform for which the least amount of copies are likely to sell. It probably doesn’t take an expert to see that the Vita would have the smallest marketshare of the various platforms on which the game would be released and as such appears to have the least amount of time and development costs / effort put into its version. FIFA 15 is a roster update on the previous years game and nothing more or less.
The focus is on the single player aspect of the game given that the multiplayer and ultimate team modes are omitted in order to fit all the core FIFA game onto the restricted PS Vita (at least that’s what I hope) but even still the load times are inconsistent and somewhat unbearable. For example in the career mode as you advance the calendar from one match to the next I would be ok if I predict that I’ll need to wait time t to get from one match or date to another. Unfortunately that simply isn’t the case as frequently I’d be forced to wait for upwards of a minute to advance from one day to the next. I’d often worry that the game had just froze and stopped progressing only for it to suddenly start progressing again skipping easily from one day to the next.
The same load issues are also problematic throughout all of the in-game menus and I found myself ignoring checking unessential information and menus such as player or league stats and much of the transfer season bartering that I enjoy so much. Instead I simply jumped from one match to the next thinking that if I’m going to spend a significant portion of my time playing waiting I may as well be waiting for my next match to load.
Once in a match however its the standard game of FIFA’s simulated take on football. It isn’t very challenging and I soon found myself winning most matches on the medium to hard difficulty settings despite having not played a FIFA game seriously in sometime. One issue I have with the actual gameplay though is the reliance on the rear touch panel for effective shooting. Essentially the problem is that its far too easy to score if you manage a shot on target with the rear touch panel whereas its far too difficult to score using the actual dedicated shoot button. Nearly every goal I scored as I brought Cambridge United up a division was scored with the rear touch panel and I soon stopped attempting to shoot with the actual altogether. Its a smart feature don’t get me wrong just a little unbalanced in terms of the goal-to-shot ratio. Aside from that the only other addition is the ability to pass via tapping the front touch screen but in a reverse effect I found that the actual pass buttons were an almost guaranteed success whereas the touch screen more 50-50 on the successful pass ratio to not.
So its the core FIFA single player experience dumbed down a bit for portable play. Unfortunately the horrific load times are repulsive enough that the game loses its pick up and play a quick match nature. Instead its more of a pick up and wait any maybe I’ll get lucky this time and manage the first half of a match. It breaks the core loop of a quick match of FIFA on the road and for that reason alone I suggest you invest your portable playtime elsewhere as its certainly more fun than staring at a loading screen.