FIFA 17’s The Journey is EA’s best footballing move since Ultimate Team

FIFA 17’s The Journey is the mode I never knew I wanted but am now glad exists. Given how the leading football games, FIFA and PES, generally do little more than iterate from year to year, the inclusion of a full-blown story mode in this year’s game from EA is not only a nice surprise, but also a great deal of fun.

Whatever your thoughts on how FIFA 17 plays compared to PES 2017 (I happen to think they both offer an excellent game of football this year), FIFA is the only one to offer a story mode. Both games have careers of sorts, letting you manage and play as a team over numerous seasons. But in The Journey you are Alex Hunter, a young player who starts his career on a field watched over by enthusiastic parents, before working up the ranks. It is, essentially, FIFA: The RPG.

That might sound a bit far fetched, and is to a degree, but as you progress you earn points that can be put into skills, constantly improving your standing as a player. This isn’t a skill tree on a level to what you’d find in Mass Effect (although BioWare was involved in creating the story here), but you do have some say over how Alex develops. And it has a more positive impact than you might think: even with slight control over how your man progresses, your attachment to him grows quickly.

Over the years of playing FIFA, I’ve generally stuck to playing as a whole team, whether that be in the various career modes or in FIFA Ultimate Team. In The Journey you can do that too, but the experience is so much better if you only take control of Alex. It’s easy to get caught up with everything as games progress, getting angry at teammates who didn’t pick you out when you call for the ball after making a great run, or throwing your arms up when you make a killer pass only for your strike partner to fluff his lines.

And it doesn’t take long to throw you into the deep end, either. 11-year old Alex is soon 18-year old Alex, taking part in an Exit Trial to try and impress scouts. Bizarrely at this early stage in the campaign you have no choice but to take control of the whole team, which makes impressing as Alex trickier than it needs to have been. You’ll play a couple of 11v11 halves and do some drills, then get signed up to a Premier League team should you make the grade (if you don’t, you just retry until you do).

It’s a nice touch to be able to choose your team (you’re so good they all want you), but the decision isn’t as simple as picking the club offering the best wage. The top teams will require better performances to get on the bench or into the starting 11, while relegation fodder like Bournemouth will likely offer you more match time. Again, it’s not the most complex system, but it’s another nod towards realism in what is a mode designed to give players their chance to live the dream as a professional footballer.

The story itself is pretty cliched, but it’s the kind of stuff I want to see: tensions in the dressing room, a strained relationship with your father, a grandad who will do anything to help his grandson succeed. The major letdown comes from the in-game performances provided by the footballing pros EA has brought onboard to ‘act’. I love Harry Kane, but the further he is from a voiceover studio the better.

BioWare’s touch is most apparent in the conversations, with the game giving you the option to respond in a balanced, fiery, or cool manner. Your choice impacts your overall status with your fans and manager, with fiery confrontations going down well with punters but the boss preferring that the team is put first at all times. More fans will earn you better sponsorship deals, but you may not get into the starting 11 if the manager isn’t on your side. Story and decision-making only take up a small amount of overall play time, but it’s enough to get you immersed into what’s going on.

FIFA 17’s The Journey is far from perfect, with a rating system that seems quick to punish minor slip ups but less keen to reward good attacking play, but I really enjoyed it. If you’ve found FIFA to be a little stale in recent years, this could well be the game mode you’ve been waiting for.