As a FIFA player for over 15 years, a story mode is something I've always wanted, but never thought I'd see the day it arrived. FIFA 17 is the one they finally thought to give it a shot with, after Fight Night Champion gave it a crack in 2011. Alex Hunter, the grandson of the great, Jim Hunter, is a 17 year-old looking to make it in the big leagues. With the choice to sign for any Premier League club, you get the chance to make him a rising star for your favourite prem team.
The game has cutscenes that tell Hunters life and they look great. Powered by the Frostbite Engine, it looks real and the lip syncing is great, an odd plus for a FIFA game. There are a number of characters that show up, Hunter's family and people who pop up in his footballing life. Some of these are portrayed brilliantly, particularly Hunter's mother, Butler, the coach at your chosen team and Hunter's lifelong friend, Gareth Walker. Their performances seem so genuine and real.
The game works out as a more in depth Be A Pro, but you can also play as the whole team, which I found much more preferable. Hunter is aiming to get into the first team and an eventual starter. After the rise of fellow teammate, Walker, Hunter is then made to leave on loan to the Championship. So, you end up playing for two teams, which I didn't see coming but liked it as it made sense. Hunter is portrayed well, but it can be so hard to listen to his cringey dialogue, especially during the post-match interviews.
You get to pick which position to play as, you only get the choice of attacking positions. However, depending on what the default team is, the team you sign for may not play your position. I picked CAM and my chosen team didn't play with one, but my on loan team did, suffice to say I enjoyed being on loan, rather than playing for my favourite team. The weaker squads were always getting played too, third choice goalkeepers and the youth striker would play ahead of the star players. All the teams you played against had their star players on, which made it feel unfair. Williams was another footballing personality in the game, he featured often in cutscenes and in the social media tweets praising him and Hunter's partnership together, I think the whole time I was in the same squad as him, we played together twice. It was the same with Harry Kane, who was the big signing your team made, but he didn't feature with me once.
You can do training skills to improve your overall stats and you get punished by skipping them, you can lose your starting eleven place. I wanted to check my personal stats, like my goals and assists, but I didn't think you could. Turns out they were hidden by what I thought was an Ultimate Team advert, but after you looked at your UT rewards you could see your personal stats. I thought that Butler should've just been the manager of whatever team you chose, the real life manager features but never says anything, I know they couldn't get the real voices, but Butler acts like the manager, it just fits better. Also, when going for the league title, a random woman in a suit entered the dressing room and gave a big speech, Butler and the real manager just stood there, I had no idea who she was, she just entered, spoke and left, no one even told us who she was.
I think we were partly mis-sold, there weren't really choices. I was expecting choices that affected your career, not just picking how to react to dialogue. I was expecting people to ask you to come out drinking at a party and you had a dilemma of choosing whether to go out with your friends or call it a day for training the next day. Basically, someone says something or you get asked a question in an interview and you get three choices to respond with. The gist of each option is to reply humbly, cocky or standard responses. They didn't seem to really even matter, fiery just meant you'd get more Twitter followers and fall down the pecking order with your manager and the opposite if you responded cool.
The Journey is a welcomed addition to the FIFA series and I commend EA for trying something new as the franchise certainly needed a new feature/mode. It's only available on the newer generation of consoles, keep that in mind. Sadly, it's only one season long which gives you around forty five games to play, maybe Alex Hunter's story continues in FIFA 18 and a year of his career each new FIFA game. I didn't know the name Hunter, but I certainly do now.
7.5/10
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