Hollow souls: why today’s football games can’t simulate the spirit of the beautiful g

April 14th, 2014, 21:22 Posted By: wraggster

EA Sports’ official World Cup 2014 game is released later this week. But where is the current generation’s Sensible Soccer?

While the crazy money at the top tiers of professional football can make a man weep, there’s no doubting what comprises the enduring appeal of the world’s most popular sport, followed by an estimated 3.5 billion people. Or: half the globe’s population.It’s not the glamour or the sports cars, or even the montage of wonder strikes rounding off any given tournament. It’s that anyone can enjoy it. Anyone can play, however impoverished or affluent they might be. Get together with friends, grab something spherical to kick, and you’ve got football.Its essence is something that can be appreciated for its purity. You look, you shoot, you score – a chain of events set within a miniscule time frame and connected by symbiotic motions, a flick of the eyes to assess the position of the keeper coinciding with the drawing back of a boot, strike direction determined by neuronal feedback travelling at 100 metres a second. This isn’t chess, where forethought and an appreciation of the long game inform every equation. It’s pure instinct.Just before Christmas 2013, I found myself in possession of the two biggest football games on the console market: Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 and EA’s FIFA 14. I played them both, at length. But as great as they were, neither left me feeling particularly close to the sport they simulate.These are amazingly comprehensive titles offering fans of ephemeral features – season-specific statistical accuracies and flawless stutter-step animations – depth enough to spend a full 12 months luxuriating in, until the next iteration of their chosen series rolls around. Each new release is an interactive parallel to a perception of football realism framed by contemporary television presentation: intimidatingly loud, incredibly analytical, and probably featuring a spinning graphic or seven. They deliver Super Sunday any day of the week.

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