A single moment can say a great deal about a game’s design philosophy. For me, that moment came in a game between me (as Man City) and the CPU (as Chelsea). Pablo Zabaleta won the ball with a crunching challenge on Eden Hazard; the Belgian hit the deck, with Zabaleta about to stride onto the loose ball, and into acres of space. Meanwhile, his fellow Argentine Sergio Aguero, anticipating an unfolding counter-attack, accelerated into a sprint. But instead of running forward as I squeezed the right trigger, Zabaleta suddenly held both hands up, as if to say 'no foul'. By the time the player responded to my prompt, Nemanja Matic had seized upon the opportunity, intercepting the ball and launching another Chelsea sortie.

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It’s an example of FIFA 15’s much-touted ‘emotional intelligence’, a feature designed to make each player respond authentically to any given scenario. Yet emotions tend to overrule the rational part of our brains, and the same applies here; what it ultimately means for FIFA is that you’ll see players make more mistakes under pressure. In theory, it’s a fine idea, but the execution is problematic, because to compensate for human error, EA Sports has made them less fallible elsewhere. The result is that AI behaviour oscillates between smart and stupid.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with goalkeepers. They’ve been noticeably refined, and for the most part this turns them into truly great shot-stoppers. They’ll now react to deviations in the ball’s flight path, twisting their bodies in mid-air when it takes a deflection off a lunging defender’s knee, jabbing out a leg to turn aside a shot that seems to be squirming past them, and sticking out gloves to palm aside rebounds on the rare occasions the ball falls kindly to your striker. (It’s more common to see a parry picked up by an AI forward, of course.) Unlike last year’s game, you won’t see them hurl themselves full length to the right of their goal as the ball trickles into the bottom left-hand corner. This is undoubtedly a good thing. Loading But on the other hand, they’re often comically panicky in goalmouth scrambles, and alarmingly prone to letting daisy-cutters through their legs. During a thumping early win with my Ultimate Team, I nutmegged the keeper for four of my goals. In another game, I saw Joe Hart suddenly sprint out of his goalmouth as if called forward for an injury-time corner. Which would have been fair enough, but the ball was still in play at the time, and I was 3-0 up. Soon to be 3-1 up.

In fairness, glitches like this in a game that bravely attempts to accurately simulate the extraordinarily complicated physical and behavioural variables of a sport are to be expected, and it’s to FIFA’s credit that they’re relatively infrequent. And in the main, goalkeepers are – as they should be – hard to beat, yet still fallible. It’s thrilling to break an opponent’s back line, only for your rasping, top-corner drive to be thwarted by a fingertip save, bringing howls of anguish from the noisy crowd.

Penetrating that defensive barrier can be quite a challenge at times, not least because opponents seem more ready than ever to put their bodies on the line. Blocked shots are a common occurrence, and even nippy forwards and wingers like Sturridge, Robben and Navas will struggle to accelerate clear of the last man, as lumbering defenders suddenly find a superhuman burst of speed to catch up with players they shouldn’t be able to get near. I get some joy by running into the channels and cutting inside, or back onto your other foot, particularly with flair players: long, mazy dribbles are now easier than ever, and players with low centres of gravity will skip over the outstretched boots of their markers, retaining the ball even as their shirts are being tugged. This does mean that anyone who favours a crossing game may be disappointed. In the demo I scored far too many volleyed goals from long, arcing balls into the box, but that’s not the case in the finished game - though there’s an apparent sweet spot if you manage to double-up on one side. A short pass to a wing-back or wide midfielder and a first-time cross will finds a striker’s head more often than a regular cut-back from the byline. I’m slightly wary of suggesting finesse shots – and, to a lesser extent, flair shots - are overpowered, lest EA Sports nerf them too aggressively with another patch. But it’s true that in a one-on-one, squeezing the left trigger or right bumper as you let fly does give you a significant advantage.

When you’re commanding one of Europe’s top sides in particular, maintaining possession in FIFA 15 is a joy. Slaloming past challenges as Carlos Tevez, say, is a rare treat, and when you’ve got the ball you’ll feel in almost total control. When you lose it, however, it’s another matter. That invisible bubble around attackers is harder to break than ever, not least because sliding challenges are more easily anticipated by players shifting their weight – one of the strengths of my defensive game is now a clear weakness - while minor infractions are more frequently punished.

It doesn’t help that player positioning is bafflingly poor at times. You’ll give the ball away because an overlapping wing-back simply didn’t make the obvious run; even when you telegraph a pass into space, they’ll inexplicably fail to anticipate your plan. And whichever formation you choose, there’s often a huge gap in the middle of the park, frequently exploited by the AI in FIFA’s most egregious piece of scripting: defensive clearances. Should an opposing side head or hack the ball away, the chances of it bypassing your entire midfield and landing at the feet of their forwards is astonishingly high. Loading It’s akin to that classic uncanny valley effect – you can’t help but notice these issues all the more because FIFA gets everything else so right. The animation is sublime, while dribbling and turning is more gratifyingly responsive this year, and overall there’s a more palpably organic feel to each game: the loose balls, the interceptions, the deflections all make it more unpredictable and thus more satisfying.

That’s when it lets you play, because this year it feels like EA Sports has built a game that’s often keener for you to watch. Cutaways intrude more frequently than ever, and you’ll have to wait several seconds in each instance before you’re allowed to skip them. When the ball goes out of play, you’re often reminded of a recent goal or incident by a replay, and while they’re often beautifully framed, after a while it feels like an indulgence, a way of inviting you to marvel at the way dirt and grass stain players’ shirts, or the evident wear and tear on the pitch.

Though these interstitials should, perhaps, be optional, some players will relish a second viewing of a blistering strike. And the role of presentational tweaks shouldn’t be easily dismissed. The wealth of cosmetic changes during gameplay all contribute to the big-match feel, and helps you become more invested in the outcome of a game. If you’re a fan of a mid- to lower-table Premier League team in particular, the novelty of seeing the stands you’ve likely sat in and cheered your side on from, as well as hearing the chants of your fellow supporters, will take some time to wear off.

There are welcome adjustments elsewhere, too. The addition of loan players to Ultimate Team gives you the opportunity to briefly employ a galactico to give your team a temporary boost, though it’ll bite a significant chunk out of your in-game funds that might be more wisely invested elsewhere. Better, perhaps to employ a former great who hasn’t lost their eye for goal: I got some good early mileage out of Diego Milito, for example. It’s now much easier to tailor your tactics according to who you’re playing, too – whichever game mode you choose, you can create and customise multiple team sheets to quickly switch between, rather than having to adjust your setup before every game. Meanwhile, the Match Day Live hub strengthens the growing ties between the game and the sport, giving fans the latest news updates and stats about their favourite team. Loading Increasingly, FIFA seems more interested in simulating a TV broadcast of a match rather than the beautiful game itself. In some cases, that’s not necessarily a bad thing: there’s something special about Martin Tyler reading out the team sheets and highlighting your team’s setup in the early stages of a match, while the recorded snippets of commentary are stitched together more seamlessly than ever.

And yet even here there are problems: Tyler can’t resist an opportunity to discuss how a player performed in “the World Cup of 2014”, while Alan Smith seems obsessed with where exactly the ball hit the back of the net. The desire to feed back to the player, to demonstrate that it’s aware of what’s happening in both the game and the real sport, only serves to remind you that you’re not listening to two human beings converse. No commentary team would talk like this during a real-life match.

It’s moments like this that highlight one of the biggest problems with annualised sports franchises: FIFA 15 is so keen to show what it’s doing differently, that its changes are more in service of the feature list on the back of the box than the quality of the simulation itself. My celebratory response to a last-minute Sebastian Giovinco volley which finally broke a stubborn Sassuolo rearguard action (their Park The Bus strategy proving frustratingly efficient) is testament to how FIFA can stir passions like almost no other game. But even with some sensible investments this season, it’s a little way short of its best form.