Off the pitch, FIFA 15’s menus feel less laggy than last year’s game and the ability to save up to three custom team sheets, each with their own formation, strategy and player instructions, should please the tacticians among us. Plus, the addition of two new team mentalities, including “park the bus”, should please Jose Mourinho wannabes. For the rest of us, EA’s much-touted “player intelligence” means that teams will automatically change their strategy according to the events and importance of the match. Need nothing less than a win to clinch promotion? Tied 1-1 with ten game minutes to go? Your men will automatically get forward like a team possessed, or at least like Man City against QPR in the dying moments of the 2011/12 Premier League season.

 

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. 

 

Let's start with the certainties. FIFA 15 is, in purely technical terms, stunningly impressive. The player models, though a little top heavy, have taken another huge stride towards photorealism, and the renewed match atmosphere effects - team sheets being read out, player emotions, licensed stadiums, authentic terrace chants, to name but a few - combine to create a real wow factor for the first few games you play.

 

This is, lest we forget, the first fully-fledged next-gen release for the series, and you sense EA has decided the best way to catapult the series forward is to lob the proverbial kitchen sink into our living rooms, cramming in two or three years' worth of updates all in one go.

 

Online, there's very little difference between FIFA 15 and FIFA 14. You can play competitively or cooperatively in seasons, join Ultimate Team tournaments or join a club and meet up for 11 vs 11 events. The action seems, on first impressions, to be smooth, with good matchmaking and plenty of scope to play how you want to play. 

 

If there's a sense of 'if it ain't broke' about the structure and game modes, then it's more than made up for by the presentation. On one level, FIFA 15 pushes the Sky Sports-inspired look and feel about as far as it can go, with superb cutaways and replays, titles, close-ups and the rest that leave it closely resembling real TV coverage. The commentary from Martin Tyler and Adam Smith is astonishingly good, particularly in the premiership, though you wonder how well the references to Manchester United's troubles or world cup performances will date over the coming months.