14 DAY TRIAL // 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is clearly not as good a game as FIFA 14, but the development team at EA Sports was wise enough to understand that sometimes sales are not based only on quality, but on the variety that a title can offer.
In the new World Cup focused title, the studio has managed to create an experience that managed to capture my imagination and fill hours of my playing time: Captain Your Country, which asks the gamer to get a player from the fringes of the national team and guide him off and on the pitch towards greatness.
I was presented with several possibilities and my loyalty to Liverpool meant that I chose to control Raheem Sterling, the 19-year-old winger who has been performing very well during the season and has scored some crucial goals for the side as it tries to secure the Premier League title.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil game mode pits the selected player against three others and asks them to perform well during matches, which can be fictional or based on real-life schedules, while also improving their overall performance during training sessions.
My first match was a B-side affair with France and I was quick to put my stamp on the game by picking up the ball from the opposing player to score with a quick shot to the right side of the keeper in the fourth minute.
As you can imagine, the game quickly gave me a performance level of 9, which was sorely needed because I spent the rest of the match trying to perform the same feat and failing in my defensive and my midfield duties.
Captain Your Country is not a forgiving mode, although it takes some pretty poor performances to actually fail, but it gives an interesting look at the way players need to perform in order to move up in a national team and convince their head coach to get them into the World Cup level squad.
The most difficult areas of the game are the various training sessions, during which the player is expected to improve some aspects of his performance, and there, the AI-controlled players regularly outperformed me.
This meant that I needed to perform even better in the actual matches, which I tended to do by using my pace and shooting power to contribute at least one goal for England in both friendly matches and during qualifying.