14 DAY TRIAL // The 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil game from EA Sports might only be coming to the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, but it seems that the development team is focused on adding a number of improvements that will appeal to all fans of the football sim.
Matthew Prior, line producer at the studio, tells Sportra that there are changes to the entire penalty system, designed to make it easier for gamers to execute them, especially given how important they can become in a World Cup elimination match.
Gamers will need to be more attentive to the green bar and the amount of power they use rather than place the shot using their left analogue stick.
The change is designed to make players work harder to get a penalty and then convert it, especially during a tight match, which hardly happens in FIFA 14 at the moment because scoring from such a situation is a little too difficult.
The defensive side of 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is also being transformed by the fact that defenders who are dropping back are able to actually use the body of an attacker to get more height on their jump and clear the ball.
This basically means that it is easier to defend against lobed balls, one of the most efficient attacking methods in FIFA 14, which should add some more realism to the entire experience.
It will be interesting to see how the player community reacts to the changes, many of which might then also be implemented in the normal version of the game.
2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is set to be offered on April 15 in North America and on April 17 in Europe, giving players more than one month to play with the game before the real-world competition starts.
Gamers will be able to pick up any nation in the world and then guide it through the qualification process and then the final tournament in Brazil, with all the stadiums realistically translated into virtual form and all the players given carefully researched stats.
A new Captain Your Country mode is being introduced, challenging gamers to choose any player in the squad and then battle three rivals through training and matches in order to earn the right to wear the armband.
FIFA 15 is also in the initial stages of development, but no info on it has been yet offered.