But FIFA Mobile requires you to have players who fill specific positions to utilize those tactics - no playing anyone out of position here. You’re able to choose from Attacking, Balanced and Defensive tactics for Attack Mode or Season matches, with more of them available as you level up. Why? It has to do with the formations and tactics and how they work as you unlock them. Forget a starting XI, you’ll want 27 players in order to field a proper squad with all options available to you. What might startle you is how many players you need to round out your team. That’s a core element of many sports games these days. It’s probably not going to be a surprise to learn that FIFA Mobile wants you to start with players of modest talent and continually improve your squad using a card-based system. This is a group of up to 32 players, ensuring you can always challenge someone you (sort of) know to a friendly Attack Mode match, as well as participate in League Championships and Tournaments against other Leagues. While not a separate mode per se, you’ll also unlock the ability to start or join a League. It starts out fairly difficult right off the bat, so you’ll probably want to build your team up to an overall rating of at least 70 before jumping into a Season. Season – Exactly what it sounds like, Season mode allows you to pick from a number of real life leagues to test your skills and your own squad against their clubs.Winning matches in Attak Mode earns you fans, allowing you to progress to higher tiers that offer greater rewards for a victory. The process then repeats for the second half. Then your opponent takes a turn, playing a half against your defenders (controlled by the AI but following your tactics). Suffice it to say that you play half a match controlling only those times your team has the ball, trying to score as many goals as you can. Attack Mode – This is the asynchronous multiplayer mode, and is unusual enough to go into in more detail.And yes, we’ve played in the middle of the night to verify that. The good news is that you’ll always find something that’s live no matter when you log in. The selection changes constantly, with each event only around for a certain amount of time before it’s replaced by another. Live Events – Familiar to anyone who’s played Madden Mobile, Live Events are quick challenges that you can complete to earn coins, XP and collectibles.That means making some decisions about what to tackle in any given session, which is why it’s helpful to know what each mode is about. Know Your Game ModesįIFA Mobile has several different ways to play soccer, each of which draws from a common pool of Stamina. Sometimes that may be beneficial when you are just starting out and getting a feel for the game, but allowing the AI to be in control when close to goal is almost always a bad idea, one that will lead to goalkeepers claiming the ball many times without your side even getting off a shot. Most of all, never forget that if you don’t give your players some input, they’re going to do what they want. However, you can use a combination of the two for example, using the stick to dribble and then tapping on a teammate to pass. One very important thing to remember is that the stick and buttons override the tap controls, so as soon as you are on the stick, that’s in control. The stick is used to direct the player’s movement, while the buttons have context-sensitive roles on offense and defense: pass (blue), sprint & skill (green) and shoot (red) while attacking, and switch (blue), sprint & tackle (green) and slide (red) while defending. The alternative is to use a virtual stick and button combo. This is a little trickier than passing but still not too difficult overall, and you should get the hang of it quickly. To shoot, you simply start on the player with the ball and swipe toward the goal, with the speed of the swipe controlling the shot’s power and the direction of it controlling … well, the direction of the shot. Passing can be done by either tapping on a player without the ball, in which case the current player will get it to him by ground or air, depending on the distance, or by tapping on a spot on the pitch to play a pass into space.
The important things to remember here are how to pass and shoot. Your team will operate this way by default. The first and most basic way is to let the AI control where the players move when they have the ball, with you stepping in to use taps and swipes when necessary. While we’d argue that FIFA Mobile still doesn’t quite deliver a console quality experience in terms of its actual match play, at least it gives you two viable options for controlling your team.