The Journey is EA’s first serious attempt at creating something 2K has been doing with its NBA 2K series for years: namely, provide a proper singleplayer story mode, complete with a narrative and cutscenes. It’s more than just a single new game mode, though. This isn’t some bullet point for the back of the box. Just like 2K’s MyCareer, The Journey is being positioned as the centrepiece of FIFA 17, and for a guy like me who prefers singleplayer, that’s exactly what it’s become.

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Unlike PES’ career modes—or even FIFA’s older equivalents, which are still present deeper in the menus—The Journey puts you in the shoes of a pre-designed character, who has his own backstory and physical appearance.

Beginning as a young boy, you control a guy named Alex Hunter as he makes his way through the ups and downs of the professional game in England, experiencing everything from a loan spell with a lower-division team to cup finals and Premier League titles.

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The Journey isn’t just a fancy singleplayer mode for a sports game, though. It’s practically a full-blown RPG experience. While you’ll be playing actual games of football, you also have to take part in training sessions with your team, which at first are used as tutorials for newcomers, but which soon become the best way for you to level up Alex’s stats (both his overall numbers and by unlocking and attaching specific perks); the better you do in each drill (essentially FIFA mini-games), the more you’ll improve, and the better your chances of making the starting XI for the next game, which in turn will give you more game time and more chances to level up.

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Adding to the RPG feel are the quantity and quality of cutscenes that are used to break up the football. Sure, the story is corny as hell (it’s your standard “boy come good” sports tale), but it’s told with genuine sincerity, a few lighter moments and some very fancy cutscenes helping it all go down a little easier

So far so 2K MyCareer, but one thing FIFA improves on its own is that it tailors the game experience to suit the story. Instead of just asking you to play and then loosely cobbling some cutscenes together based on your performance, The Journey directly intervenes in your game sometimes to suit its narrative needs, creating roster spots for fictional characters on actual teams (which 2K has also done this year), injuring star players to give you your first shot and transferring big players (like Harry Kane) into your club to give the manager an excuse to present you with your career’s first roadblock.

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It makes the whole thing feel like a more complete, coherent package than just a collection of cutscenes padding your games. And while it runs into many of MyCareer’s problems later down the line—like a drop in cutscenes once you establish yourself in a mid-career grind—its strong opening and overall packaging have made it one of the most enjoyable things I’ve played in a sports game in a long time.

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Is The Journey going to mean much to the kind of person who obsesses over pack opening videos on YouTube? Maybe. But it definitely means a lot to me, a solitary player who used to craft his own narratives in career mode anyway, but can now indulge this style of play on a (relatively) Hollywood scale. It’ll also mean a lot to a more casual player, who now gets a guided tour of sorts (including tutorials) through the meat of FIFA’s offering, while also serving as perhaps the only major sports games that is now totally welcoming of any brand new players, whether they be football fans taking their first steps in an RPG, or maybe even vice versa.

It’s a key part of the FIFA 17 experience, a real reason to pick this game up even if you’re not a hardcore football game player, and it’s one that PES can’t even offer, let alone match.

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I’m disappointed that FIFA’s move to a new engine didn’t result in a bigger improvement to its on-field offering, and I’m disappointed that despite year after year of feedback PES still can’t seem to fix their shit when it comes to basic issues of navigation and presentation.

Indeed, the established divides/cliches between the two series—that FIFA is the skin and PES is the soul of football—have become so entrenched this year that you almost wish the two studios could climb out of the trenches on Christmas Day, shake hands, join forces and release a single football game. Let Konami handle the on-field code and EA can do...everything else.

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Since that’s never going to happen, though, we’re left with this eternal struggle, which some years is won by the plucky underdog, but which most years—like this one—is carried by the global juggernaut which is able to devote so much money and manpower to their game that even when it’s not as good a football game, it remains the more enjoyable experience overall.

SYSTEM NOTES

I played PES 2017 on PS4. I played FIFA 17 on Xbox One. I also played PES 2017 on PC, which is an embarrassing port, so that you don’t have to.