FIFA’s Ultimate is something I haven’t really tried out until FIFA 16 and it has literally consumed my weeknights. Instead of playing music, going outside to play basketball during these warm summer evenings, more often than not I come home from my internship and play FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) for the remaining hours of the night until I realize I need to go to sleep so I don’t get in too late tomorrow morning at work.

For those unaware of this game mode is, it is a new way to play where you start off with a terrible squad filled with bronze players (the skill and quality of players are categorized by bronze, silver, and gold, in that order, with the exception of special rare types). What makes this game mode so much fun is the amount of control you have over your squad. You can pick your formation at any time, buy or sell players on the live transfer market that has approximately two million transfers going on at any given time, pick your team’s home and away kits, stadium, ball, etc.

The sets of games you play are in the order of ten game seasons. The point system is the same as in the real world, three points for a win, one point for a tie, and no points awarded for a loss. After these first ten games where you start off in the lowest division, DIV 10, the total points you earned determines whether your team gets promoted to the next division, remain in your current division, or get relegated to a lower division (if you do not get promoted in DIV 10 you remain there because it is the lowest, and the same goes for DIV 1, you cannot be promoted past it). There is also a “title” to be won which is always three more points higher than getting promotion in the current division you are in.

After playing a game you earn a certain amount of coins which is the currency used to buy any team items (kits, stadiums, managers), consumables (training boosts, chemistry/style upgrades), and most importantly, players. Whether your team gets promoted, relegated, remains in the current division, or wins the title, you get an extra amount of coins. It goes without saying that the better you play the more coins you earn (obviously more for a win than a loss, but also more for a clean sheet, no goals scored against you, than allowing the other team to score three goals against you, as well as other factors that contribute to how well you played).

One of the great things about this game that makes it so addictive is worrying about two fundamental elements related to your players: chemistry and fitness. Teammates that are adjacent to each other in the formation have a line drawn connecting them. In a simple example, two strikers at the top who do not play in the same professional league nor are from the same country will have no chemistry between each other and the line connecting them will be red. However if they do play in the same league like Serie A, or even the same team like Juventus, or are both Spanish, then they will have a stronger “link”, either yellow, or green which is stronger. It is imperative to have a team with nearly all yellow or green links between players making for the maximum potential chemistry which is one-hundred.

The other factor to consider is fitness. After playing a game, the players used during the game, the ones in starting eleven, will have a fatigue factor played against them and their fitness level/stat, which was ninety-nine when they were fresh if they hadn’t played yet, will go down to ninety-two or eighty-seven or something. Before I always dreaded this because it meant I had to buy fitness consumables to increase the players’ fitness back to ninety-nine so I could use them at their full potential for the next game. There are two solutions to this that I will address later.

This game has both an offline and online mode. I certainly enjoy playing online more against other people because there is something significantly more satisfying beating another person instead of a computer. Currently I am in DIV 3 and trying to at least hold my place. This is my second time in this division where I was relegated before to DIV 4 and I am trying to at least stay in this division or get promoted to DIV 2.

It has taken a while to build up my team. What some people have done to address the fitness issue built into the game is actually to cultivate two teams that they swap out for each other in between games because after “resting” one game during the season, those players on the bench will have their fitness back to ninety-nine before their next game. The other solution would be to buy fitness consumables and apply them to any and all players that needed them each time you wanted them to play consecutive games. This is a more costly and tedious method so I have gone with the former.

I have made two impressive (in my eyes) teams; a one-hundred eighty-four rated Liga BBVA club/Spanish club and a one-hundred eighty-five rated Ligue 1/French club. These numbers come from the overall player ratings and the additional one-hundred from a maxed out chemistry between the players and manager. My goal is to reach DIV 1 and win the title hopefully before FIFA 17 comes out.