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FIFA 18 on Nintendo Switch is a curious beast: a game not quite last gen, not quite current gen. It's a game that on the face of it looks significantly inferior to the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions, but viewed as a portable game is pretty impressive. It's a game I'm happy to play on a bus, but I wouldn't want to play it on a big telly at home. Indulge me the appropriation of a football cliche: FIFA 18 is a video game of two halves.I played FIFA 18 on Switch at EA's big Los Angeles event yesterday, and can report it certainly feels like FIFA. But there's no avoiding the big issue here: it doesn't look anywhere near as good as the other versions (check out my early impressions of FIFA 18 played on a PS4 Pro for more). FIFA 18 on Switch is not built on the Frostbite game engine, and so none of the fancy new graphical features that you'll see on the main version of the game are included. It looks pretty plain by comparison, with an almost flat feel that lacks depth and atmosphere. The crowds and grass suffer in particular. Clearly, FIFA 18 on Switch is hamstrung by the lack of the Frostbite engine, but the game plays nicely and feels at least as responsive as FIFA 17.
After playing in handheld mode, my colleague Chris Bratt and I played with the Joy-con detached. This is a particularly fiddly experience made just about bearable by slotting on the Joy-con extenders to make pressing shoulder buttons easier. When you play FIFA in this way, the game triggers a four-button control scheme and displays helpful input commands that pop up above the selected players. I didn't enjoy using the Joy-con detached, but I can see them doing an okay job if I were killing time with a friend on a train.
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