Another year, another glut of sports games. We all know about the yearly additions that EA makes to line their coffers with glorious, glorious money. Sports titles are pretty much guaranteed sales in EA's eyes, because there are many sports fans, and a lot them will play it in their frat houses, or whatever it is that American college kids do. At least, I imagine that's the main consumer base for most of EA's titles. Except, of course, for Fifa.
Fifa is one of the 2 big football games, the other being Pro Evolution Soccer. It is EA sports biggest franchise, and has huge worldwide sales, apparently the 2011 edition sold 2.6 million units in it's first week, an impressive total considering most active gamers write sports games off.
Anyhow, the clock has been turning, and it's almost time for a new edition of Fifa to be released. And on Tuesday the demo was released, and so I have been pouring my time into it. Last year, Fifa 11 really did change the game considerably. They made the physics more realistic, they made passing much more realistic and generally changed it to be a much better experience than previous iterations. Can this years edition continue the forward momentum, and bring the gaming action closer to the real life beautiful game? In short, the answer is a resounding yes.
Pessimists often suggest that yearly sequels are nothing but glorified team updates. Reflect changes to team line-ups and player stats, and that about it. Not true. Till about 3 or 4 years ago, Pro Evo was the better football game. However, PES has stagnated, whilst Fifa has made good headway, progressed nicely to make a much better game.
The main gameplay additions to this year come in the form of the player impact engine, and tactical defending. I will start with the one that has the most impact: Tactical defending. Tactical defending basically means they have taken out the ridiculous hold A, charge down the ball and tackle. You now have to manually track the man on the ball and tackle. If you have spent the last 10 years playing football games using the old style ?hold a button and get the ball? style of playing, like me, good luck in your first few games. You'll have a leakier defence than Arsenal.
Tactical defending is HARD. It takes a lot of time to get used to. However, it is clearly a much more realistic take on defending, and once you get used to it it gives you a lot more utility. You can use an AI player to close an opposition player in, and then position yourself to intercept a likely pass, or you could stay with a man and use the new jostling system, allowing you to slow him down with a well timed shirt tug or shoulder barge, allowing you to make a tackle. Or giving away a free kick, if your not careful.
You do have the option to change to Legacy Defending, which is pretty much the same defending system used in Fifa 11. After using tactical defending I did prefer this to legacy, but I wonder how this will fit into online play. Certainly the legacy defending is an easier way to play, and someone using it against someone who is still learning to play the tactical way will have a real advantage.
The other big feature is the new player impact engine. This is a new physics engine that more realistically simulates the effect of tackles and other player impacts during the game. This allows for a more realistic model for injury, and also helps with what is a legal tackle and what is a foul. I spent some time deliberately fouling players and and giving it close inspection in the instant replay. I found it to be very impressive. It has removed a lot of clipping, as far as I can tell. In the older games, occasionally tackles would occur where legs go through each other, and all manner of other strange occurrences. This seems to be largely gone with this new engine. It also makes the big tackles look much better and more realistic. It certainly adds to the growing fidelity of the game.
Another new addition that I have been able to test in the demo is the new precision dribbling mechanic. With a hold or the LB button, you can make your player make very small, and very precise moves. This allows you to navigate defenders, turn and make a critical pass, clearance or shot. This mechanic can be used in a variety of situations, and not just in attack. It is very useful in defence so that you can make a little space and play in a precision pass to play your way out of defence, instead just hoofing it out.
In general these new gameplay additions are very benficial to the game over all, and I expect I'll be hitting the local game shop on launch day.
One thing I am slightly worried about by the demo is the stats that the teams have. It seems that Barcelona's players have some rather over inflated overall stats. It's hard to argue that Barcelona, as a team, are currently the worlds best, but as single players they aren't that much better than others, except for Messi. Players like Pique, Xavi and Iniesta seem to have inflated stats purely through being Barca players. Comparing them to a team like Manchester City, whose current squad is incredibly strong, shows that it does seem a little biased.
Sadly, you can't try the online play in this demo, and I am interested to see how they have changed it. The biggest problem with Fifa 11 was the amount of people who quit whilst losing, and EA really need to sort this out by putting sever in game punishment for quitting too often. Other than this, the game is shaping up to be the best so far.
