It used to be so simple for the discerning purist who’d know that Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer played the better game of footy by a country mile. After all, it’s been the game that footballers themselves play, boasting enthusiastic endorsements from the likes of former FIFA cover star Thierry Henry, who later went on to star on the box for PES 4.
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| Player likenesses don’t look quite so waxy anymore. Ronaldinho here is spot on. | Play is far more physical in FIFA 10, which includes aerial challenges like this. |
PES managed to distil the very essence of real football, providing an unmatched, effortlessly fluid and intuitive game every time while FIFA gradually became increasingly bogged down in a mire of gimmickry and convolution. These days however, things have shifted somewhat as PES has begun to lose the foothold it’s always taken for granted, and as the inauspicious 2008 instalment proved to be a patchy next-gen debut (PES 6 doesn’t count), FIFA upped its game in response, delivering the first great iteration in years.
Fast forward a year and each of the 2009 versions offered enormously accomplished experiences, each boasting a similarly bloated list of special features including Become A Legend and Be A Pro, which left console footy fans with a genuine dilemma for arguably the first time ever.
This year, EA Vancouver are again ensuring that FIFA 10 is at the top of its game when it launches later this year, in an effort to tempt yet more PES fans away from the fold. We’ve always considered ourselves die-hard PES devotees, but we could well be opting for FIFA for the first time since FIFA 95 for the Mega Drive, on the strength of what we’ve played so far of EA Sport’s remarkable offering for the 2010 season.
FIFA 10 is chock-full of new or enhanced features that if delivered to the standard EA is promising, could easily make this the most definitive football game available. Most are refinements and tweaks to components from FIFA 09, but they’re incredibly welcome tweaks nonetheless.
Manager Mode’s authenticity issues have been addressed for one, the dev team isolating 50 key areas for improvement. So, FIFA 10’s upgraded Manager Mode now features authentic transfers, believable player development and realistic match results. Like the central game itself, Manager Mode’s fundamentals have been completely overhauled in an effort to replicate the feeling of being enveloped in a plausible football world.
Gameplay is top of the agenda though according to EA Vancouver’s Line Producer David Rutter, so naturally the majority of improvements have been centred around the core fundamentals. During his presentation, Rutter states that 70% of development resources were focused upon refinement and improvements (some of which were based on fan feedback) and 30% were devoted to innovation, the majority of which has been devoted to tightening up the gameplay.
Fine-tuning the movement has been foremost priority, with a 360-degree dribbling system one of the most significant new implementations. In previous football games, movement had always been restricted to an eight-directional axis, so you’d be obligated to make a run at an unnaturally acute angle, requiring a sharp change in bearing to change course. 360-degree dribbling may sound like a subtle change on paper, but it augments the fluidity of the game immeasurably. It also makes executing a skilled dribble satisfyingly effortless, a side effect of which is the ability to now round the keeper, which was nigh on impossible in FIFA 09.
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| Being able to make curved runs is a massive step forward for football games. No longer are you restricted by an eight-direction axis. | As ever with FIFA, the licenses are packed in with virtually every club and national team accounted for. Still no official Dutch squad though. |
Goalkeepers themselves have also been given an AI upgrade, so they’re no longer superhuman acrobats capable of ridiculous saves. They play safe, tipping over the bar or deflecting a shot wherever necessary too, so they behave in much more convincing and realistic fashion.
Players themselves also respond to situations in a more credible manner, contextually jostling into position for defensive and offensive plays. There’s also greater freedom in physical play complemented by updated AI that reacts with greater urgency and an increased logic. This makes FIFA 10’s matches more physical than before, forming something authentically competitive and satisfying where the usual modifications to the passing, shooting and free kicks provide the icing on the cake.
Playing the game at EA’s Guildford office, we found the alterations to FIFA’s essentials immediately apparent. Being able to make curved runs and weave between players alone represents a massive leap in gameplay terms, transforming FIFA into an astonishingly organic game of football. The dozens of additional improvements might not be as obvious, but they’re undoubtedly there, making for the most cohesive FIFA yet. The game plays exceptionally well even at this stage of completion, which is currently hovering somewhere around the 75% mark, we’re told.
Perhaps the most exciting brand new addition to FIFA’s swelling bag of extra options is the recently revealed ‘Create-A-Set-Piece’ tool, which allows you to choose a segment of the pitch, then freely sketch out player’s movements to customise your very own plays. You can record motions using a face button, manipulate the timeline using the right analogue stick and then test out your creation until you’re finally content with the results.
Once you’ve finished assembling your bespoke set piece you can then assign it to a direction on the D-pad for each quadrant on the field, meaning you can have four bespoke plays mapped at any one time per quadrant. This gives you a grand total of 32 set pieces for you to call upon with a tap on a direction depending upon where you are on the pitch. ‘Create-A-Set-Piece’ is something EA hope will be a “compelling and useful” piece of unique user-generated content that you can helpfully deploy in matches at any time.
Online too has been given an enormous push, tackling the frustrations that plagued multiplayer in response to requests from the community. There have been over 275, 000,000 games of FIFA played online to date, so formulating a more robust service has been high on the agenda for EA Vancouver. Multiplayer also extends to the practice arena now, so you can have a training kickabout with a friend both online or locally.
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| Goalkeepers will be more intelligent for FIFA 10, without being ludicrously acrobatic. | Manager Mode – like the rest of the game – has enjoyed a major overhaul. EA Vancouver say it’s a much more realistic and authentic experience. |
EA Vancouver has seemingly thought of everything for FIFA 10, scrutinising every conceivable facet of the last game in a concerted endeavour to hone the elements they felt weren’t up to the high standards that they have now set themselves. EA Sports’ bigwig Peter Moore has said that he wants FIFA 09’s Metacritic score of 87 to increase to at least 90 for FIFA 10, and on the basis of what we’ve enjoyed so far, things seem to be shaping up nicely.
Fundamentally, FIFA 10 feels right and looks good. An increased emphasis on authenticity appears to have given the franchise renewed vigour, which should in turn reshape everyone’s expectations. For now then, we’re saying it’s 1-0 to EA Sports until we have the chance to get our hands on PES 2010. Konami most definitely have a fight on their hands this year though. We wait with baited breath…
