The Good
Firstly, let me start by saying that the graphical improvements are evident from the get-go. The pitches, the textures, the lightning and especially the player models all look stunning, and when looked at close-up look even better. I’d go as far to say that no football game has ever come this close to player realism.
The actual teams themselves are much improved also. Liverpool ‘feel’ like their real-life counterparts, focusing much more on a strong backline and a steady ship. Barcelona opts for a more attacking game, and Italy play their best football from the midfield, playing intricate passes and penetrating through-balls from deeper positions. There are a total of six teams to play as: Liverpool, Barcelona, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.
The players also have been given the same care and attention to detail. Fernando Torres is shockingly similar, not just in the way he looks, but also in his movement, the way he reacts and controls the ball, and even the way he shoots and finishes when presented certain situations.
They’ve gone some way to improving the ball physics, not by a great margin but the subtle changes are there for everyone to see. They’ve made dribbling and trapping the ball harder too, putting more responsibility on the user to control the ball. The game has also been slowed down and now has a much better pace about it. Add that to the fact that the AI has been improved in defensive areas of the pitch and what you’re left with is a much more balanced game and realistic game.
The menu’s have also been given some treatment and now host a plethora of new options, especially for the tacticians amongst us. You can now auto-choose your team by form, ability, form and ability. You can have your substitutes come on when they’re a little tired, moderately tired, very tired. You can choose whether they play a direct attacking game through the centre, down the sides, or mix it up and utilise both, and that’s just the start. If you spend enough time twiddling you can mold almost everything to your liking.
The Bad
Now for the bad, and there’s quite a bit to cover. We will start with the goalkeepers as they are cringe-worthy. The AI is absolutely dire; they can’t save properly, they run passed some balls, they fall over for no apparent reason on occasion, other times they simply don’t react to shots, and yes, the annoying way they parry the ball to the striker is back and as infuriating as ever.
The animations aren’t the best either. While they have threw in a few new animations in there are still a bunch of rehashed ones, and your players still run like they have a stick up their bum. They even thought it’d be fun to go all retro on us and provide us with a few animations that were seen in the series five and six years ago, seriously un-cool. What else they’ve brought back is jerky replays, but this has happened with demos of Konami’s in the past and was fixed by final build.
A lot of the sounds are annoying and inaccurate. The referee’s whistle is strange-sounding, and the ball resounds with a dull ‘thud’ from time-to-time. The crowds also need work, while they may have improved their timing and reaction to certain situations; they still sound a little poor. Plus, they still insist on repeating the same chant over and over in a monotonic drone that will grate on you very quickly.
Finally, the controls aren’t exactly responsive at the moment, and don’t have the same tightness as we’re accustomed to seeing. I’ve been reassured that this is simply a problem in the demo though and has already been fixed for the final build. Let’s just hope that isn’t all they’ve fixed come launch, because if they are going to directly compete with Fifa 10 then more improvements need to be seen. At this present moment it feels like two steps forward and one step back.
Craig Bryan, NoobFeed
