FIFA 12 News, Information & Discussion Part 6

[Silverstone]

Sounds good so far. Looking forward to this. Always a day one purchase

[Fintan Stack]

That all sounds like good news and a step in the correct direction. It needed to happen. Here's exactly why.

Fifa 12: arguably the best fifa yet; arguably one of the best football games ever made. It got so much right, but some crucial things wrong. The flaws only really appearing upon repeated visiting of the game, you start to notice the cracks in the veneer.

There's a lot of Fifa 12 that I love. They've nailed the aspect of facing up a defender and taking him on. You don't need tricks, just fancy reactions with the control stick, and you can feel the difference from certain players to another, although that aspect is still too overpowered. You can still outfox one or two defenders with someone like Vidic for example. That's fine, though. That just requires a tweak here and there to get right. Ball physics are very good, and even though people still think the jury is still out on the Impact Engine, I personally thought it added a proper sense of...hmmm...impact to the game in vital areas of the pitch, like the penalty area. You get a proper sense if you were taken off the ball, and for that it does it's job fantastically. The close control with L1 is another nice little feature that worked well. All that aside, though. Onto those flaws that drive me nuts, and each one of the main ones mostly fall under the category of AI. Not so much in the attacking sense, but more in the defensive. This is all from my experience playing the multi-player, so it makes these problems all the more critical:

Defensive Ai:

This is the main issue I have with Fifa 12. The defensive lines often shatter and become totally useless at times during games, and it's a maddening sight to see an attacker, and sometimes more, to be standing high up the pitch only to be consistently be played onside by a single full-back or centre half that just seems to want to play them all onside, when the AI could easily just step up and catch them all off. What this always results in is situations where a long ball is hoffed from the keeper or from a defensive situation to find one of these attackers and suddenly it's 3 against 1 or a lot of the times a 1-0n-1 situation with the keeper. Those are too frequent in the game. Other scenarios are when a long ball is kicked from the keeper and if you've a big target player up top, sometimes they get a flick on to someone like Ronaldo, who will run from the midfield with no one marking him or no one even tracking him. If the big man gets that flick on, it always lands into the attacking players path making that burst, and you have another 1-on-1 situation. All this from general play. You may argue that these things happen in the real game, and sometimes they do, but not in the same pattern. Not every time resulting in the same scenario from the same situations.

Set play: Corners:

Another massive issue I have with the game. Yes, you can go in and edit your runs in the nice little editor they gave us, but why should we have to do this? Couldn't they have pre-programmed runs for us to chose instead? The problem I have with corners, both in the attacking sense and mainly the defensive, is that when you lump a ball into the area, every single player is standing, static, frozen. There is a window of time where you've to switch player and either try to wrestle in front of a defender and attack the ball, or vice versa. If you're defending and an attacker gets in front, then its often a free header and a goal. When you are the attacker and you do this, then it's the most unsatisfying goal you'll ever score, because they are almost identical in nature each and every time you score one. Just press shoot, jump, and a soft goal. They always feel so soft, especially conceding. It just feels like there wasn't much you could have done, and it's the lack of dynamics in the box that is responsible for that, It's dire, and I sincerely hope EA fix that for 13 as it's a major aspect of real football.

There are other little niggling things that grate at me, but they're not really fundamental errors that make the game almost feel like it's cheating you or at times such an unrewarding and unsatisfying experience to play. Little things like players having a instant first touch, especially lesser gifted players: they all seem to be able to tame the ball in difficult situations. I understand that it's a game, and these things have a fine balance between what's realistic and what is playable, so that can be tweaked, and from the list released it looks like it's being addressed, which is a bonus, but not a major issue like the AI one's I've listed. If these things are rectified and revamped for 13, then it's the only way EA will be getting my money this year.

[_anderson]

Press release sounds good but surprisingly short. They'll need to be more specific regarding the AI for me to get my hopes up.

They had to use the word "revolution" again didn't they? There's one every year... Brilliant PR.

[MGMT]

Everyone should know that it always sounds 100 times better than it is, no matter what game it is.

[Fintan Stack]

Everyone should know that it always sounds 100 times better than it is, no matter what game it is.

Is correct.