Defence: Reduce by 25%

Balance: Increase by 5%

Stamina: Increase by 10%

Top Speed: Reduce by 67%

Acceleration: Reduce by 33%

Agility: Reduce by 50%

Short pass speed: Reduce by 25%

Long pass speed: Reduce by 25%

Shot accuracy: Reduce by 10%

Heading: Increase by 10%

Technique: Increase by 5%

Aggression: Reduce by 67%

Teamwork: Increase by 25%

These are basically tweaks of the player attribute values in the option file. Here are the ingredients I had, to create the realism patch: XBOX 360, Datel Max Transfer Kit, 64MB Memory Card, PES 2009 editor v2.8, Exploder_resigner program. If you don’t have some of these, please google it yourself to find them. Do leave a feed back on how did you like this!

No PES is ever complete without the patches and tweaks. With FIFA, even patches and tweaks won’t make them quite complete. Because, with patches and tweaks, PES would be the next immediate thing to real football while FIFA would still be a long way behind. The core gameplay of PES 2009 is a splendid piece of work. Don’t complain about the game being fast or slow or stuff like that. Those are all editable stuff. You can edit almost everything and they will all have an impact on the game. The part that is the raw basic game that is not touched by the edits is what I call the core gameplay. That’s where PES2009 rules over FIFA 09. Also, editing PES is always fun.

What I’m talking here is about a realism patch. This is basically tweaks of the player attribute values in the option file. Here are the ingredients I had, to create the realism patch: XBOX 360, Datel Max Transfer Kit, 64MB Memory Card, PES 2009 editor v2.8, Exploder_resigner program. If you don’t have some of these, please google it yourself to find them.

Here are the tweaks that I made:

Agility Tweak: Reduce agility by 30% to 35% – The players in PES2009 turn all too quickly. With not enough animations to back that kind of agility, it looks very unrealistic and impossible. Even otherwise, the agility values seemed to be very high which made it look like a pure arcade game. Reduce it by 30% or 35% or 40% and you’ll see less of clumsy and cluttered moves.

Speed Tweak: Reduce top speed by 15% to 20% – The game is still a bit faster though this is one of the slowest PES’ ever. I’d love to see the speed drop a bit so it’s very very close to real football. After this tweak, you realy have time on the ball and gameplay is that of real football’s speed. You’ll love the fact that you can really build up your attack with the gameplay freedom that PES2009 offers.

Stamina tweak: Increase stamina by 10% | Improve condition/fitness by 1 – The default stamina values are little low for professional footballers. They should generally be able to play competitively for all 90 minutes and they should be able to play 3 matches in a week. With all the slower gameplay and less agility, you don’t want your players to lose stamina and crawl across the pitch. Give them more stamina while you have taken away the agility and speed. Helps to balance the work rate on the pitch.

If you have done these tweaks, PES 2009 will be the game for you! Amazingly close to real life football. The game gets lot more tactical and intelligent. You can set up your game so beautifully to your heart’s content. Also, the difference between teams and players will be much more visible now. On the whole, the tweaks will re-invent PES 2009 for you. Try them and let me know.

In all PES forums, most of the threads I see are just on how bad the game is, how online sucks, how poor the animations are, why the scripting should stop and stuff like that. These kind of discussions just dominate all the PES forums. There is too much whining going around. If you give PES 2009 the chance it deserves, you’ll know that it is a great game. I was a PES freak and as I bought XBOX 360 I bought FIFA 08 and FIFA 09. Continued with FIFA because PES 2008 was unplayable. Having played all these games for months, I can tell you that PES 2009 is the best football game. Let’s talk about the nice things about the game. Let’s talk positive things. Let’s do some constructive posts. Let’s all revive this forum.

Let’s not talk about wishlists. PES 2010 is already on its way. There is so much to learn and tweak in PES 2009 that would make this a much better game. Talk about how to resolve certain situations. Talk about how certain tweaks and ideas improve PES 2009. Shall we get busy creating threads and writing posts?

Something very basic and something most of you might know but still here it goes . . .

The roles that you assign to each player on the pitch is very crucial. It has a huge influence on how the players behave on the pitch. There are some quick information that you should know.

1. Full backs going out of position: When you assign an RB or LB role, these players do join in the attacks very often which sometimes leaves exploitable gaps behind. If you don’t want your full backs to charge forward, go to formation edit, choose them and change their role to CB. As CBs, they won’t leave their zone there by providing you defensive support at the back all the time.

2. Desparate for a goal: While you’re desparate for a goal, you might change your formation to an attacking one. While you’re doing it, also change the roles of your DM and CM to AM. This would give them license to go to attacking third and look for opportunities. Also set your striker’s role to CF and not SS. This would complement well with your midfielders being AM.

3. Knock around: If you want to knock the ball around and protect a lead for a shortwhile, you’d have to have your players in close distance so you can find them and pass to them. If you have a four man midfield, set them all to CMs or DMs. Even set your strikers roles as AM. That would keep all the players in close company for keeping the ball as well as defend in numbers.

4. Defend to save your life: If you’ve got a comfortble lead and you simply don’t intend to score more and all that you care is to prevent conceding goals, you can improve your defence by doing this. In formation and player settings, set your CF to mark the opponent’s CF. This would mean your CF would always try to roam alongside the opponent CF and be available for defending, in addition to the defensive options available.

That’s it for now! Cheers!

As soon as I booted up PES 2009, five things hit me. One – the pitch graphics is just amazing. Two – the pitch is so big. Three – the gameplay has been slowed down to perfect speed. Four – anything works as long as you play well. Five – the games can be completely random. The pitch graphics is the best I’ve seen in a football game. I have a 40″ HDTV and FIFA 09 pitches don’t look this good. In all the stadiums, you can play afternoon kick-offs as well which are the best. The night matches are such a beauty unlike the dark corridors in FIFA 09. Ah, how I love the pitch being so big. The size of the pitch gives a new dimension to the game. There is so much space to keep the ball, dribble the ball, draw defenders and create openings etc. It feels like football.

PES 2009 has been slowed down by a great extent. PES 2008 was in frantic pace. It was just crazy. In PES 2009, I think they have hit the sweet spot with respect to the speed. It is not slow as sluggish or fast as hell but it surely resembles the pace of real football than FIFA09. It is the unsophisticated animations that gives us a feeling that this game is fast. I’d say this game is as fast as the real life football. Real football is slow in general and shows some bursts of pace depending on the situations. That’s very beautifully captured in PES 2009. Now I can truly control the pace of the game, at least when I have the ball. I can knock it around among my defenders and midfielders and can quickly use my pace if I see an opportunity, just like real football.

The great thing about pro evo is that it allows you to play the game the way you want to. There are no beaten paths, no routine play or boring build-ups. This is what gives us the famous PES promise of ‘you’ll never score the same goal twice’. I’m not trying to say that FIFA 09 is scripted but it works in a framework. It does not allow you to play freely. Don’t get me wrong. FIFA 09 is a great game and it is seen as a more complete offering than pro evo. In FIFA 09, I get this feeling that the game wants you to play in a certain way and forces you to play that way.

See, I’m a good football gamer and a very normal one too. I don’t do flip-flaps and all that. I just play my game, the game I normally see on TV every weekend. FIFA 09 does not allow us to beat defenders. It’s not that uncommon in FIFA 09 as it is in real life. You don’t need to do flip-flap or a 360 degree spin everytime you want to beat a defender. In PES 2009, you can beat the defenders with your normal dribble. And I love that. But beating a defender with the dribble does not mean you get no challenge. The defenders can catch the attackers purely based on the speed and strength attributes, and direction and angle of the run. All other things being equal, a man without the ball can run faster than the man with the ball. But the difference should not be too much because there won’t be any attacks and if the difference is less then you’ll have too many break aways and one-on-ones. Pro evo has got this spot on. The speed advantage is neither for the attackers nor the defenders.

You can play the style of football you want to, provided the players you are suitable for it. You can play one-touch-short-passing game, you can play a long ball game, you attack through the wings, you can split through the centre, you can play slow build-up game, you can shoot on sight etc. Basically what Konami tell us is, here is the set of things you can do, come with a combination of these things and score the goal any which way you want. Whatever PES2009 allows us to do, it allows to do them very very well. Take shooting, you can shoot from distance as well as from difficult angles, depending on the player that you control. Take crossing, it is so sweet in this game. It is a real weapon. In FIFA09, crossing was kind of discouraged by the way the game plays. Crosses are always useless so you stop playing that kind of game. In FIFA09, it’s unnaturally hard to cut back from the sides. In FIFA08, it was way too easy and probably hence, they made it so difficult in FIFA09. In PES 2009, you can cut-back beautifully.

If you can attack so effectively in all these ways, do we end up with huge scores such as 10-8 or something? No, certainly not. Because, the defence behaves very well. They know exactly what to do as defenders. They are very smart in staying in their positions and cut down spaces for you to exploit. They also pre-empt your possible next pass and attack the passing lanes which you keep you guessing and provoke you to be innovative on the pitch. The defenders don’t walk around disinterested. They play as if they certianly don’t want to concede. In FIFA09, defenders were a big problem. They were made a bit ineffective so that you can score goals. The played up all the time and even with all the tweaks and tactics, it’s hard to keep them deep. It’s not the playing up that was a problem. It’s their lack of pace while staying so up that made it all too easy for the attackers.

Basically, in FIFA09, the players who are not controlled by you, had only half brain. Which is why the defenders were not smart in moving to their positions and cutting the spaces. Similarly, you’ll have attackers who don’t make smart runs while you have the ball. Basically, the AI of your team mates lacked game intelligence. The FIFA players are not very dynamic. They are in fact, lazy and lethargic. This is the reason why the FIFA games do not produce the excitement of Pro Evo. To be honest, I have really really enjoyed FIFA 09 but what I realise now is that it lacks longevity. The fact that FIFA has all the licenses make you play as various teams which will give you a feeling that you’re experiencing variety in gameplay. If you play team A vs team B about 10 times continuously, you’ll see that the games will pan out in a very very similar fashion. In comparison, PES 2009 plays a much more random game.

In contrast, the PES players are much better. They do close spaces in time and they do make intelligent attacking runs. I read somewhere that the AI off the ball player in FIFA does not make diagonal runs. All that it can do is to run in a straight line. The PES AI players run diagonally as well which creates a truckload more of possible attacking moves. In FIFA, the players that you don’t control do not decide or act on your behalf. All that they do is run and not stand still. Only when you take control of them, they come alive. Whereas in PES, even the players that you don’t control do think and act on their own. I’ve heard quite a bit about people complaining about their team mate AI that gets sent off. That’s because AI thinks on its own and it could be an aggressive player. You can easily resolve this problem by selecting the player that’s closest to the ball carrier. So now you’re the one who’s is in a position to make a tackle or get sent off. It’s your decision then.

I also love the fact that you can even play the long ball game. They can sometimes be very effective. You can time your jump and win the ball and can truly make it very effective if you have the kind of players that would take advantage of the situation. The other thing I like in PES 09 is that the set pieces can be very useful. If I get a foul outside the D, I don’t have worry about the interruption of my attack. I can make that free kick really count. You have a variety of ways to deliver the free kick and they can be good fun. Quick freekicks are also implemented very nicely.

I get a feeling that this is the best football game ever. They seem to have fixed exactly those things which were the pain points of PES 2008. That’s all they had to do. At the core of PES, you have a great football game. You may not garnish it with decoratives but you can certainly avoid making a mess of it with your extra efforts. PES 2009 is no way complete. It is lacking animations big time. Very limited number of animations mean jerky looking movements and arcadish looking game. Despite all this, for me the FIFA 09 vs PES 2009 is over. PES 2009 is the clear winner by a country mile. The race is not as close as the reviewers are making it out to be. It might take years for FIFA to reach the gameplay levels of PES. Konami have understood the beautiful game lot better than EA. That’s why PES 2009 is much more realistic and resembles real football than FIFA 09.

The weakest part of FIFA 09 is the defence. The back line pushes up too much. They easily get overpowered and outmuscled. You get a feeling that a definite advantage is given to the attacking side over the defensive side. Everytime the defence pushes up unnecessarily and concedes a goal due to that, you get wild. ‘It’s not my fault’ is what you scream.

Now you want the defence to do what they’re expected to do – defend the goal. You want them to be in the right places at the right times. You don’t want them to leave spaces mindlessly. You want them to make it difficult for the attackers. You don’t want them to concede any cheap goals.

I’ve always said that the best way to improve FIFA 09 is tweaking – custom tactics and player attributes. The solution for a disciplined defence is also in tweaking custom tactics. The good thing about tweaking custom tactics is, it takes hardly 10 seconds, unlike player attribute editing. The other good thing is, you can use it ONLINE as well!!!

Ok, here is what you do.

In custom tactics, under BUILD-UP:

Positioning: Set this to ‘organised’. This positioning affects the movement of your players in your half of the pitch. This will have no impact on the randomness of your chance creation or in the final third. This is just for the own half positioning.

In custom tactics, under DEFENCE:

Pressure: Just bring this slider to the minimum. The least it would go to is a value of 1. What this would do is, the players won’t move up to pressure the opposition. You’ll find that your players allow the opponents to have the ball and you can nip it when it matters most. This does not mean they will stand still in their respective places. They would move forward as with the action zone but they would be more position conscious.

Aggression: This determines the tendency of the defence to commit tackles and fouls. This is more relevant for the teams where the AI controls all the players. As far as your team goes, no player would tackle unless you order them to do so. So, with this setting what happens is that the players get into a position where they only wait for your button press to tackle the opponent. By setting aggression to a low number, say between 30 and 40, your players will stay in their zones.

Team width: Set this to a low number, say, again between 30 and 40. This would mean the defensive back line would stay closer to each other in front of the goal. This is especially effective against opponents who play throughballs to the lone striker. With low team width setting, the lone striker of the opponent will be seriously hindered. The downside is that, there would be some space in the flanks which the opponents can use but still the crosses or cut backs can be managed because you have a crowded defence in the box to handle them.

Plus, always first line of defence must be the midfielders. Use the midfielders to defend and tackle. That would buy some time for the defenders to get back to their areas as per the above settings.

I tried these things today. I got to play a lot of intense, tight matches where really had to find ways to break the defence. This also meant both teams got a lot of time on the ball in the midfield. The midfielders really came into existence, orchestrating the attacks and making the killer passes to outfox the defence. Plus, play in LEGENDARY difficulty. That’s where teams play true to their strengths. The games in legendary are very challenging, random and fun.

Try this and let me know.

Having tweaked the custom tactics and adjusted the speed and acceleration attributes, I thought I had hit the sweet spot with FIFA 09. But then I could feel that something wasn’t right. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I put FIFA 08 (not 09) on my XBOX 360 just to remind myself of how it played. Having finished one game in FIFA 08, I realised what had to happen in 09.

FIFA 08 is being seen as a more tactical game ONLY because it was slower. In all other respects, FIFA 09 is far superior. We have already reduced the speed and acceleration attributes by 15 points. So what had happened is, the players have become slower and very reasonable in their ability to move. It does give a lot of opportunities for tactical gameplay but for one little thing. While the players have slowed down, their passing has not. So what happens is, players move slowly but when they decide to pass, the pass goes lightning quick which makes the game look very ping-pong. Also if the passes are so quick, you don’t get to see players moving as the ball is still transiting. It is important because even before you receive the ball, you should have multiple options to proceed.

So, I decided to reduce the short passing attribute by 15 points. That should now sync well with the reduction of player speeds. It works perfectly. When you make a 20-yard pass, it should go at a certain speed. And that passing speed is very important for the dynamics of the attacking game. With slower passing speed, my ability to receive passes successfully has also improved. The ball receiver now gets a fraction more time to react. With reduced passing speed, I’ve even started using the first touch skill with the right analog stick. More than my convenience, I find the game incredibly realistic now. For whatever reason, I think EA has deliberately boosted the speed, acceleration and short passing which makes the game very arcadish.

I know there has been a lot of efforts to have the player edits done. I wish I had realised this point on short passing much before so that when you guys were editing the player attributes you had also take care of short passing values. But I had to test this myself to confirm if it has an impact and more importantly a positive impact on the gameplay. I could only confirm it now. As of now, I don’t know if I’m done with the tweaks. As I learn the game and nuances, ideas keep coming so it’s always possible that there is another discovery from me or anyone else.

Now onto the super players. I see that people complain about Messi not being Messi and Xavi not being Xavi. I have observed that this is primarily to do with three key attributes that separate star players and normal players. They are consistency, aggression and strength. Consistency refers to how often the player plays true to his rest of the attributes. If the finishing is 92 and consistency is 100, he always plays with a 92 finishing ability. When the consistency is say 65 and the finishing is 92, he could make some amazing finishes every now and then but could be on and off in terms of form. Aggression refers to the determination of the players. It shows how the players want to keep the ball or win the ball. Players with high aggression are difficult to be shoved away. If you notice, EA have rated a lot of star players very low on aggression. If aggression is a mental attribute, strength is the equivalent physical attribute. Even if your aggression is 100, if your strength is 60, your player might want to keep the ball at any cost but his physical strength won’t help him.

What I have done is, picked out those real star players and improved their stats on consistency, aggression and strength. If you ask me if I have increased them by 10 or 15, I’d say I inceased the stats on a case to case basis. It’s purely my opinion and belief based on which I propped up the stars. For instance, I’ve put a 90 for Messi when it comes to consistency. For players like Iniesta and Xavi, I’ve put the aggression in 90s and strength in 80s. For someone like Essien, both those attributes would in 90s. I’d put Adriano high on strength and low on aggression; Fabregas, low on strength and high on aggression. So I suggest you to identify the star players who want to improve and adjust these attributes as per your judgement.

In the tweaked custom tactics, make sure that teams do not have more than a value of 50 in shooting. If you set it beyond 50, the AI keeps shooting from unreasonable positions and very stupidly at times which results in numerous shots most of which wouldn’t have troubled you.

Finally, I can cross now! Crossing in this game has been such a let down for me. Practically, my inability to cross in this game has changed the way I play this game. Because I couldn’t cross, I have always been looking for passing the ball even from fantastic crossing positions. I think I have the definitive solution to crossing – set crossing to SEMI. Yes, it doesn’t work well in manual or assisted. In SEMI, my crossing is back to its best. Now my custom tactics for crossing does have a meaning. I tried setting the crossing my custom tactics to 80 so that I have people in crossing positions and also have people crowding in the box to receive the crosses. It was fantastic. Now crossing is one of my potent weapons. I’m gonna make AI taste a dose of its own medicine!

And now, personally my biggest discovery wrto visuals: DYNAMIC camera. Yup. I’m generally a fan of wide and far camera angles. I always used to play in WIDE camera or TELE camera (co-op in Euro 2008) because I want to see the spaces in the pitch to exploit. I never thought dynamic camera can be useful. The advantages of a wide camera is the ability to see spaces. If you don’t exploit those spaces, there is no point in playing a wide angle because the dynamic angle provides a lot more in terms of playability. In DYNAMIC camera angle, I’ve set the height to maximum and zoom to zero (no zoom at all). With this, my game has vastly improved, especially my possession football. The camera angle being so close, it certainly gives that extra fraction of a time which is more than enough or the human brain to react and make the best use of it. Believe it or not, my quality of passing/shots has highly improved in dynamic camera. Please try this yourself and enjoy. Again, don’t write this off without actually testing it.

To remind you, I play in SLOW gamespeed, use assisted controls (semi crossing), use dynamic cam, play in world class difficulty and player select set to automatic, two points from the left. I no longer play online and in offline I play only exhibition matches, single player and also co-op with my mates. My style of play is possession football.

To summarise:

1. I take it that you’ve already tweaked the custom tactics and the speed/acceleration attributes
2. Now reduce the short passing attribute by 15 points for all players in the teams you play or play against
3. For star players, improve these attributes – consistency, aggression and strength
4. In custom tactics for all teams, ensure that the shooting value is not beyond 50
5. Set the crossing to SEMI
6. Use DYNAMIC cam – maximum height & zero zoom

All the above in totality is what I’ve named as ‘FIFA Revolution update’. If you apply this FIFA Revolution update, I can bet that this game becomes ‘unputdownable’. As always, try these and let me know how these work! Your comments are most welcome.

Truth be told I love defending more than attacking. I love tackles, ball winning, blocks and interceptions. Now we’ll talk about how do we defend in FIFA 09. This is one area which gamers have complained a lot about this FIFA. The common complaint is that the defence pushes up. Of course it does but not more than it happens in real football. Well, that’s my opinion.

We’ll talk about how I learnt defending in FIFA and if that can work for you. In defence, you have some key areas such as (a) formation setting (b) misuse of defenders (c) pressure (d) aggression (d) read the passing lanes (f) player select. If you get these right, you’ll see a sea change in your defending.

Formation settings: Before we complain about the defensive AI, we should check if all the settings are in place properly in your custom tactics and in your formation. If written quite a bit about custom tactics, so you know what are the important things there. In a nutshell, set pressure to 20 or something, set aggression to 70, set team width at 30 to 40 and let defender line be cover. In formation settings, you will be able to set the defensive and attacking mentality of each and every player. If you want your defence to stay back, just do this. Pick one centre back. Mark his attacking movement backwards, that is towards our own goal. This means when the ball is in your possession, he would be running behind and not forward.

In workrate, set his attacking work rate to low and defensive work rate to high. Most probably that’s how it would have been set. Now, if you wish, you can even edit the formation to place these defenders closer to the goal keeper. And now the full backs. The settings would depend on how you want to use them. If you just want regular full backs, set the attacking runs to neutral, that is neither forward nor backward, as opposed to centre backs whose attacking runs are set by us now to backwards. Also set the attack word rate to low and defensive work rate to medium. If you want Carlos-like wing backs, set their attacking runs to forward, attacking work rate to medium and also defensive work rate to medium.

Okay now, we’re all set. Having set all our defenders in the right place with right instructions, it’s left to us to use them properly. Now we’ll look at the principles of defending. There are certain very fundamentals that we should know and practice.

Misuse of defenders: This is one of the very common problems. John Terry has the ball and you keep dribbling forward because you’ve got space. So you’ve created a hole in your central defence and if you lose the ball now, you know where your opponent would run. We should learn to use defenders as defenders. Especially when you play multiplayer co-op games, you and your mate would be dragging your defenders everywhere leaving huge spaces in your defence. So, don’t roam around too much with your defenders. They should pass to midfielders and wait for their further involvement in the game, instead of trying dictate the attacks themselves. Try not to step nto the opponent half as any of your defenders. If you think you might touch the half line, pass it on. Maintain the discipline and organisation yourselves, before blaming it on the defensive AI.

Use midfielders: Back in PES days, I remember screaming to my mates (co-op multiplayer), “defend with midfielders”. That’s a great tactic. Don’t disturb your defensive organisation. Chase down the opponents with your midfielders and tackle them, if need be. In worst case, it’s you midfielder who might get sent off and not a defender which is a more specialist position. In other words, use your defenders as the last resort. This would also mean trying to nip the attacks in the bud, instead of preparing for a head-on collision as a defender. Especially when you want to apply pressure, don’t do it with the defenders, because just one quick piece of skill would leave your defender biting the grass and your opponent could be straight on goal. The mantra is “defend with midfielders”.

Pressure: In custom tactics, we have already set the pressure to 20 which means our defensive AI will wait until their zone is attacked by the opponent. In other words, they won’t pressure, they’d wait. Now that means, if you want to pressure, you have to take that effort with the player that you control. Applying pressure is not the same as tackling and ball winning. They could be the results of applying pressure. By the term pressure, what we need to understand is that to make the ball carrier’s life as difficult as possible. You run closer to him, run along side him, jockey him, disturb him or simply make him uncomfortable. Remember, you need to decide whether you need to apply pressure or not. Unfortunately, applying pressure is the default way of defending for most of us. Whenever the opponent has the ball, you keep running towards him, behind him and along side him.

Think for a moment. Do you need to pressurise him now or you can let him do his stuff. Sometimes you can let him do his stuff and snatch the ball when it matters and where it matters. So what you can also try is not to chase the ball carrier instead of that, run your man to a place where you want him to be, may be to the penalty box, because that’s where the attack has to culminate. So basically, you need to judge whether to pressure or not. When you don’t pressure, make an intelligent movement which would turn out to be much more useful than a 50-50 pressure tactic. Know who you’re defending with. If you’re controlling a big, strong defender, you have a great chance of winning the ball. So know who you’re defending as.

Penalty box defending is an art. This is where your common sense and street-smartness will come to the fore. Having gotten so close to the goal, your only target should be to prevent the goal. To prevent the goal, you don’t always have to make a tackle at the risk of conceding a penalty. Primarily, you have to get in the way for the attacker. Don’t give him a good angle to shoot. Position yourself in such a way that even if he shoots, you would be able to block it. Blocking is a very useful method of goal prevention but in order to do that you have to “get in the way”.

Aggression: Saying enough’s enough in footballing terms. Hard tackles are not that hard to pull off. It’s just like shooting. If you get the timing and direction right, you got it. Mostly you perform a hard tackle in two occasions (a) you’re very confident that you’ll nick the ball (b) you’re fed up with your opponents running around or skills moves. If it’s the former, you’re fine. if it’s the latter, control your temper. Just let him run around in circles but remember whatever trick he pulls off in the middle of the park, for him to score he should come towards the penalty box. As I said before, if you want to tackle hard, just for a moment see if that’s a midfielder or a defender or a forward. To the extent possible, avoid hard tackling with a defender. Use the midfielders to do this dirty job.

Read the passing lanes: Study the game and the opponent as you play. Anticipate. Look for the passing lanes. As in, just try to guess what would be his next probable move. Where could he pass? Do I have someone covered there? Can I intercept that pass? Anticipate. Anticipate. Anticipate. That’s the name of the game in defending. It might go wrong sometimes but with experience and practice, you’d mostly get it right. If you have difficulty in reading the passing lane, just watch a AI vs AI match. In exhibition mode, you can set the controller symbol right in the middle (not on either teams) and that would bring up an AI vs AI match. While you’re watching constantly try to guess the next move by AI, where would he pass, would he shoot or not, would he dribble or not . . it would surely help.

Player Select: You can be rather smart in deciding which player to control and when exactly to control him. If in your custom tactics, the pressure is set beyond 70, you can rather watch the AI defender (of your team) take on the attackers and only when it really matters, you can jump in and control that player for the no-nonsense ending. I normally play on manual player select setting. So when I’m a midfielder and the opponent AI is making an attack, I would quickly decide whether to leave the matter with our AI defenders or I should take control there. If decide to let the AI defenders handle the attack, what I would be doing is to drag the midfielder I’m controlling, to the zone of action and finally if required, control the defender. Also, if you can anticipate the opponent’s moves and manoeuvres, if you can see those possible passing lanes, you can do player select accordingly and get that extra time on the ball carrier. As we all know, player select does not happen instantly. So if you choose to do player select at the very last moment, you should be ready for that delay. I’d suggest that you follow and understand the game to anticipate possible attacks.

All this does not mean I’m a defence guru or something. I still let in goals cheaply. One thing is about knowing and other is about executing it. It’s easy to say ‘get the timing right’ but it’s rather difficult to in fact get the timing right. So I’m sharing this with you because I thought I can share with you what I’ve learnt in this game the hard way. Hope it’s useful to you.

Exhibition matches – That’s where you’d get the best out of FIFA 09. I have played online games, offline competitions, offline leagues, manager mode, be a pro seasons, exhibition matches – every mode that’s available, all in WORDL CLASS difficulty. I can tell you with confidence that the game plays best in exhibition matches more than anything else.

I gave up on online games the very first week I had the game. All offline competition/league/MM game modes are crippled by two things (a) the AI’s scripted game play (b) your tactics and tweaks won’t work best. So there’s something unreal about the offline game modes. I’m not saying games are fully scripted. The results are scripted. And your team is being crippled to achieve that scripted result. Before the start of the game itself, there is a result that AI fixes for this game and achieves it SOMEHOW. Ok, scripting is in every game. I should be a good enough player to overcome that. But I’m not. That’s why I have made this thread.

Whereas exhibition games play such a great game of football devoid of AI scripting. So I have decided now that I would play a series of exhibition matches instead of playing a competition where I can’t (not allowed to?) progress beyond the second round. I don’t want to reduce my difficulty level to PROFESSIONAL because that’s way too easy and the game play is realistic in WORLD CLASS only.

In every gaming session, I would play about 6 to 10 matches. I would invariably start as Chelsea in a champions league or league, and start losing and drawing big time before I call it a day. Instead of going through this pain, I have decided to play that many number of exhibition matches for various reasons:

1. Unlike the other offline modes, the AI does not play with a desired result in its mind (?). Exhibition matches are the most open, natural and unspoilt version of this beautiful game. When you’re a goal up, in offline game modes, you’ll see your defenders pushing up when you don’t want to, you’ll see your defenders messing up with two-yard passes, you’ll find yourself passing to your opponent, you’ll find that none of your defenders bother to jump to win the incoming cross no matter how much you mash the buttons. In exhibition matches, the game played by the numbers – the player attributes with no turbo boost by AI to any of the values.

2. AI plays a very good game of football. It just plays a natural game with the flow and ebb of the game. AI plays a better open and creative game that can keep you guessing and you’ll be on your toes. Also it’s nice to see the AI challenge you in a very appropriate, honest manner. The teams will play true to their strengths and weaknesses only in exhibition matches. A good team plays like a good team and a crap team plays like a crap team. May be it’s not a coincidence that my best goals and my most satisfactory goals have come from exhibition matches.

3. The custom tactics and the speed/acceleration tweaks work best in exhibition matches. Try this yourself. Play team A vs team B in a competition or a manager mode or whatever offline mode. And then play the same team A vs team B in an exhibition match. See the difference. The exhibition match is much much more fluid and natural.

4. You can play as any team, instead of your favourite team. When you play in any of the game modes as one of your favourite teams, you mostly play the same formation (because that suits the team well) and the almost in a similar playing style every match because you’re using the same set of players. In exhibition matches, you could play as Chelsea one match, Lyon another, Napoli in anothere and so on. The variety keeps you going and makes a great gaming session.

5. You can choose which stadium to play, whether you want to play day, night or dusk. This is a big one for me. When I kick off in a pitch that I don’t like, it turns me off and shows up in my performance. Also I hate playing night matches in FIFA (be it 08 or 09). When I play exhibition matches, I can play in the choicest of stadiums in day or preferably dusk.

So it’s exhibition mode for me henceforth. When I play champions league, I might play Fenerbahce in knock out round, Valencia in quarters, Liverpool in semis and Barca in final. I might as well play four exhibition matches, one each against Fener, Valencia, Liverpool and Barca. It’s not that we need to win stuff to unlock anything. I just want to enjoy the game as much as I want to.

If exhibition matches are your most ignored offline game mode, please change your mind. Compare the gameplay and AI behaviour/style in exhibition matches and in other offline modes. You’ll realise it and agree with me. I’m going to play exhibition matches only and enjoy the game to its fullest potential. What do you feel?

Ok guys, be ready with the bouquets and everything. I’m presenting you the biggest discovery in FIFA 09. This discovery would change the way you play FIFA and will make you go crazy over it.

The below has been tested and found successful only in OFFLINE games so far. I play in WORLD CLASS difficulty with assisted passing/shooting and manual with the rest. I play with SLOW pace setting. Importantly, I DO NOT USE ADIDAS Live Season.

Firstly, let me start by saying why this discovery was needed. I’m now going to list down all the points which are affecting the FIFA 09 gameplay on the pitch:

1. The game play is a bit too fast, even on slow settings
2. Unable to hold the ball; AI always puts pressure and wins
3. Ends up being just a quick one-touch passing game all the time
4. Attacks are monotonous; there is not enough variety
5. Attacks and chance creation are not random and realistic
6. AI plays with the same plan in all through the match
7. Quite difficult to pull off the tricks

What I’m going to suggest could be a time consuming process but certainly worthwhile, if you want to realistic football in FIFA 09. Just follow me very carefully. All that we need to do is to reduce the values of two attributes for each player in a team. Then in my FIFA 09 profile, set my favourite team as Tottenham (I’ll explain you the reasons later). Then I went to the ‘manage teams’ and chose ‘edit player’. Now this opens up the squad list of Tottenham so that I can edit each player. This is why I set Tottenham as my favourite team temporarily so that I don’t have to browse from Chelsea (my favourite team) to Tottenham every time.

Now I opened the first player for editing. I went to ‘movement’ attributes. In there, the first two attributes are acceleration and sprint speed. Now for these two attributes, I reduced the values by 15 points. For instance, if the acceleration is 86, changed it to 71, if the sprint speed is 83, changed it to 68. After I changed them, I hit the start button or back button to carefully ’save and exit’. Now I was back to the squad list. Then I kept repeating this for all the possible first teamers and the bench. It took about 5 minutes to make these tweaks for Tottenham team. Now I have a team that has no one in their 80s in sprint speed and acceleration. Then I edited the Sunderland squad. I set a match up between an edited Tottenham and an edited Sunderland.

The final result: I won 2-1. You won’t believe how much I enjoyed that match. Forget the result. The process was fabulous. My players were slower but they played like professional footballers. They had control on the ball. They were able to dribble tactically. I had the time to think how I can build the attack. When I was pressurised by the opponents, I could keep the ball by evading the opponent, something I just could never do before.

Earlier, whenever I was under pressure, all I would try to do was to hurriedly pass the ball to the nearest player. Now I could dodge the opponent just like how the AI players will evade your pressure or tackle. More than all this, the game play experience was fantastic. As players move slowly, you’re not in a mindset to hurry the attack. You keep the ball and try to look for spaces. The more I kept the ball, I started seeing the AI players making intelligent runs or even overlapping runs.

Earlier, when the game is played fast no one has time to make these runs. Typically, My CB will pass to CM, CM to LM, LM to CAM and CAM to ST (and the ST to fumble it!). There was some amount of routine in which the game was played by me. That was because, the players ran faster, passes were delivered quickly and hence the players received the ball even before they could start their attacking runs. In effect, all players would be in their respective positions as per the formation when they received the ball. They weren’t making too many runs primarily because I didn’t allow them to, as I would pass the ball to them to wherever they are, before they could make runs.

With the game now slowing down due to the reduced acceleration and sprint speed, the pitch now looks bigger! Yes! Earlier the pitch was small and the players in high speed made the pitch look even smaller. If someone like Torres could cover one half of the pitch in 5 real seconds earlier, now he will take 7 to 8 seconds. That’s a lot of additional time for you to react. Now you may ask, that if the defender’s speed is also reduced what difference it will make? Good question. Remember that the defenders’ pushing up is also slowed down and even if you lose ball to allow a breakaway, you have a lot of time to select the correct defender or to make the right decisions.

More time on the ball also makes you think creatively. That’s what happened to me. With that extra second on the ball, I started looking to surprise the AI (which is by the way, the best way to beat the AI) and even tried to do outrageous moves. This is all too good to be true but I have started shooting better than before, because of the overall adjusted speeds all around.

More than anything, I’m playing good football and I’m very satisfied with the way I play and AI plays. Because the sprint speed and acceleration of AI players are also reduced, the way AI played the game also changed. Granted it takes only milliseconds to process but certainly with more time at its disposal, it can take better decisions and that was very evident. Someone made this brilliant comment: ‘when the players run it looks like they have more than two legs’. Completely agree. But now, in reduced speeds, even the running animation looks nicer.

I’m very convinced that this is the way to play the game. I wished there was a quicker way to edit the attributes but I’m happy that we are at least able to edit them. Then I went ahead and edited for Chelsea and played against an unedited Man Utd, got beat 3-0 but again, was a very satisfying match. Then I edited Man Utd and they won in penalties after a 1-1 result at the end of extra time. I ended up editing Arsenal and Liverpool too. I’m planning to edit 4 teams per league per day. I’m not going to edit the players of a team which I’m never going to play as or play against. I did not edit any other attribute other than the two I mentioned above.

We generally know that the league two teams produce great matches in FIFA 09. Ever wondered why? Because they’re slower, you can control them better. Imagine a very controllable and slower Man Utd or Chelsea with the same level of their own skill and other capabilities. Remember, we’re only reducing the acceleration and sprint speed. We are leaving all other attributes as it is. There could be a top striker with a sprint speed of 68 with a ball control or 92. This means he will have controllable pace with having very good ball control. This is why my shooting (not finishing) has improved.

My suggestion to you is to edit the acceleration and sprint speed values for players in two decent mid-table teams and play out an exhibition match for a proof of concept. Play 10-minute halves in world class difficulty or professional difficulty, preferably the former. If you’re impressed, you can then go ahead and edit the values of players of all other teams that you might use. In a week’s time I’d have edited the player values for all champions league teams and the premier league teams. After you’re done with the editing, make sure you save the squad file in two or three different names so that your hardwork is safe.

Okay then, let me summarise what needs to be done in short bullet points:

1. Choose the team for which you want to edit the values
2. Set this team as your favourite team in your FIFA 09 profile
3. For all players in that team, reduce the values of speed sprint and acceleration by 15 points.
4. Save the squad file in two or three names to be safe
5. For another team, go to step 1

Finally, if this is the way the game should have been, why did EA set the values of sprint speed and acceleration so high? Because, most of the millions of copies sold, were sold to very casual gamers or casual footie fans who may not look for realism, as much as you and I do. Those were the ones who kept EA in the FIFA business when they were sh1t. No disrespect to those type of gamers; each one can have different expectations from a same game. Out of the FIFA 09 buyers, the football connoisseurs would be a very very small minority. It makes sense to make the game to please the majority instead of an obscure purist minority.

Finally, if it works for you (certainly works for me), please drop a line here so that we all know. And, try to spread this message as much as possible so that everyone know about this. Please DO NOT WRITE OFF this idea without TESTING it. EA has hidden a great game within FIFA 09. The tweaked game that I play is incredibly better than the original retail copy. I would thank EA for making this great game and also for making it in such a way that it can be customised to your needs. Let’s FIFA 09! ]]> http://www.football-gamer.com/ultimate-guide-to-realistic-football-in-fifa-09/feed/ 0 http://www.football-gamer.com/tactics-for-top-teams-for-brilliant-gameplay-in-fifa-09/ http://www.football-gamer.com/tactics-for-top-teams-for-brilliant-gameplay-in-fifa-09/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:12:44 +0000 vjkrishna http://www.football-gamer.com/?p=25

I’m back. I’m sure a lot of you have read my earlier post on custom tactics suggestion for realistic gameplay in FIFA 09. That’s what about 7500 views in EA’s forums are telling me. Now, this time, I’ve going to suggest custom tactics for the top top teams. I’ve tried these setting myself and I find that the games are very open, random and very attacking. The more I play, the more I’m able to study the game. The more I experiment the more I understand about the tactical sliders and how they impact the game. I’ve had new learnings every day. The below is the latest of my understanding and suggestions.

Build up speed: The maximum that you set this for any team should be 50. Again, don’t set it to more than 50 to any team. The reason is, the pitch size in FIFA 09 is small. It is not as big as it’s in Pro Evo. In a small-sized pitch, it the build up speed is set to 70 or 80, it would just be a game of counterattacks. When you lose the ball in your attacking third, because of the high build up speed, you’ll see the ball the opponents attacking third in the very next moment. With high build up speed there won’t be midfield battles. That’s why you should slow down the build up speed to 50 for the quickest team and then may be 10 or 15, for the slowest team. For Man Utd and Arsenal, it should be 50. For Chelsea and Liverpool, it can be 40.

Build up passing: Set this to a maximum of 70. For teams like Man Utd and Chelsea, set this to 60. For Liverpool, set this to 70. For Arsenal, set this to 40. This will determine what mix of short and long passing will be made by the team. Long passes will mean there will be 50-50 balls in the air which really adds to the excitement. A 40 for Arsenal will mean they will make mostly short passes and very occasional short passes. Even here, the pitch size makes a difference. Too much of short passing will create a lot of congestion while the long passes will change the sides of play and even out the player distribution on the pitch.

Chance creation passing: This shows how much risk the teams would take while making the passes. This means looking for the killer passes and also the off the ball players making runs to get those killer passes. Set this to as high as possible. For teams like Chelsea and Man Utd, I’ve set this to 90. This means these teams would play some very enterprising football which adds to the excitement. For Liverpool, I’ve set this to 80 and for Arsenal I’ve put this to 70. I don’t want to set this to less than 50 for any top half teams. This tactical slider plays a major role in making your games play an unpredictable attacking game.

Chance creation crossing: This slider’s value would determine where and how off the ball players would make themselves available to receive the ball and whether they would make movements expecting a cross. I have no suggestions here. Please set this up as you find it appropriate. I’ve set Chelsea’s crossing at 60, Man Utd’s crossing at 50, Arsenal’s at 30 and Liverpool’s at 60. Feel free to set this as per your choice.

Chance creation shooting: This slider’s value would determine whether the off the ball players position themselves to take a shot and whether they would think it’s a priority to position themselves for a shot instead of looking for a passing position. I have no suggestions here. Please set this up as you find it appropriate. I’ve set Chelsea’s shooting at 80, Man Utd’s shooting at 80, Arsenal’s at 50 and Liverpool’s at 70. Feel free to set this as per your choice.

Team width: For all the top teams, the team width is set to 60 – 70. Teams with good full backs should have a 70 here. I’ve seen that with the team width set highly, players get spread out on the pitch. The full backs participate in the attacks. When you set it to low, the defenders narrow down in the centre which created invariably the same type of games where you’d pass it to the flanks and then bring it in. With the team width set high, you’re challenged at every part of the pitch, instead of leaving you room and space in the flanks which produces similar games.

Pressure: For the top teams set this to just 15. Anything higher, again, produces similar kind of games such which have mostly throughballs and lobbed throughballs. When you set the pressure to just 15, you’ll see your defenders backing up when the opponent has the ball (that’s quite a sight!). And then when you win the ball with a defender, you have about 75 to 80% of the pitch still to be covered and with slow build up, it creates a lovely football game.

Aggression: This will have to be set to 70. This is as explained in my other thread. The higher this is, the higher the tackling/ball winning mentality of the players. If set this any higher, you might see a lot of cards and sending offs. If you set this any lower, the crucial tackles may not be made in time. Unless you use skill, you won’t be able to waltz past the players. Forces you to pass around and build up creative attacks.

Positioning – Build up & Chance Creation: Set both these to FREE FORM. The top teams have top quality players who have varied attributes to be able to do well with ‘free form’ positioning. Again, with ‘free form’ positioning, players do make overlapping runs and making unpredictable build ups and attacks. Also, it is the AI which is playing so ‘free form’ would do well.

My settings: I play on ‘world class’. I use ‘assisted’ passing, crossing and through balls, ‘manual’ crossing and lobs. I use TELE camera angle with height and zoom set to ZERO. My player change setting is set to about 2/10 of the bar. I do not play MM. I just play custom created tournaments. I generally love to play possession football while trying to surprise the opposition at every chance! I play only OFFLINE games despite having access to xbox live gold membership valid until next year.

Remember, the tactics numbers for the top teams are set based on my opinions. Let’s not have an argument on whether Arsenal should be 40 in buildup passing or Liverpool should be 80 in chance creation passing. You’re free to set the numbers to your beliefs/liking.

Just understand the logic and set your numbers accordingly. For the la liga, serie a and other league top teams, you can set the sliders accordingly. I played a league with just Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool, with home and away games. All matches were very tight and challenging. They were very random and unpredictable too. I have not put the tactics in the locker. There are very few changes to be done, so you can do it yourselves manually. If I learn more, I’ll share more. Cheers!