Football Gamer - Pro Evo & FIFA on the XBOX 360

I wanted to get my FIFA 10 review done before I get PES 2010 so that I’m not influenced by that game. I can’t say the same for PES 2010 review and that’s what happening to the FIFA and PES reviews across the web. FIFA 10 has the benefit of being reviewed for what it is while PES reviews obviously make a comparison with FIFA to which the web magazines have already committed a high score. Okay, let’s get on with it then.

Let’s get this out of way right upfront. FIFA10 is a fantastic game. It’s a great game technically. It’s well presented. It’s got loads of modes to keep you dabbling around. It’s got all the licenses and stuff. Its online gaming is very good. It’s a very good complete package for a football game. Like the game reviewers, I’m gonna split this review into various parts – visuals, sound, gameplay and the final word. In the overall rating, the weightages are like this. Visuals: 30%. Audio : 10%. Gameplay: 60%. I’m going to keep two important things out of this review: online games and manager mode. I know that for a lot of people these two things matter a lot but I spend most of my time in offline singleplayer and multiplayer games and cups. I don’t play manager mode and I hardly go online.

So all I’m going to talk about is how the game plays on the pitch. That means this review should ideally apply to any match that you play in FIFA 10. Here we go.

Visuals: In visuals I’m gonna talk about graphics and animations. I’m not very impressed with the graphics in FIFA 10 though it’s an improvement over FIFA 09. Player likenesses are completely poor. Some of them very poor. Not even the superstars of the game have been recreated properly. This holds good even for the man in the game cover, Wayne Rooney. The player models still look like plastic cardboards when they don’t move. There’s something really wrong with the heights of the players. The tall players don’t look tall enough and the short players don’t look short enough. If you happen to see Crouch and Defoe next to each other in the game, just watch their proportion of heights and then compare it to their real life heights. Same story with the players’ physique as well. Because of this averaging out of players’ physical attributes, they are not instantly recognisable on the pitch. With EA’s resources I don’t why is it so difficult to create player likenesses in faces and physiques.

Pitch graphics are okay. Not really dazzling but good enough. Some of the pitches are simply not fun to play on. Rain and snow are good. Lighting has been improved only to the extent that night matches are worth playing. Day matches are still too bright forcing me to adjust the TV settings for each ground.

Animations: In FIFA 10, animations are simply mind-blowing. That’s the high point of this game. Players move in such fluid and realistic manner sometimes you forget that you’re playing a video game. It’s not just the movements, they are numerous pieces of animation that the players do depending on the situations. The animations especially for some defending/clearances from awkward positions are just so awesome. The animations had to be at the best if they had to make 360-degree thingy a success. The animations and the 360-degree movement just complement each other and produce a visual treat when on song. I must talk about the collisions animations as well. The body checking, the nudge, the push and the physicality of the game is so beautifully brought out through fantastic animations.

Verdict on visuals: Stunning animations but let down by player graphics. 8/10.

Sound: Commentary is as good as it was in FIFA 09. Lots of new lines of commentaties have been added though. Martin Tyler and Andy Gray are a fantastic combination for the English commentary. Let’s be honest. There would be some limitation to commentaries. They can never be spontaneous and interesting as live match commentaries. You’re going to listen to certain lines a hundred times if you’re playing the game for a lengthy period of time. I’m not very pleased with the crowd chants. They are a hit and miss. The crowd doesn’t seem to watch the game as it happens. They tempo and decibels don’t go up enough when the ball comes to closer to the final third or goal. Even worse, they take a second to erupt and the ball hits the net. Could have done better with that.

Verdict on audio: Great commentary but lame crowd reactions. 9/10.

Gameplay: In gameplay, I want to split this into three parts – common elements, core gameplay and the AI capabilities. The core gameplay is all about what I can do and cannot do as a gamer and the AI capabilities is what the AI can do to me and cannot do to me on the pitch. And then there are some common elements which can enhance the gameplay experience.

Common elements: The pitch is still small. That’s been the case with FIFA. The players look a bit bigger than they should be on the pitch. But it’s more about pitch being small than about players being big. I’m able to say this because when you look at the dimensions of the goal post and the players, it looks just fine. That’s why I think the pitch size is smaller instead of saying players are bigger. The pitch being small does impact the gameplay to a great extent. With a smaller pitch, the build up play looks a little hurried. Smaller pitch also means your opponent players are more closer to you thereby making it easier for them to aggressively pressurize you.

The usual set of camera angles are there. I always play in TELE zoomed out with max height. Still, I think a camera angle further wide would have been better. For EA, it helps them to have closer camera angles so they can showcase you their beautifully made animations. The longer you go the lesses you’d notice the nuances in animations. From a tactical point of view and from a build-up play point of view, I’d have loved a more distant camera angle.

The game speed has been brought down. That’s a welcome change. You still have the slow, normal and fast speed settings. For what’s being touted as a simulation game, these options of speed levels look very arcadic. There is no need for multiple speed levels if you can get the realistic game speed into the game. The slow speed setting suits me well. I think it does represent the speed at which the game is played. Since the game is played at different speeds in different leagues, I think the game speed should be dictated purely through the custom tactics setting for each team instead of the slow, normal and fast speed setting. Custom tactics are still there and they do make a difference. But it’s very stupid and lazy to have provided the same 28 slots for custom tactics for the 500+ teams that are there in the game. Just simply does not make sense.

Core gameplay: Initially, I didn’t notice too much difference between FIFA 09 gameplay and FIFA 10 gameplay. That was because I was trying to play FIFA 10 like I used to play FIFA 09. I didn’t know what am I capable of in FIFA 10 that I was not capable of in FIFA 09. It took me a few matches to really get the hang of the 360-degree movement. Once I understood it works and how to get the best out of this new feature, the possibilities were endless. The passing is good and smooth. I’m still not happy with the crossing though. Everytime there’s a cross the ball swerves like a Roberto Carlos free kick. Little bit of swerve and swing is fine but to see a banana cross in every single cross is not realistic. Shooting also needs some more work. The way the ball travels when shot is still a bit floaty.

Where are the goals coming from? Well, you can say it depends on how one plays. But FIFA have a tradition of forcing you to play in a certain way and making you abandon certain sources of goals. As far as I’ve seen though it appears that goals can come from anywhere there are some easier routes. Crossing is a waste of time because headers don’t connect so easily. Over a period of time, crossing gets completely removed from our arsenal due to its uselessness. Same story with the long shots. You can score some but even with the best players, the long shots are . . well a long shot. Lobbed passes . . not talking about lobbed throughballs . . the lobbed passes are also a hit and miss. The trajectories of the lobbed passes always surprise me, no matter which control setting I have. I’ve stopped trusting the lobbed passes as a way of going forward or keeping the ball. So what works well? Keep passing on the ground. You’ll always have some unmanned passing lanes that you can go through. The throughball works well and can be very useful.

The key thing is gameplay is to establish that balance among all ways to score a goal – you should choose one of the various routes to the goal because of the match situation and not because that’s easier than the other routes. While this can be the case for certain teams based on their players’ strengths and weaknesses. For instance when you’re playing as a team with no good crossers, you may want to avoid crossing. That’s not what I’m referring to here. The game as such makes certain routes easier for you than the rest. If you get to record a full match that you have played, you can see what options you had at every stage and what decision you took at those stages and why. Though I want to play the game like real football is played out, when I’m 0-1 down, all I’m trying to do is to play in a way that is usually successful in FIFA. This is something FIFA need to get away with. The usefulness of ground passes, lobbed passes, crosses and long shots must all be very well balanced out so that the gamers get to use these weapons based on the match demands rather than game’s capabilities.

I must tell you that the passing game in FIFA 10 is sheer pleasure to play. The 360-degree control on the players make the passing game even better. You can pull off some of the most stunning team work moves if you play the ball on the ground. Dribbling is easier in FIFA 10 than it was in FIFA 09. That’s primarily because of the 360-degree control that allows you to move your player by say only 10 degrees and lose your marker. The pace of the players is no longer as key as it was in FIFA 09. But with the superb collision animations, the strength becomes a very key attribute on the pitch. Thanks to the 360-degree animation and the strength attributes, I can still lose my marker even if I’m not very pacy.

Defending in FIFA 10 is not instinctive. Though the defenders are much more disciplined than in FIFA 09, defending in FIFA 1o is not something that you’d enjoy doing. You know what, I really enjoy defending. While I’m controlling a defender I should feel empowered and enabled to defend which I don’t find in FIFA 10. It’s one more of the hits and misses of FIFA 10.

Let’s talk about the AI. The AI has improved manifold from FIFA 09. The AI plays a very good game of football and can leave you stranded at times. But that’s all in attack. In defence, they can be rather dumb at times. The AI players do pressurise you all the time because they know that even if they keep pressurising their stamina is not going to go down. I think it’s a bad thing that the AI is pressurising the ball carrier so much. Instead of chasing the ball carrier every single time, the opponent AI must close the gaps, watch the passing lanes and concentrate on the possible ball receiver. This would make the gameplay improve to a great extent. Because the pressure is on the ball carrier, there is less time to react and in most cases what happens is a plain simple short pass to keep the ball. If on the other hand, if the AI takes care of the ball receiver, it forces the gamer to use his creativity, innovation, improvisation and his footballing brain to make something happen.

I’ve had the game for only a couple of weeks now and I’m playing on legendary difficulty already. I’m a decent gamer but normally someone who doesn’t even get to play on the highest difficulty because the highest-but-one difficulty can be a good challenge for me. When you call a difficulty level ‘legendary’, you’d expect the AI to slaughter you with mindblowing attacks, punish your mistakes and stay rock solid at the back. That’s quite not my experience so far. I was able to win matches at a high frequency, some of them with ease, never felt that I was playing ‘legendary’ difficulty. You may advise me to artificially raise my difficulty level by playing on manual but that’s a poor workaround for what the game should offer me through the difficulty level. Moreover, when we talk about difficulty levels, we are not talking about making things easy or difficulty for us but we’re talking about raising the level of the opponent AI.

The other downer about the gameplay is the lack of player individuality. Most of the players are just the same, based on the on-pitch display of attributes. The difference between say, Xabi Alonso and Mascherano is almost nothing. Messi and Ribery? They’re the same. This lack of difference makes your experience a very flat and uninteresting sometimes. It’s sad that even at the highest difficulty level, the opponent AI does not do the special moves such as the flip-flap, rabona etc. That’s even when the AI controls players like Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Ribery etc. I don’t know why that’s so difficult. So I never have to worry about the skill-merchants on the opposition team because they’re just going to dribble and pass, dribble and pass, dribble and pass . . .

Overall, gameplay has certainly improved but not by much. What needs to improve also include some of the most fundamental things for a football game. The most important being the balance across the various weapons that are there at your disposal. The other important improvement is the player individuality and the difficulty of the opponent AI. Strangely these shortcomings have always been FIFA’s problems. Unfortunately, EA have concentrated on other things while leaving these areas unaddressed. And for these shortcomings to still exist in this franchise, in the third edition in the next-gen consoles and with so many other non-key improvements being made, is very unacceptable. Despite these key disadvantages, FIFA 10’s gameplay is quite enjoyable though not realistic. Whether it has the longevity or not depends on what you’d expect from a football video game. I don’t know if I’d still be playing FIFA 10 even after say, 6 months.

Gameplay verdict: Smooth and fluid. Old but fundamental shortcomings still remain. 7/10.

Final score: 8/10 on visuals that has 30% weightage. 9/10 on sound that has 10% weightage. 7/10 on gameplay that has 60% weightage. If you do the math I think you get a score of 7.5/10 overall. Yes, 7.5/10 is my final score. Though FIFA 10 is a massive improvement over FIFA 09, the massive improvements have not come in the more crucial and fundamental areas for a football game.