(i) Gamespeed: It is certainly slower than before. With every patch, the game speed has been coming down, which is very good. Overall, the pace of the game is very very realistic. It feels more like football than a video game now.

(ii) Dribbling: Now the dribbling animations are smoother. The jerky movements are very very less now. The dribbling speed has also been reduced. Only yesterday, I could sprint from the right defending corner to right attacking corner with someone like Bosingwa in a flash. After the update, even with Lennon, though I could see he is one of the paciest players, I take more time to cover the pitch. The dribbling animations and speed are just about perfect now.

(iii) Passing: The short passing speed has been lowered. Earlier, the so-called ‘ping-pong’ existed for any player with a passing ability of more than 75 points. Now, only players with above 90 points short passing speed ability pass the ball at these speeds. The short passing speed of anyone (most of the players) who have a short passing speed of less than 90, is now very realistic. Only now, even in top matches like Chelsea vs Man Utd, you can see the ball receiver waiting for the ball to reach him before he makes his move. Earlier the ball used to zip across the pitch. Now it’s very realistic. I also feel that the passing is lot more freer than it was before. The variety of attacking moves I’m able to make now are a testimony to this.

(iv) Goalkeepers: Improvement in goalkeepers. No more silly parries. They keep very well. They parry it when they have to. Basically, I think they now play true to their goalkeeping player abilities.

(v) Referees: They are certainly stricter. More fouls are being called. More penalties are given. They can still go wrong either ways but they can be error-prone but not scandalous as they were before.

What still needs to happen? The defenders, especially the side backs have to be lot more sharper and ruthless. They need to read the game better and anticipate attacking moves. They need to tackle more frequently and throw their bodies when it matters. Also, some of the stadiums I find unplayable due to the pitch graphics or lighting. Rest are fine with me.

For me, Winning Eleven 2010 was already a revelation and it is way better than PES 2010. With this patch, this game has got so much better. I’m loving it. This is not out of imagination, exaggeration or placebo effect. I have experienced all those things mentioned above. And, I’m writing this after playing several offline games. Having spent more than 20-30 hours in editing and testing alone, I can certainly see the difference when it’s there.

We have got closer to a very perfect football game.

Q: Is WE 2010 better than PES 2010?
A: Yes, it certainly is. Not by a great deal, but it is certainly better.

Q: Does it have menus in English or Japanese?
A: There is an option. For both menus and commentary language, you can choose either English or Japanese.

Q: Does WE 2010 plays faster than PES 2010?
A: No, it doesn’t. It feels a bit more liberated which can make you think the game runs faster.

Q: Are the referees better?
A: No. Exactly the same referees.

Q: Are the keepers better?
A: YES! They are not just better, they’re just brilliant. In 8 hours of WE 2010, so many diving saves and no fumbles so far.

Q: Does the AI play better?
A: Definitely yes. AI in WE 2010 is smarter and sharper. It plays well in attack as well as defence. Yes, I’m referring to the professional difficulty.

Q: Does it have new animations?
A: WE 2010 doesn’t have new animations. But the animations have been touched up a bit. That’s evident. The PES 2010 jerkiness is very less here.

Q: Is it the same graphics?
A: No. The graphics has been touched up as well. The lighting looks better. The bright sunshine near the goal area in day/afternoon matches is not there.

Q: Do you get option files for WE 2010?
A: I got a fantastic one from www.winningeleven.sg. It’s based on the kit and emblem files of PES 2010 (Jackwhobra) option file and it’s brilliant.

Q: What about chants?
A: Just create a new playlist called KONAMI_WE and copy and paste all the chants that you had in KONAMI_PES. The load from the game.

Q: Is WE 2010’s superstar more difficult than PES 2010’s top player?
A: Yes, of course it is more difficult. But for now, I’m sticking with professional. That’s good enough challenge for me.

Q: Is it worth buying WE 2010 when you already have PES 2010?
A: if you’re a pro evo freak, go get it. Others, don’t, only because you may not appreciate the difference.

As we get more questions being answered, I’d add to the above list.

The biggest difference is the PACE of the game. Winning Eleven is beautifully paced. The game simulates football like no other football titles have (including PES5 and PES6). Without giving the game a good go, I started tweaking the top speed, dribble speed and passing speed stats to slow the game down. I did that for quite a few teams. Then I realised that the tweaking wasn’t helping. I went back to the original stats. I reset to original stats for all teams. Then started playing match after match using different teams. If anything, some of the stats need increases and not decreases.

I have upped the agility, balance and response values so the game can run smoothly. I then upped the aggression, teamwork and tenacity so that the AI can be more attacking. As far as the game speed is concerned I have not made any changes to stats.

Now the WE 2010 graphics are really eye-candy, the animations are so organic and lovely and now the AI beats me more often than not. I must say, this is the best football gaming experience I’ve had.

As you might know, I’ve replaced my XBOX 360 with PS3 – ONLY for PES 2010. As soon as I got the game, what I did was to download the latest WENB option file. Extracted the file and moved it to my Transcend pen drive. Plugged it to PS3 and transferred them. Pure bliss. No more file transfer complications and reliance on third party softwares and add-on devices. Some of the base colours applied by the WENB option file didn’t look correct for me. So I changed them with brilliant Jackwhobra’s formulae.

And then, I did something that’s impossible to do with unmodded XBOX 360, even with any of those softwares and devices. I transferred the chants pack for all top European teams. The transferring and assigning of those chants to the various teams was so unbelievably easy. So what I now have is – complete emblems, kits, top teams from German league and the chants.

I love the control panels of PS3 over XBOX360’s. Much more than I had in 360, I ‘feel’ that I’m in complete control of the settings of PS3. I thought the look and feel of the control panels of PS3 would not be better than XBOX360. I was wrong. Not only the PS3 screens look beautiful they are also highly customisable.

I’m still getting used to the Dualshock controllers. I like the fact that the PS3 controller is lighter than that of XBOX 360. The placement of the left analog stick was a bit awkward for me at the beginning. In just a matter of two days, I feel comfortable with the arrangement of buttons and sticks. The one thing that was better in the XBOX 360 controller was the triggers (L2 & R2). These buttons in the dualshock controller kind of evade my grip.

And you know what, there are a list of things that have won me over:

1. PS3 is Wi-Fi enabled, not sure if 360 is, at least it is more easy and visible in PS3.
2. PS3 controllers do not need batteries to be replaced. You just charge them on the PS3.
3. Transfer of data from your PC to PS3 is so easy – option files, image files, chants etc
4. The dualshock controller is very impressive. Now, I like it better than the 360 controllers
5. PS3 has an in-built internet browser that can even bring up youtube videos
6. Large Pro Evo community in PS3 – to share stuff and play online (the quality of online gamers is better in PS3 I heard
7. Uncharted 2 & Little Big Planet – good enough reasons to own a PS3

Overall, I’m glad that I bought a PS3. This must be my best gaming decision of this year. I’m not trying to sell PS3 here. If you’re a pro evo fan and if you can shell out the money, get the slim PS3. You’ll enjoy it, thoroughly.

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.

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.