BigZombieMonkey's Blog

FIFA clubs - who is to blame?

2011-09-28T13:47:00.000+01:00

I suppose this blog has been a long time coming but it’s come to a point where I suppose I need to get something off of my chest regarding FIFA, the clubs community and EA themselves. What I am referring to is the mess regarding Virtual pro hacking and how all people involved with it are killing clubs off.

In FIFA 11 it was discovered that by using some widely available programs and a USB stick that a file saved on the 360 hard drive could be modified to give the user a modified Virtual Pro. At first it started off with a VP being 70%, then it was 89%, then 98% and finally someone uploaded a 100% VP at which point it seemed the majority of the community were using a 100% VP. Now many argue that this is not a “clubs mode killing issue” but I argue otherwise.

Before I go on let me hold up my hand and say “I downloaded a VP in FIFA 11”, my reasons being that I was playing for a very good club, most of them had already downloaded a VP and I was worried that I’d be dropped from the squad if my VP was so poor that it left me at a disadvantage. Is that a good reason? Upon reflection it is not and I realise that last year I was as much a part of the problem as any other person who downloaded a VP of any sorts.

So, who is to blame? Many of the community argue that it is EA and whilst there is a lot of truth in that there are also others to blame, namely the community of FIFA players itself. Whilst EA have not done enough in the technical aspect of preventing hacking it is the FIFA community who are exploiting that and downloading already completed VP’s. To me it’s like someone using cheat codes to become invincible in a video game and complaining that it’s too easy because the company put cheat codes in when in fact it’s the users choice to use those codes.

I will continue to write who is to blame but I’m going to focus first on EA and then the community. With EA the blame is high, NHL 12 has a “clubs” mode called Hockey League and whilst NHL 12 was made in the same Studio as FIFA 12 with both teams sharing technology and code the two games are miles apart when it comes to their clubs mode, with NHL 12 being a fantastic mode that punishes people who quit early and rewarding those who stick out games and who play good Hockey and FIFA being a mode full of exploits, cheaters and boosters.

Hockey League works on a system of XP awarded based on rank earned by meeting various goals, meaning when you start out you are a Rookie rank 1 and by meeting certain goals like winning 2 games, having an average teamwork rating of D- and a positioning average rating of D+ you will progress to Rookie rank 2 which will give you more XP to use on your VP. What’s so great about this is that you have to meet certain goals in order to progress and these goals can only be met online meaning a player cannot boost himself unless he has other players willing to sacrifice their ratings and possibly lose xp points. In FIFA there is no punishment at all, lose a game and it means nothing other than your team lose points, hack your VP and exploit the game and nothing is done about it by EA and this is the reason the exploits and VP Hacking continue to grow and grow.

In FIFA 13 EA need to make sure that VP’s are split, you have one for offline and one for online and the online one needs to be saved serverside so that it cannot be modified or hacked. This will prevent people from hacking even if they want to and will instantly put everyone back on a level playing ground, something that they have not been for FIFA 11 and look unlikely to be on FIFA 12 now that there are people already working hard on hacking FIFA 12 VP’s.

One major annoyance for myself is that EA FIFA team still continue to do nothing to deter cheaters on the FIFA games, there are no announcements of people being banned, no-one seems to be banned, boosters do so openly and even on the recent results of teams you can see they have played the same team 10-15 times with all games a 3-0 win, VP’s were hacked to be superhuman and still no action is taken on these users. I think it is a fair assumption that if a person is cheated against and feels wronged and the people responsible do nothing about it there is a chance that the wrong person will turn to cheating to “even the playing ground” which in turn means he wrongs someone else resulting in a viral hacking issue as we saw in FIFA 11 which brings me to the community.

I am amazed by how often I read the sentence “It’s EA’s fault that clubs is ruined because they haven’t stopped the hacking of VP’s” and yet it is written by someone who has downloaded a 100% VP or who has “tried” a “128 hacked VP”. The problem with the community is there are a large number of people who are so competitive that they will do whatever it takes to win and so they will download a hacked VP. There seems to be four categories to these hackers:

1) The all out cheater

2) The “moral” cheater

3) The booster

4) The peer pressured cheater

The all out cheater I name so because this person wants to win so bad that they will do anything to win, even if it means playing terrible, unrealistic, abusing football. They will hack their VP to get every statistic up to 128, they will abuse know glitches and bugs, they will pull their Ethernet cable if it’s the 90th minute and they are losing etc

The worst part about this kind of cheater is that they have no interest in winning through being the better team, they just want to win and boast about being on a leader board and so it is safe to say they are not a fan of football or football gaming, but instead they are the kind of gamer who thinks a leader board position makes you better.

Next you have the moral cheater who is the type of person who will download a VP because they feel they have the right to have a 100% VP but they will not cheat in a match. Most often the moral cheater has some morals (hence the name) such as they won’t do a glitch like the throw in glitch and they will not pull the cord when losing. Does this make the moral cheater a lesser part of the issue? No, it really doesn’t as they have still downloaded a hacked VP to get to 100%, they still haven’t earned the advantage they have over the players who are levelling their VP properly and as the game intends you to do so.

They are also a major part of the hacking problem despite how they feel and the reason being is that when lots of people turn up being 88 rated so early into the game their opponents begin to think “how did that person get so highly rated so quickly” and turn to google. A quick google search later and they have discovered the 100% Virtual pro hack, a little longer into their process of learning how it is done and they discover the 128 hack at which point they figure “well they cheated, so will I” and download the 128 VP. It’s essentially a viral hacking issue caused by a few but that spreads to the many.

The booster I name so because these are the type of players who set their VP to play against a terrible team and then go through the accomplishments like a list. With FIFA 12 this has been made easier as even the World Class accomplishments are a walk in the park due to the introduction of the sliders. It seems that many people are knocking the opponents sliders right down so that they are essentially useless whilst putting all of their teams sliders on maximum so that they have a massive advantage meaning they can boost their VP up without any real challenge. These cheaters may not be responsible for VP hacking directly but again many people do the same thing as I mentioned with the moral hackers, “how did his VP get so highly rated so quickly?” and so on it continues to lead to the 128 VP discovery.

Finally you have the peer pressured cheater. In FIFA 11 I fell into this category and this is the type of player who plays with very good players who have hacked or boosted and when the team start up they realise they are nowhere near up to the standard, not because of lacking the ability but because they are using a much weaker, slower VP. Trying to play in a team of 88 rated VP’s when you are rated 71 or 72 is very hard as the pace of the game is dictated by the majority. With FIFA 12 this only looks to get worse as with poor stamina you can be injured more frequently and when you’re playing with a team of very fast and high stamina players you’re going to struggle to keep up with the pace. It is at this point this type of cheater decides to cheat by downloading a VP or boosting in order to keep up with his teammates, hence the term peer pressured.

So looking back up at that list you can see that all of these kinds of cheaters are what is ruining clubs and each are equally as responsible as each other, even if they don’t want to admit it.

The only way I can see FIFA clubs being saved from it’s own destructive community is by EA’s FIFA development team taking control, biting the bullet and implementing serverside VP’s, rewarding honest, good players and punishing those who cheat. If EA do not take this stance for FIFA 13 they may find they don’t have much of a clubs fan base left and being as so many hardcore clubs players only play FIFA for clubs they will not only lose a small base of sales but also give themselves one less advantage over their rival game PES, or even open the door for Konami to take that part of the community by implementing a clubs mode of their own.

So to conclude this blog I think both EA and the clubs community are to blame for the recent deterioration of clubs and unless EA take control of it again they may kill off one of the best footballing modes ever implemented into a football game, the ball is in EA’s court.

FIFA 12, PES 2012, my views on their demos.

2011-09-14T20:39:00.000+01:00

It’s common knowledge that if you like football and you like video games that you’ll know of both the PES and FIFA series of football games but every year heated debates pop up about which game is “better”, and this year is no exception.

Let me start here by saying that I am a Gamechanger for EA and help run and maintain a FIFA based website so it is highly likely that any dedicated fan of the PES franchise may take this article with a pinch of salt. That said, I am a fan of both games and a fan of football simulation foremost, so whilst I may have these links with FIFA all I want is the best football game I can get my hands on.

Demo quality

Whilst Konami treats its users to some fantastic depth in its demo I can’t help but feel EA seem to be missing the point of releasing a demo at all. To me a demo is a chance to experience the game and see if I want to buy it. Now I am the type of person who plays 7 minutes a half on FIFA and 10 minutes a half on PES so I was happy to see that on PES I could play * minutes a half but on FIFA my only option was 3 minutes a half!? Honestly EA what are you thinking? Do you want people to play your game or do you just want to show off the basic changes of the game without giving the user a real chance to experience a match?

For me 3 minutes a half really doesn’t offer enough time to see how a decent length match will pan out so it’s a real shame that EA still haven’t listened to their fans after they have asked for at least 6 minutes a half for the previous 2 demos and this one too.

Another thing I think PES has done better is offering a variety of teams. EA always seem to have big name teams and whilst I can understand this is due to a large demand it doesn’t help users such as myself who play with Championship teams mostly get a feel of the game at the lower leagues. PES however have chosen to give more variety in ability with Rangers being a mid card team as I would refer to them. I think it’s fair comment to say that whilst Rangers are not as low down as a Championship team they are nowhere near the standards of the teams in the FIFA demo which means the user can experience different levels of football.

I suppose to sum up what I’ve entitled demo quality it’s a clear “win” for Pro Evo due to them giving users what they want, a better demo in which to see what they really think of the game.

Presentation

FIFA 12:

Whilst FIFAs presentation has taken a step forward it still feels like something created by EA rather than a recreation of actual football. By this I mean that when I play the game the presentation does not make me feel like I am playing a football game, it makes me feel like I’m playing a video game made by EA because the presentation is of EA’s own design. I know that EA have to be careful about how they deliver their game but from my understanding they had or have some kind of licence with Sky Sports and if this is the case then why not use it?! When an English team are playing and are home then why not use the Sky Sports TV presentation style? Use the logo even if you can’t use the in game model to recreate the Sky Sports line up they have. All EA seem to have done this year is borrowed a presentation idea that they use on NHL 12 which is very disappointing. When I say this don’t think I mean the presentation is not better because it is, it’s just not football as we know it.

PES 2012:

When it comes to presentation PES feels a lot more complete with the cameras, stewards and so on when you come out to start the game, EA has an improvement with the small videos of various players. It’s odd that a camera man walking between each team as they prepare to come out of the tunnel or walking along in front of the players as they line up can make such a big difference, but it does.

I, as many other football gaming fans, have said it’s the small things that make such a big difference and it seems that Konami are in agreement as they really have focused on them. When a match starts you see the linesmen and the referee in the tunnel, stewards on the sidelines and around the players as they come out and you see the camera men. When the game starts you’ll notice the manager stood up on the sideline and in one case when playing on the first PES 2012 demo I even seen some random man making his way somewhere else in the stadium like he was doing something important. Now this may seem irrelevant to gameplay and it is, but it’s that kind of level of presentation that makes a massive difference and takes a player from playing a video game into playing football. A great example of a small touch that doesn’t affect the game but really adds to the immersion is how at half time the ground staff come out onto the pitch and tend to it, pushing in divots etc, it’s a small touch but it’s a great one.

Another area that the presentation is great is in the cut scenes as players expressed emotion in a realistic manner. PES has always been notoriously bad compared to FIFA in animations but when it comes to cut scenes I would say it is vice versa as FIFA’s cut scenes seem to lack emotion whereas PES’ have captured it very well.

Defending

Defending AI

FIFA 12:

With this year’s game defenders are better on a whole but still seem to lack urgency at times and do not seem to understand what is going on around them. A huge part of what makes defenders so good in real life is their ability to read a game and react to it, something they do not do in FIFA as they seem to become lost in play. On a whole the frequency in which players become lost is not too high but it’s enough to cause frustration and this in turn causes criticism. The poor defensive AI hits hardest with midfielders as quite often I find myself controlling a defender whilst trying to stop two attacking players only for a midfielder who is standing 10 yards away not to react to the two on one situation and come to help, even with no other threat anywhere near him.

It’s a real shame that with all of the fantastic work EA have done on FIFA 12 that they have not worked on the area that is key to gameplay, the AI.

In one circumstance my right midfielder was beaten by the oppositions left back leaving my right back to fend off an advancing left back and left midfielder, as I jockeyed backwards to ensure I wasn’t beaten they played a one two pulling me out of position and allowing them to pass me and get into a dangerous crossing position. Now this sounds fine and shows that the attacking AI was working well in this circumstance but the issue was that I had two central midfielders not more than 10 yards away and not marking any player in the middle and neither came to offer support. Had one or both of these midfielders come to me then the opposition would not have been able to play the one two pass to break past me and yet this is something that seemed to happen all over the pitch, midfielders not reacting to dangerous situations when they should be.

I hope that with the full retail release I can use the new sliders that EA have implemented to tweak this issue so that it does not happen as much, however I do find myself somewhat put out that I have to tune the game when Konami have managed to deliver a game that does not need tweaking in this area.

PES 2012:

One thing you can see Konami have put a lot of time and effort into with PES 2012 is the AI and the defending AI is no exception as it is fantastic. The midfielders are very intelligent and cover runs when the defence is struggling, they help cut off options and are thoughtful in their positioning to help break down attacks. There is also a real element of the players understanding the need to get back in certain situations such as when 2-3 attacking players on the opposition are breaking together and pose a threat. I was very impressed to see both the midfield and the defence charging back to help and positioning themselves well in the process.

PES 2012 delivers what you expect from a football game when it comes to defending, defenders react in the right situations, runs off of the ball are tracked, passing options are cut off and defenders seem to be constantly adapting to the situations that surround them, much credit to Konami.

Goalkeepers

FIFA 12:

One thing I was impressed with when playing the demo was to find that foot planting is there and working well with goalkeepers. In one game I took a pot shot to the left of the keeper as he was moving to his right forcing him to plant his foot before he could push off to dive left. I scored because of this and it looked realistic too which gave me a good hope for FIFA 12 goalkeepers. Now as I write this I am yet to see any freak goalkeeper moments in FIFA 12 although I am sure they will be there as it’s one of the hardest areas of the game to code, however I am pretty happy that in so many matches I have yet to see it when in FIFA 11 it was a regular occurrence, kudos EA.

On a whole my experience with goalkeepers in FIFA 12 so far has been very good, I’ve seen a good comparison to real keepers in deflections beating them, making reaction saves at the right times and not looking too overpowered like they were in FIFA 11. They seem to have been coded better to deal with crosses and also seem to understand lobbing angles better too.

PES 2012:

In PES I’ve always felt that the goalkeepers are hit and miss and it would seem my opinion on them for PES 2012 is pretty much the same. To put it bluntly the goalkeepers still seem to be on rails in how they go about things and remind me of the IF ELSE coding for javascript which is not a good thing for those who know what I’m talking about.

On numerous occasions I have already seen goalkeepers throwing themselves at a loose ball when a defender is calmly positioning himself to clear or lunging at a ball that has crossed the line already. In one case I had a shot with Defoe that deflected off a defender and past the keeper. The deflection hit the post and then as it came back at the keeper it hit him in his man grapes and went out of play. Having not reacted to the massive impact on his plums and still standing rooted to the spot he continued not to react until the ball has crossed the line at which point he launched himself at the ball like it was a winning lottery ticket.

I do like PES goalkeepers despite how it may sound as they feel human when it comes to shot stopping as they can be beaten realistically but when it comes to loose ball situations I fear that it’s all going to go pear shaped and goalkeepers are something Konami still need to do more work on.

Attacking

Attacking AI

FIFA 12:

One thing I was glad to experience when I played pre-alpha code of FIFA 12 was there was a massive improvement of FIFA 12’s attacking AI with reference to how it built up attacks. It was a case of the AI has suddenly learned more than one way to attack and playing the AI was more challenging as it now used variety in attacking was a lot more dangerous when dribbling at players and trying to beat them. I’m glad to say this is still working well and whilst most of my friends chose to play on World Class or legendary I knew dropping down to Pro to adapt was a good idea. (To those who chose to play on World Class and then got frustrated about it... told you haha.)

One major annoyance I found was that the computer still doesn’t recycle the play and instead chooses only to go forward. I chose to play Olymipique Marseille to test this theory out as the demo says they have a balanced build up play, with mixed build up passing, to me this surely should include passing the ball backwards. My guess after trying it was EA do not agree with me on this as after counting 30 passes over multiple attacks only one pass had gone backwards and this was due to there being no options in front of the striker. I think this is an area of FIFA that has always frustrated me as I think the opposition should understand the importance of recycling play when there are no options on as real teams do.

Another thing that stood out was how I still find that my team mates often run away from me when I’m the player in possession and need support, leaving me to be closed down and my options cut off.

It’s a shame really that with such a great leap forward in how the AI attacks that the movement off of the ball still requires a lot of work and with Konami putting in a lot of time this year on it FIFA has fallen even further behind.

PES 2012:

As with the defensive AI it would appear that Konami have worked very hard on the attacking aspects of the AI too with Konami delivering some fantastic advancements. As I mentioned one of my main pet hates on FIFA is how the movement is so static and the attack has to be orchestrated by the player in order to see any real movement, in PES 2012 that’s not an issue. The players understand how to attack, they make runs off of the ball, they support the ball carrier and they look for opportunities. The movement and intelligent positioning make games against the AI and 1 vs 1 great as the AI is competent of attacking in a variety of manners, in an intelligent manner and also makes good attacking decisions when you’re carrying the ball.

Shooting

FIFA 12:

I’ve always felt that the shooting in FIFA felt pretty good but with some of the changes I’ve realise that it actually still had a lot of space for improvement. The changes I’m talking about are how EA have added a lot more weight to the ball and distance shots now feel like they have a lot more realism in how they dip, curve and travel. It’s remarkable how well EA have adjusted the physics via tweaking and in doing so made the shooting feel a lot closer to real life.

Sadly, as you would expect, finesse shots are still too powerful. As I’ve said before finesse shots should not just be about a curling inside foot shot but instead should add finesse to a variety of types of shots.

Finesse means delicacy or subtlety in action and is a skill in handling a difficult situation, so I don’t think that the finesse modifier actually adds finesse but instead triggers and over powered inside foot shot. EA need to change the very way the finesse modifier works so when it is triggered the player is more delicate and subtle in how he attempts the shot so he uses accuracy over power. This should be contextual as it is with normal shooting so that if I hold down the finesse modifier as I hit a volley from a cross I should try to guide the ball rather than hit it, essentially using accuracy at the expense of power.

PES 2012:

With FIFA having got shooting down to a very nice level of realism (with exception of the finesse shooting) it’s good news to hear that PES’ shooting is also better than 2011’s. I do have a criticism with the shooting though, it seems to have gone from one extreme to another, with shots in PES 2011 taking a little too long to power up and now in PES 2012 shots can go off like a rocket with the tap of a button. I think whilst I do like the shooting in PES it can seem a little erratic with regards to power and this is something Konami need to sort out as I’m never comfortable with putting power into a shot as I never get the result you would expect. What I mean by this is more often than not I can tap the shot button and hit it like a scud missile and in other circumstances I can hold down to put some power in a shot to find that it doesn’t have enough behind it.

Another criticism I have is that the ball still feels like it floats too much. The sound effect of kicking the ball quite often is a thumping sound only for the ball to float like it’s partly inflated by using helium, it’s a total lack of continuity when the sound really doesn’t match the images playing in front of me.

Gameplay

FIFA 12:

One major issue that I have brought up about game play many times is how fast players just don’t seem able to break away from the defence and in FIFA 12 this seems to have got worse. On one occasion I got a good 3 yard advantage on Kolarov as Walcott but after running down the line for 15-20 yards Kolarov had caught me up and started pulling me back to slow me down more. Now I know there are other factors like stamina and so on but this was at the beginning of the match so I do not understand how Kolarov, who has acceleration 76 and sprint speed 68, caught up to Walcott who has 97 acceleration and 96 sprint speed, it’s like the road runner being caught by the Coyote with a ball and chain on his leg. This seems to be the case with many break away opportunities with faster players being caught by much slower ones and really needs to be fixed as players like Walcott would never be caught by Kolarov if he had a 3 yard ahead start.

Having put forward an opinion that would suggest that the defence has an advantage over the attack this year I feel this is the point to spin that around and point out that this is very much not the case and that it is more of the opposite. It would seem that with the new precision dribbling and tactical defending this year’s FIFA is very much unbalanced in terms of attack vs defending. It’s no secret that in previous years FIFA has been far too aggressive with its defending system and in FIFA 11 one of the most common complaints was that defending was too automated. Cue the complete 180 and a whole new defending system called tactical defending in which tackling is manual and there is only containing, no heat seeking missile defenders.

I think it’s fair to say that the biggest shock to the system when playing FIFA 12 is adapting to no longer having FIFA do so much of the defending for you. Whilst this seems to have split decisions I’m very much in favour of the new tactical defending system but I do think that the tackle button is a little underpowered, especially when used against the new precision dribbling.

One great effect of taking away auto tackling is that the field is opened up and time on the ball is possible now which is something FIFA has always needed due to it feeling so restricted.

One thing I always tend to pay attention to with each game in the FIFA series is the speed of the game as a whole and this year I think the speed felt right for me. I certainly feel it is a lot slower in how it plays if you play possession football as you no longer feel forced to move the ball around at a high pace to maintain possession, instead you just have to make sensible passes and hold the ball when options are not on. Having said that this could lead to a nasty online issue of cheap wins by getting a goal and then going into defensive overdrive and just keeping a hold of possession with no attempt to try and score a second, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

One thing I do want to add whilst under the category of game play is the new addition of fast throw ins which may not always be available but at times are great for keeping the game flowing rather than being broken down by a lot of starts and stops. It’s good to see EA implement this after it was a much requested feature by many fans of the FIFA franchise.

PES 2012:

One area that PES always was great in FIFA 11 and that helped me enjoy the gameplay so much was the inertia. PES has got inertia down to a tee giving the player the ability to use momentum, weight shift and foot planting as real footballers do to beat players. This is a key area that FIFA has always lacked and it is one of the key reasons that playing PES can be an absolute joy as there is nothing better than running or jogging alongside a defending player only to make a sudden turn and leave the defender flat footed and unable to stop you. The inertia of PES seems to affect many aspects of the game too, not just dribbling as defenders come charging out to block a shot only for a striker to fake his shot and watch as the defenders momentum takes him straight past the ball and striker.

I think inertia is something EA have over looked a lot and whilst I have watched as Chris (aka HandofBeadle) and Toby (aka Xaor) have argued this point at Gamechanger meetings until they are blue in the face, it still seems to be something EA either don’t understand or don’t want to implement.

One area that PES 2012 seems to have fallen short is with the fouls and collisions. Most of my frustration when playing PES 2012 comes with collision detection and the foul/tackling within the game as frequently it seems to be a case of the game getting it all wrong and certainly not having any consistency. On numerous occasions I found myself being tripped, knocked and bashed about from various challenges where the player never got near the ball only for the referee to play on as if nothing had happened. Now if it had been a case of we collided and I came off worse I could accept that, but frequently when I have the ball I find I am pushed by a defender which initiates a stumble or collision animation. That causes me to not only lose possession but also not be able to move whilst the animation takes place meaning the player has fouled me as he’s not made contact with the ball but has made contact with me causing the loss of possession. PES doesn’t seem to understand this type of collision and it happens far too often not to be a problem and thus it causes a lot of frustration as possession is lost to a foul that doesn’t seem to register which leads me onto my next point.

Another issue I’ve always disliked about PES 2011 seems to have carried over to PES 2012 and that is the stumble animation that seems to be triggered when you run alongside a defender for more than a second or two. It’s very frustrating as it detaches the ball from the carrier and causes him to stumble allowing the defending player to take away possession. This seems to be Konamis answer to two players running side by side in deadlock rather than having a system like FIFA where the players can jostle and battle for the ball like in real football. There is nothing more frustrating than getting into a side by side battle in PES knowing you have the weaker player of the two as you know there is only a matter of time before you’ll lose possession or give up your run. This is not realistic in any sense as there are many times that in football a weaker player can win a jostle for the ball using his balance, ability to keep the ball close to his feet and determination. I think this is an area where PES needs to add a better jostling system so the outcome of side by side jostling is not just a stumble and dispossession so frequently.

I’ve been quite negative so far with this section and I’m afraid it’ll have to continue here as I’m also disappointed with the speed of the of game. PES has always had a decent pace to it but now the game feels a lot faster with more pressuring which almost reminds me of FIFA prior to tactical defending. It’s not quite as bad as FIFA was but still with FIFA going in the right direction it feels like PES has gone the opposite way which is a shame as one of the things I enjoyed a lot with PES was the games pace.

Player Individuality

FIFA 12:

I know EA have focused more on player individuality and whilst there is definitely a difference that has been made over the last two years it still doesn’t meet the level I want. Player individuality still doesn’t feel like it’s actual a case of individuality but more a case of grouping. This may sound odd but what I mean by grouping is that strong players are strong, fast players are fast, deadly finishers are deadly finishers but they are not individuals, they are more like clones with different bodies. Another branch of the individuality is lost in the off the ball and positioning part of the game as FIFA doesn’t do this well. Players like Messi are superb not just because of what they do on the ball but what they do off of the ball so with off of the ball movement being pretty generic you lose a lot of personality and individuality of a player.

PES 2012:

As with PES 2011 the player individuality seems to be streaks ahead of FIFA with players having style cards that allows them to use their individual traits on the field. The difference between the games is that the players actually feel like their real life counter parts which leaves the question to be begged “if Konami can do it then why can’t EA?”.

Upon playing the demo I gave Inter Milan a go and Sneijder felt dangerous when shooting from range, Cambiasso felt like he bullied the midfield and Eto’o made dangerous runs and tracked back too. It’s something that Konami have done very well and it works on so many levels that players feel right.

Off the ball AI

FIFA 12:

This is the area of FIFA which falls shortest in my opinion as players still make straight, easy to read runs and more than often have to be triggered to happen at all which gives the user more to do in a short space of time. If I were playing in the premiership I would not expect to have to shout to a player “make a run”, in order for his brain to start working but this seems to be the case with FIFA. EA drastically need to look at their off of the ball system as the off the ball attacking runs are almost non-existent and when triggered they are always straight and pointless which is even more frustrating as the user has no option to manually make an off of the ball run.

PES 2012:

The off of the ball movement on PES is fantastic with defenders getting into sensible defending positions and strikers making intelligent runs to space or pulling players out of position. On numerous occasions I watched players making diagonal runs and then turning when they saw space to move into which really gave me options when attacking as well as helping pull defenders out of position.

The off the ball runs also carry over to defending very well with defenders tracking runs properly and making sure that they are not static when there is a threat.

To add to the great automatic runs PES offers a system that has triggered runs where the user can click the analogue stick and the player will make a run. Now at first I thought this was no different to FIFA’s poor straight line triggered runs which is true when you’re set to automatic runs. However, on PES you can set your triggered runs to manual and then you can open up a whole new level of off of the ball runs by manually controlling another player using the right analogue whilst dribbling with your other player using the left analogue. At first I found this very hard but with a little practice I found myself using this very effectively to ensure I got to my passes first, split defences and just give my receiving player more space.

The thing I find odd about this is I’m fairly sure it was in a previous FIFA in the past as a bit of a gimmick and yet it’s a feature that works so well for those who wish to explore it so I have no idea why it has not resurfaced in FIFA again.

Animations

FIFA 12:

And so we reach animations, the area where FIFA has excelled for quite some time between the two games. Now this year should of been EA’s year to really make an impact with their new engine (no pun intended), however with only 2 days of play it would seem that the Impact Engine is not delivering quite as well as it should be. First of all I will say that when the Impact Engine works it looks fantastic as it did when we played it in Guildford in its pre-alpha stage, however, it is a real immersion killer when it does bug up and a player “floats” in mid air or “explodes” across the field. The Impact Engine has a hell of a lot of potential and generally works very well but it has some nasty side effects such as the for mentioned exploding players or floating mid air collisions as well as some quite unnatural moments as limbs can bend in a manner they never should. Having said that even with these niggles and bugs I think the overall animations and look of the game is very impressive and looks very organic as a whole making FIFA a very immersive game to play.

PES 2012:

With PES 2012 I think the animations have come a long way but still feel like they need a lot of work. Now I know many may think that this is harsh as PES has taken a big step forward in flow and animations but it still feels like the animations need to be changed drastically and the flow from one animation to another is also massively flawed and it affects the game play. There is nothing more frustrating than playing a game where you’re immersed in the game play and then a very unnaturally timed animation takes place and leaves you wondering why it’s happened. An example is when I am running 3-4 yards away from a player tracking him down the line the player will switch from a full sprint into a jockey and back again for no apparent reason and it looks massively unnatural. I suppose the best way to sum it up is that whilst PES delivers very good animation captures they do not seem to transition properly, meaning every time an animation switches from one to another you get a slight jerking feeling which is often referred to as “robotic”. Whilst this happening once or twice is not a big deal to me it feels like PES does this far too frequently and that it does not transition well enough on a whole, giving the game the feel of a poorly animated game when it actually isn’t.

Graphics

FIFA 12:

I suppose the best place to start with FIFA’s graphics is with the player faces which are fantastic and really easy to identify thanks to the 8 way technology. Having said that some faces still look wrong and obviously the further you go down the leagues the more likely it will be that faces get worse and worse.

In previous FIFA’s the graphics have not looked so great with the colour palettes that EA have used and the crowds have looked awful so it is a great change to see the graphics of FIFA taking a nice step forward. The colours look a lot nicer, the

PES 2012:

PES 2012 looks fantastic with so many little touches all being included, even the cameras behind the net are of a high quality as well as the stewards and so on. The colours used look genuine, the details on players look sharp and player faces are easy to identify. I think the best way to sum up the graphics of PES 2012 is that they are everything you would expect from a football game and the only flaws I can find is that some of the Caucasian players can look a little rubbery and that some parts of the game can look like they are not part of one whole if that makes sense? I think a better way of explaining myself is that at times the graphics as a whole don’t have great continuity.

Commentary

FIFA 12:

With the previous FIFA games commentary has always been pretty good but it seems that this year with EA having to find a new commentary team they have created some fantastic commentary with Martin Tyler and Alan Smith discussing various aspects of the game and reacting very well to the game being played. I personally think the commentary is fantastic and although I’m sure in time some phrases will get repetitive it is great to see there is a lot more depth and a lot less irrelevant commentary being used at the wrong times.

PES 2012:

I’m not sure if I missed an option or something but on the demo I couldn’t actually find anything to change so that the commentary was on. I’m not sure if PES 2012 plans on having commentary but I can’t imagine it doesn’t but with it not being in the demo (or at least I can’t find it) I can’t actually comment on it.

Summary

FIFA 12:

FIFA 12 has taken some big steps in improving its game, with the new tactical defending being the biggest of them all and it has resulted in what looks to be a promising game. Unfortunately it would seem that the potential problem areas are already easy to identify in FIFA 12 with some freak Impact Engine issues and AI that is really lacking in key areas of the game.

I suppose to sum up my thoughts on FIFA is that there is a great game there and with more time playing its retail version with the sliders there is even more potential for a fantastic football game.

PES 2012:

PES 2012 is a great step forward in many ways but there is something about it that reminds me of FIFA when I thought FIFA needed some major changes, maybe it’s the speed, I honestly don’t know. Having said that PES shows that AI can be done very well in a football game and that a thinking man’s football is possible within gaming.

With PES’ previous reputation of depth in its games and its new and improved game play I’m sure the retail game will offer hours upon hours of great football gaming and I think it’s safe to say I will be buying both games and enjoying both games despite not reaching the standards I would like.

Game - How to Lose Customers & Alienate Them

2011-09-08T22:06:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow see's the British release of NHL 12 and Warhammer Space Marines and whilst I have grown excited of playing these titles I am somewhat resigned to the idea that tomorrow will not be the day I own them. By now I'm sure anyone reading this has come across it in the same manner that I came across others sharing the same worries, because GAME has let me down.

I have always used GAME as my games provider due to their quick delivery and very good customer service so when I heard there would be a new website I was very much looking forward to experiencing an even easier and more reliable service, how wrong I was.

Since this new website has been launched I have had nothing but problems and poor service which has left me somewhat surprised that such a massive games retailer could go from providing an exceptional service to being quite possibly the worst service I have ever had the disdain to experience!

In the last four days I have made three phone calls, sent multiple e-mails and been in contact with the gamedigital twitter account, all of whom said not to worry and that my pre-order would make it to me by tomorrow and whilst I bit my tongue and accepted this it would seem I would have been better off canceling my orders and going to ASDA, Tescos or my local indie video game store.

On my first phone call to GAME's customer services I asked why my pre-orders were missing from my account, if my pre-orders would still go through and when their new site would actually stop functioning like a clapping robot that had not yet been given a second arm. I was assured that all would be sorted out and that any pre-orders I had would go through as normal and that the website would be up and running as soon as possible. I can honestly say at this point I hung up the phone, confident that I was in good hands and no problems would ensue other than a slight issue of not being able to check on my pre-orders status.

Upon my second call which was the Wednesday prior to release I spoke to a polite lady who again ensured me that all of my pre-orders would go ahead and be dispatched later in the day so that they would arrive by the scheduled release day which was tomorrow (Friday). I had made the second call because all of my previous pre-orders were processed two days prior to release and more often than not had turned up the next day which was obviously pleasing and great service. However, I had no received an e-mail, I had not had the money taken out of my account, I had not seen the order status change on the GAME website and to add to this any contact I have had with GAME had just given me the same "your pre-order will be dispatched asap".

My third call came today at 10am when I wanted to check that my pre-orders would be dispatched as had been reassured by GAME employees in my previous two calls, on twitter and via e-mail. As expected I was reassured that the money would be taken and upon checking twitter I'd seen numerous customers experiencing the same issues as me being re-assured that the money would be taken before 6pm and their pre-orders would be shipped.

It is now 21:39 as I write this, my account remains the same with no GAME payments having been made, no e-mails received and Twitter seems to have gone quiet 7 hours ago, most presumably because GAME are aware that they are about to have a wave of angry, dissapointed, empty handed gamers looking for answers that they seem completley unable to cope with.

I did try to make a call at 5:49pm as their customer services say that they are open from 9am-6pm but I received an automated message telling me that the offices were closed now, fantastic service GAME. It seems that when GAME have a real issue on their hands the ideal time to go home is 10 minutes early, not keep working to ensure customers are happy with the service that they have received.

It is with some regret that I write this blog but it has come to the point where I feel the service has been pathetic and whilst this is a strong word I honestly think it is a fair assesment of the service that I have received. It has also resulted in a large loss for GAME if both of my pre-orders do not turn up tomorrow as I will cancel the other two pre-orders I already have and then follow on by making the pre-orders I had planned for MW3, PES 2012, Batman Arkham City, Saint's Row 3, Zelda the Skyward Sword and all other future pre-orders with another company due to this poor service and no offer to compensate me.

I am an owner of the 3DS, Wii, PS3, Xbox, DS and a collector of Blu-ray movies and many of my games and movies are bought in GAME stores and online and I am very dissapointed that after years of using GAME as my main retailer I have been treated so poorly. I hope that others will do the same in boycotting the use of GAME if they do not provide the service that we pay for. GAME have already taken over and ruined Gamestation, who provided gamers with a much better service and a more indie and honest approach in the market and now it seems that with very little competition from other game retailers they think that customers will accept their sub-standard performance of recent.

Tomorrow is a big day for GAME with regards to a loyal customer, if they cannot provide then I will seek other suppliers and spend my money elsewhere.

PES 2012 demo - My Thoughts

2011-08-25T13:32:00.003+01:00

With the release of the PES 2012 demo I guess it was almost certain that my blog would get an update yet it’s a very conflicted blog today.

First of all I suppose that I should mention that my opinions/views are based on playing on the Playstation when I have always played my games on the Xbox 360 so there is always going to be an air of conflict as I just do not like the PS3 control pad.

The reason I am playing on my PS3 is because there seems to be some kind of issue with the Xbox 360 demo and Konami have not managed to get it out on Xbox live. The reason for this is unclear but my guess is that Microsoft may have said no to PES 2012 having two demos. I understand Driver has two but one is for multiplayer and one if for single player and from what I understand this is not the same for PES 2012.

Anyway, enough speculation and on to PES 2012 itself, I think I should start by explaining that whilst I am a Gamechanger for EA’s FIFA series and an administrator for the FVPA which is a FIFA clubs website I am also a football fan and a gamer and thus PES has always been a game I am interested in. When PES 2011 was released last year I was not impressed at first and felt that PES was again a poor game with horrible animation flow and a lack of control and so I traded it in quite swiftly. Since then I tried it again and yet again I could not get myself into its foreign feeling controls and dated feeling flow. However my big enlightenment came upon buying it for the third time and forcing myself to sit down and play it a lot. After a good 2-3 days of playing it non-stop with no FIFA sessions I found myself discovering that PES has a lot of depth in certain areas that FIFA is no-where near matching and found myself not converted, but able to enjoy both football games with immense enjoyment.

The above statement may be very hard for some people to understand, the general view on football games is you’re with EA or you’re with Konami and there is no middle ground. More often than not any person found saying “I like both games” is looked at like a leper who is offering you cheesecake as he rubs his hands into the base of it. This said I am one of those people since PES 2011 was released as I’ve found it can offer many things I want from a football game that FIFA cannot.

So, with the PES 2012 demo released I suppose it’s time I have my say. I’ll start with the flow of the game as I think this is one of the areas Konami have improved immensely, the flow now seems to be great with a lot less jerking and the game feeling a lot more natural than it did in previous instalments. I’m not quite sure how to put my finger on what has helped achieve this as it seems to be a combination of changes more than anything but what is achieved is a much smoother feel that helps the player become a lot more immersed in the game itself.

The shooting seems to have been changed a lot, some have said that they prefer it, some have said they think PES 2011’s shooting was better, I’m somewhat in the middle. I think the shooting in PES 2011 could be very erratic but all in all it had a very realistic feel as putting the ball in the top corner was not overly easy and meant you had to take many factors into consideration such as the speed at which your player was dribbling, the position of ball to his foot, how much space he had etc I enjoyed this a lot as it meant when you did score a screamer it looked fantastic and felt just as good, something I just never experienced on FIFA as scoring a great goal is too easy and unless you hit a 40 yard screamer on FIFA it just never felt impressive. In PES 2012 I think the shooting feels a lot more like a combination of PES 2011 and FIFA 11 which is pretty much great as the factoring in taking a shot still comes into it but the eraticness seems to have been phased out. From what I have played so far I would say PES 2012’s shooting is a fantastic evolution that feels great to use.

The next thing I was really looking at was the dribbling as this was the area where most FIFA-first players found they could not adapt over to playing PES. In PES inertia is very much a part of the game and rightly so as it’s something that has always been missing in FIFA. The difference between an average Premiership player and Messi just doesn’t feel big enough in FIFA 11 and whilst dramatic steps have been made to change that in FIFA 12 I still do not feel like the inertia that PES creates is anywhere to be seen in a FIFA game. For a very long time I was not that fussed on inertia and so I could enjoy FIFA tirelessly but upon getting used to the dribbling in PES 2011 I realised just how vital it is to a football game. If you watch a football match you’ll see that some of the world’s best players and some of the best players in League 2 have something in common, a drop of the should or the shifting of the players weight can fool an opponent, it’s what makes football a joy to watch, anyone can beat anyone because at the end of the day we’re all human and no-one can change the law of physics. This is where PES shines for me, I can drop a shoulder and cause a defender to plant his foot and then turn sharply and by the time he’s shifted his weight I have that yard on him. PES 2012 further works on this but has done a great job in making it less “in your face”. When I first played the demo of PES 2012 I was worried that PES had lost one of its key selling points as I could not feel the inertia instantly. Upon playing more and using some of the precise dribbling I realised that the game just felt so much smoother that when you pulled off these key moments it just felt more natural than it does in PES 2011. PES really is leaps and bounds ahead of FIFA when it comes to this part of football simulation and it really makes a difference in game play as it makes tackling much more of an art and also makes attacking a lot more realistic, especially when it comes to beating a player, kudos Konami.

Now at this point I kind of wanted to get into graphics and presentation and whilst I can talk about presentation I can’t comment so much on the graphics as something is not quite right. It was something I noticed instantly when I started the demo, the screen looks very blurry and nowhere near as crisp PES 2011, yet I was playing it on the same TV so I wondered if this was down to playing it on the PS3, although I never thought the PS3 would look that much worse! I took to twitter and sure enough there were comments on the same thing but Adam Bhatti said that after speaking to Konami this is down to compressing the size of the demo to make it a quicker download so I feel that I can’t really judge the graphics based on a blurry demonstration code. I guess I will have to wait until PES 2012 is retail released before I can make any kind of opinion on the graphics.

Graphics aside one thing I can comment on is presentation. I quite like the menu system, it looks simple to navigate and the footage in the background is quite welcome. Now to the bit which really matters, the in-game presentation, first of all if you’re not aware of the new addition of having cameramen then I guess you haven’t been following the PES coverage as it’s been a very much talked about feature. What I am talking about is the match build up and off pitch changes which see’s camera men following players out of the tunnel, stewards clapping as players come out as well as standing around the pitch, they are small touches but very much welcome ones as they add an air of realism that has not been seen in a football game before. One thing that both made me laugh but also impressed me at the same time was when I saw a fat man dressed in black running behind the camera men behind the goal. I can only assume this is just to add a little feeling that there are actually things going on off field as well as on which is nice and very immersive but at the same time I couldn’t help but be distracted and think “where is that little fat man going in such a rush?!”.

Again another small touch that was pointed out to me is how the cameras on a swinging crane behind the goal also moves with the action, it has no impact on game play at all but it is a massive help on immersing the player in the game.

One thing that has been talked about a lot is the passing of PES 2012, I’ve heard great things about it but upon first playing PES I felt as if though the passing had become more like FIFA than PES. I think this made the game feel a lot easier which in many ways is great but at the same time I became a little worried that if I’d adapted to the passing so quickly that it would offer no long term challenges and would be far too simplistic. I asked a few people who were in the know and they told me about passing support which I could turn down which certainly helped when I turned it off but I still feel that the passing is a little too “automated” so to speak. One thing I don’t like about FIFA and love about PES was the passing error, PES 2011 has a realistic passing error system and it added to the realism when I over hit or under hit a pass only to see the opposition pick it off first. PES 2012 seems to have taken a step backwards here leaving the passing to be a little too accurate and thus making one-twos that split the defence in half far too easy to pull off. I felt like I’d become some kind of passing super genius in just a few games which was in a manner of speaking, disheartening. I love playing PES 2011 against the CPU because whilst I can string passes together the fun is in opening up the defence when attacking, in PES 2012 it feels a little too easy due to over accurate first time passes and the accuracy of the passing feeling a little too automatic, even on the most unassisted settings. I think with all of the great advancements that PES has made from PES 2011 to PES 2011, this is the one that needs to be addressed before release as it is currently too easy for my liking.

I think I’ve covered a lot already and what was meant to be a fairly short blog is rapidly expanding but I still feel I need to touch on goalkeepers. I’ve always felt the animations of goalkeepers have not been the greatest on PES and whilst 2012 sees a step forward it still doesn’t feel big enough in this department. I do think the keepers are great on PES and very realistic, especially in the reaction times and responses to the situations but I can’t help feeling they still take me out of the immersive setting that PES 2012 creates. The animations just don’t look natural and some of the diving animations look awkward and unnatural and it’s for this reason I think it’s an area that Konami still need to improve on.

The final thing I must address is the animations and flow. Whilst the flow of the game itself is a massive improvement the flow between animations and some of the animations themselves are still what is letting PES down for me. When I see FIFA 11 and know the impact engine is not even in it I can’t help but look at it and think it still looks much more natural and impressive than even PES 2012 does. I fully understand that EA have a lot of money and tech and therefore Konami and PES will always be chasing in this area, they may never catch up EA but I still feel the gap is too large and it’s one of the key areas holding PES back. PES 2012 still suffers with the god awful running animations where the player looks like he’s running on hot coals, still has the occasional animation that just doesn’t match the situation and most annoyingly, still only seems to have one animation for when a ball is in a certain position to the player which is the scissor kick. The most annoying and immersion killing things about PES 2011 was the way in which whenever a ball was around shoulder height the only animation/shot the game would use was the scissor kick. Now I can understand that when a ball is around shoulder height and you press to shoot it makes sense to scissor kick or lower the players head to head the ball but PES’ logic seems to be if the ball is shoulder height it must be a scissor kick. I think this is the number one immersion killer for me as it can happen 2-3 times a game and in real football it’s very rare that you see a scissor kick attempted.

I was going to summarise here about my thoughts but I’ve also just remembered about a new feature I have been playing with which is the off the ball runs. One really nice feature, if you turn assisted to manual, is the off the ball runs where you click down the right analogue stick to control the player off of the ball using the right analogue stick to direct his run. At first I found this very hard to use but with a bit of practice I had my player in possession playing a pass into space as I left my marker for dead using a manual off of the ball run. Konami have added a very nice feature that I have seen asked for a lot in FIFA and in doing so have given a lot more attacking creativity options.

Summary

To finish this blog entry off I need to give an overall impression and to summarize PES 2012 I must say it’s a very game play focused addition to the series that impresses and is a great step in the right direction. I am very impressed with Konami's decision to listen to the fans and work hard on game play without prioritizing new features over game play. Some may say that this year FIFA is still the better game because it’s likely it will outsell PES but I think for a hardcore football gaming fan PES is very much in contention and for myself I have a strong feeling that PES will be the better game to play against the AI. It’s a shame Konami have not yet tried to rival EA’s FIFA Pro Club Championship mode as I think it would be very interesting to see the numbers change if they did.

It's FIFA 12 Day

2011-08-16T12:23:00.034+01:00

So today is the first day of Gamescom and I think that means all FIFA fans are thinking the same, bring on the news, the information, give us the things we want to know! As I'm sure many, if not all of you, are aware today the demo release date will be announced and whilst this is big news EA have been hinting at a lot more than just a demo date. I personally expect to hear about FIFA Pro Club Championship, other online modes, Creation Centre and much more so my fingers are crossed.

Today I'm sure there will be a lot of coverage of all of the news from FIFASoccerBlog, SweetpatchTV, UltimateFIFA and many others sites so be sure to check them for the latest news.

I will also be doing my best to update this blog post with any and all news that is posted with links to various sites so for a quick round up keep checking back. I have also added an EA Live Stream below for those of you that would like to watch.

On another note don't forget to add the #FIFA12Day and #FIFA12 hashtags to see FIFA trending.

News updates:

12:22 - All is quiet as the show is being prepared.
13:01 - According to Marius Hjerpseth on twitter (@Hjerpseth) "FIFA 12 trailer will be released in 1 hour".
13:32 - FIFASoccerBlog announce stream to go live at 2:30pm UK time. Nice one FSB.
13:46 - New FIFA tailer, view below:

13:47 - Demo date is September 13th - bring it on!
14:30 - David Rutter says EA will begin in 25 minutes :)
14:46 - You can follow the EA press conference here
15:02 - Press conference is beginning!

Gamescom info:

15:07 - Gary Patterson showing his face , EAannounces a new FIFA Street game
15:09 - I wondered why Futsal had never been added to FIFA,
it's in the new FIFA Street, glad to hear that, been suggesting it for a while.
15:13 - Need for Speed now, looks nice.
15:18 - Bioware time
15:28 - Star Wars MMORPG - Looks nice, not an interest to me.
15:29 - Mass Effect 3, should be popular. Trailer looks pretty good.
15:32 - SSX time. SSX boasts the ability to use google maps to go
to any mountain in the world, sounds like a massive boast.
15:40 - Independent studios now.
15:43 - Reckoning trailer, looks like a prettier version of World of Warcraft
but will never have as much depth.
15:45 - The Secret World. Looks very interesting, a game built of myths, legends
and conspiracies being true. Looks genuinely interesting with no classes and levels
it could be a very unique game. The trailer looked very unique and interesting too,
might have to look into this one more.
15:48 - FIFA 12!!!

FIFA 12 News

David Rutter came onto the stage and thanked the team in Vancouver. He started with the Trinity of game play which we have all heard plenty about and Career Mode. He also talked about personality changes which we have also heard a lot about.
He then went on to the online features, Online seasons mode announced where players compete over 10 seasons. Onlne friendlies mode for bragging rights.
FIFA Ultimate Team will be launching on disk. Those who have played before on UT will be able to start their team early this year with some free packs. No clubs news announced, twitter has exploded with complaints.

Gamescom info:

16:00 - Battlefield 3, looks very impressive. Call of Duty beater... maybe. Co-op looked great.

Gamescom Live Stream:

(note, press conference will not be shown on the link below,
for this look at the news updates above or click here)

Notes:

FIFA Street will be downloadable for EA Season Ticket owners

-

The FVPA, unrest and the "competition".

2011-08-12T10:49:00.002+01:00

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the FVPA.

It would seem that with the release of FIFA 12 looming closer and closer that the clubs community has suffered some unrest, most likely due to boredom and frustration with EA. It is no secret that the Xbox 360 side of the community are especially frustrated as VP’s are being hacked and 8ft giants and small super strength players are popping up game after game and this is obviously an area where EA really need to act, unfortunately it would seem that with FIFA 12 so close the official stance of EA is to say “It’ll be fixed in the next game and no patch will be released”. This understandably has caused some unrest and many of the community have wanted to name these cheaters or vent their frustrations which has led to the FVPA having to crack down pretty hard on those abusing the swear filter, posting abusive messages to other members of the community, baiting and even in a few cases racism has flared up. The FVPA has a very strong stand point on racism and the few that have been deemed to have made racist remarks have been banned and the FVPA will not change its view on this, which is fully understandable as I think any sensible member of the community would agree. However, after a recent run of rule breaking and general unrest the FVPA, as mentioned before, have had to crack down hard on members and this seems to have had numerous results on members of the community.

For the largest part the FVPA's members who are sensible and mature have accepted that this was just a case of a few ruining it for the majority and that the warnings needed to be given whilst some, including many of the trouble instigators, have decided to move on to other sites or use a combination of the FVPA and another site/s. Thankfully due to the FVPA’s strong standpoint the warnings have slowed down dramatically as they have eliminated numerous trouble instigators from using the site and now calm seems to be restoring itself.

This brings me onto the subject of this blog, which is about the small pocket communities popping up from the FVPA, trying to guide the community the FVPA has built away from the FVPA and onto other pastures that are presented as green and beautiful but actually have some pretty poor roots.

One of these communities I will refer to as FCW, I could give a full link and name but I don’t see why the site should get any free advertisement when it is a watered down copy of the FVPA that seems intent on playing dirtying the FVPA name in order to improve their own. This may not be the case of all of the owners/staff/members of their site but it certainly is the case for some.

My main reason to address this site is because stupid and unfounded comments such as “the FVPA is afraid of a little competition” or “the FVPA has copied FCW” have been made and the FVPA remains professional in its attitude and refuses to lower itself to the FCW’s level. Now at this point I can see the word “hypocrite” already boiling up in the mouths of some of the FCW’s staff and users but I would like to make something clear... the FVPA have advised me not to address this and instead to just carry on doing the work I have been doing on the FVPA. They have a very strong stand point of ignoring things such as this and just getting on with improving their own site. I can understand why FVPA Kelley and FVPA Mark have taken this stance and as an FVPA administrator I can respect it too, however I am also my own person and one thing I have received compliments on is speaking my mind rather than taking a professional stance every time. This is why I again want to reiterate that this blog is my own personal view and has been made against the wishes of the other FVPA administration team and whilst it may result in some frowns from the FVPA I feel it is necessary to make a point. The point being that the low comments/statements being made are unfounded.

Now I’ll move onto the first statement, “The FVPA has copied FCW”. This comment was made after the FVPA added an introductions area and a tournaments subsection to their forums, two areas that the FCW had first, so this is copying surely? Well it can be seen that way but it is not the case, the FVPA added the tournaments section because a member of its staff has decided to run a lot of tournaments on various other games due to FIFA 11 coming to an end of its clubs cycle. There was nothing more to it than that, a request for a new area by a member of staff who does not use the FCW. The introduction area was suggested in the FVPA feedback section by a new user who wanted a place to introduce himself, the FVPA were simply giving a user something that they had requested and felt that the area was necessary due to the number of new users that visit the site and with FIFA 12 coming it will only prove to be useful for the newer members.

If this was America and this was a court case it would be at this point that a countersuit would be put into action and this is basically what I’m going to do... turn the tables.

Upon looking at FCW the first thing you’ll notice is the community and Pro Clubs sections are set out almost identically. The Community section is actually a carbon copy of the FVPA with Off Topic, Football, Graphics and Other games. When the FCW was made the FVPA had Off Topic, Real Football, Graphics and Video Games... funny that.

The forum layout aside the next thing to look at are the details:

• The graphics section has a graphics team, something the FVPA put in place a very long time ago.

• The staff have “FCW” in front of their names e.g. FCW Eskimo, something the FVPA have done for a long time e.g. FVPA Kelley

• Medals – An administrator for FCW has stated “There will be a medal/awards system - awaiting a forum update first to fix all the little bugs there are.” The FVPA put the medal system in place a long time ago, it was actually something I suggested.

• FCW Phil has suggested that FCW will be running a goal of the week competition, surprise surprise this is something the FVPA have had for a very long time.

• A Twitter account was made for FCW after it was suggested that it was “vital” and I quote “something similar to the FVPA's”

• An Ultimate Team section has been scheduled to be added to FCW, the FVPA did this around a month ago after many users expressed an interest in it.

• The very first FCW tournament... “soccer sixes”, was a tournament that the FVPA had already run in the past named “Super Sixes”

• FCW now seem to be discussing the thought of having International Teams... iFVPA ring any bells?

• FCW have also been discussing a League, again, something the FVPA has already put into place.

With all of that the one copy I found the most blatant and funny was the attempt to copy the FVPA’s promo video as you can see below:

FVPA Promo trailer:

FCW Promo trailer:

(notice the spelling mistake of Virtual?)

So I think it’s safe to say that the FCW making accusations of the FVPA copying their site is pretty much a case of the pot calling the kettle black and holds no weight at all.

The second accusation is that the FVPA feels “threatened” by some competition. As it stands the FVPA is the best and biggest clubs based website in the UK and one of the biggest in the World and is only going from strength to strength. As I write this blog the FVPA are around 2 months into production of a revamp/upgrade that will revolutionise the way that it functions, moving from manually run tournaments and leagues to automated one with interactive features for the users. There is also a lot more going on that cannot be discussed but the FVPA looks to give even more to the community come FIFA 12 and will continue to work as an associate of EA.

The idea that the FCW is a threat to the FVPA is obviously flawed as the FCW has been using the FVPA as a benchmark for its own site and is run and owned by members who used the FVPA for the majority of FIFA 11, the owners and staff running the FVPA are Gamechangers and have a very good website building knowledge and past as well as some fantastic graphics designers who do not copy work. The FVPA are associated with EA, something very few sites can say and this comes from dedication to the clubs community.

This will be the first and last time I speak on this subject as I do not want to get into a slanging match but after so many sly comments and unfounded statements have been made I think it was only right to address the situation, the FVPA are not threatened by any other community site, it is only focused on delivering the best clubs experiences whilst maintaining a good environment for users of all ages and backgrounds and are not concerned about other websites agendas.

Spike reviews EA's gameface

2011-08-10T11:33:00.002+01:00

Gameface is something that was introduced to FIFA 10 and for those of you who are unfamiliar with it the core focus of Gameface is to allow the user to create his/her face to be used in a sports title such as FIFA or Tiger Woods.

Gameface started off in beta and to me was a great success, however others have complained of technical problems and issues with getting the software to work for them. I think one key issue could be in the users computer and how good or bad it's graphics capabilities are as I've used gameface on a number of PC's but all have had pretty decent gaming specs to start with.

That aside I am talking about Gameface because I want to address it's positives and negatives and how the gameface itself can evolve to deliver it's users a much better service that really does impress.

Facial Hair

I'm going to start with facial hair as it's something that EA have recently removed much to my dismay. The reason given by "EA_LoicArgelies" who is a gameface developer was:

"Facial hair was one of the first things we had done in the early stage of Game Face, and as the product improved over time, we felt that implementation was no longer on par with our quality expectations. Additionally, numbers showed that a small fraction of users did take advantage of facial hair on their avatar, and therefore with the latest update adding support for female and golfer avatars, along with new outfit items for soccer avatars, we removed facial hair as is - Until such time we can come up with a much stronger implementation".

I found this to be a poor decision, I'm sorry if this offends but I will justify such a strong statement now. The reason I find this to be such a poor decision is because whilst EA may find a small fraction uses it, that small fraction now cannot realistically recreate themselves using gameface which is a large slap in the face when they have had this option previously. I am one of those people and as I stated in my posting on the gameface forums, I have only been clean shaven five times in ten years. So, to have my pro without facial hair makes my VP look as much like myself as it makes Michael Clarke Duncan look like Will Smith. If I were to show my gameface without facial hair to my friends or family they wouldn't have a clue it was supposed to be me, mainly because they don't remember what I look like without my beard.

This leads me onto my major concern about gameface, will it alienate people with facial hair due to removing it? Simply answered, yes it will. Facial hair is just as crucial as getting the eyes, nose, lips, ears or any other feature of the face right, in fact many people in every day life are recognised by their facial hair e.g. Stone Cole Steve Austin, Zach Galifianakis, Ryan Dunn, Kimbo Slice and many more.

Today one of my friends was trying to make a retro VP by creating Ruud Guillit but due to the removal of the gameface facial hair he just couldn’t get the moustache right.

My point is that facial hair is very important and whilst EA’s original facial hair implementation was flat to the face and didn’t look great, it was far better than nothing at all. In all honesty I think EA need to work on implementing facial hair that actually has depth and therefore you can create facial hair like Zach Galifianakis’ or just give yourself a goatee that doesn’t look painted on, either way there really does need to be a facial hair feature for fuzzy face people such as myself.

A major issue with gameface is also in how it reads and applies a users face to an in game/gameface avatar model. Currently you can use a side face and front face image and it will add the facial hair that is around the mouth area (above the lip, below the lip to the chin and a small proportion to the left and right of the mouth), however, it does not add the sideburns or the section of the beard that joins the sideburns to the beard and this is something that needs to be changed.

Gameface works remarkably well in so many areas so it would be great if the gameface software could take more of the side images texture, including facial hair and apply it to the gameface itself.

Here is a photographical based example of what I am talking about:

As you can see, as I mentioned before the gameface software does not take any texture information from the side image and apply it to the gameface.

Hair

Currently Hair I can understand must be a hard area for EA as a haircut, like a mohawk for example, can be cut in many different ways and this goes for all haircuts. Many times I've heard "Oh they don't have my hair" and the main reason for this is that hair is one of the most complex things to create realistically due to the fact that hair is effected by physics, shape, colour, weight and many other factors. Creating a hairstyle is a long and hard process and obviously EA have to make a lot of different styles. Saying "it can't be that hard to make my hair" only shows that all factors have not been considered like how there are billions upon billions of people on earth and everyone's hair looks and moves differently to each others. For this reason I think EA have done very well to create the sheer volume of hairstyles they have and I can only congratulate them on this as they continue to add more colours and varieties. I think my only complaint in this area is that EA have added colours like pink, yellow (not blonde), green, blue etc and still lack in varieties of real style colours such as highlighted hair (dark hairs with light highlights of colours or light coloured hair with dark highlights) as this is very common and the shades of natural browns and blondes. The browns for one is one thing I think they need to work on as there are a lot of different varieties in real life but only three on gameface and one looks so dark it could be mistaken for black.

Eyes

The eyes is another area I think EA have done very well on, there are a large variety of colours and a good system for shaping them. I don't think there is much that can be said about the eyes other than it's done very well. The only improvement I think that can be made is the addition of "eye circles" which are more commonly referred to as "bags under the eyes". I have a sleep problem, in that I don't sleep a lot and this causes quite dark eye circles around my eyes and the option to darken the skin around the eyes via a slider would be a great addition as many people have eye circles even if they are not as predominant as my own.

Eyebrows

I think eyebrows are done to a high enough level and the only thing I could say that needs any work is in adjusting the shape of the eyebrow. At the moment you have two options, brow ridge and forehead depth. These are more to do with the structure of the brow, hence being under the category brow structure, but they are the only way to shape the eyebrows. My suggestion would be to have an actual eyebrow shaping set of tools so that if the eyebrows do not come out right then they can be adjusted.

Nose

As with the eyebrows the nose is done well and the only area I would suggest it be modified is by having one more slider to be able to just the straightness and the “hook” of the nose so you can get a nose with a protruding bone like many people have like the image below:

Mouth

With the mouth I find the tools to be ok but the main issue is the the lip fullness can only be adjusted for both lips, many people have a thin top lip and a fatter bottom lip or vice versa. For this reason I would say that the mouth tool can be improved by splitting the lip fullness to two different sliders, top lip fullness and bottom lip fullness, again this would help create more precise recreation for the user.

Head Shape

One thing I do not like about the gameface is that you are only allowed to change the face width, face fullness and face height which leaves a key option missing, this is face position. Not everyone's face is positioned in the same way and more often than not moving the entire face up a notch or the entire face down a notch can have a drastic effect on how the head as a whole looks. On PES this is very useful for me as I fine more often than not my face needs to be moved up a notch and on FIFA I would say my face needs to be raised a slight amount too. For this reason I would suggest adding a face position slider.

Forehead

Another thing I would say needs a slider is the forehead, some people have very small foreheads, others very large (Antony McPartlin). Trying to adjust the forehead on Gameface means moving other features around to give the right effect but then in-game or even on the gameface when you move it to other angles the face looks out of shape.

Ears

Now this is another area where I cannot recreate myself realistically as there are no options for the ears, let alone flesh tunnels or ear rings. The ear tool itself is missing and there are quite a few sliders I would suggest adding. I would suggest having ear height, ear protrusion and ear placement as these are the basics for creating an ear. Another two things I would say are crucial are ear jewelry (by this I don’t mean hooped earrings and so on but I mean flesh plugs/tunnels/ear slits) and the other other being the ability to change the size of the ear lobes.

Now in sport I understand jewelry is not always allowed so the idea that I could increase the lobe size of my ear and add an ear slit (a small line where ear stretching jewelry would be in the ear). A small touch like this can really add realism. Another idea is to add ear plugs, these are small plugs that fill the hole in the ear as you can see below:

Footballers and other sports players usually use silicon based ones whilst playing sports.

Jaw & Chin

At the moment the only option in Jaw is to change the width, I think the jaw makes a massive difference on the shape of someone's face and for this reason i would say the jaw section really needs a slider or two for defining the jaw shape and definition.

Another key area where Gameface fails for me is in the shaping of the chin, it’s almost as if the program has been designed only for people who are slim in the face and have a pronounced chin. Again if you look at the comparison image of my own gameface you can see that when my gameface generated it decided that rather than my face being very oval that I instead have a very pronounced chin shape, this is something I cannot rectify via the sliders of the jaw, chin or face shape, nothing allows me to shape my jaw and chin correctly.

Summary

To summarise all of what I have said I would say that gameface still has a lot to do in order to really give people the ability to make their gameface look as realistic as it can be but there are a few key areas that need to be addressed which are:

Facial hair – using two images should allow you to capture your full beard and a generic system like the one that has been removed is a crucial addition.

Ears – At the moment you have no control over them, a section needs to be added with a few sliders.

Jaw and chin shape – there are far too few sliders here meaning that someone with an oval or round shaped head will not look right as they will always be given a defined chin unless they are very slim faced.

Specs – I know I did not talk much about the issues of gameface not working for some but there are many it doesn’t work for and I think EA need to add a spec list to the online gameface software so people can be aware of what kind of specs their PC needs to run it properly and what software they need installed as a whole.

So gameface is a great tool and has had some great advances but I still feel there is plenty of room for improvement, what are your views?

EA Sports Season Ticket

2011-08-02T16:31:00.002+01:00

Today I was quite happily getting on with my day, had a great meat feast pizza for breakfast, had a relentless, played with my kids for a bit, helped Sophia make a card for her mother and then I went to check my e-mails to find one with a video for EA Sports Season Ticket.

So what is Season Ticket? Well as you would expect EA's marketing department have been hard at work and the latest thing they have come up with is Season Ticket which grants you access to 3 days early access to FIFA, Tiger Woods, NHL, Madden and NCAA which seems to be without buying the game. The good news is it is essentially like having a 3 day rental before the release of the game so that you can try everything.

Personally I know this is a money grabbing exercise by EA but it's one I'll be investing in, why you ask? Well because so often I've bought Madden, NHL, Tiger Woods etc and thought to myself after a few days, nah I don't want this. Well this is my chance to try the game properly without having to fight for a rental at Blockbusters or pay out £40 on the game and then after a week decided I don't want it.

EA are very coy in their marketing but in all honesty this is an idea I quite like. So what else does Season Ticket include? Well, it includes:

20% off of all DLC
Premium Web Content
Membership Recognition

So what does all of this mean?

20% off of all DLC

This is pretty self explanatory, if for example FIFA releases and then they release downloadable content such as new football boots or VP boosts then you'll get 20% off, not too bad.

Premium Web Content

Now this is where it gets interesting to me, with Premium Web Content you'll be able to create more teams and more players in the games creation centres but the big one, to quote David Rutter "you'll be able to take graphics from the real world and stamp them on your players chest so you can make them even more authentic". Now to me this is huge as I see this as a great way to advertise and get more authenticity.

No details are out yet on what modes you'll be able to use this on so it may be a case of not being able to use it online but if you can then the FVPA will certainly be sporting our brand logo.

Another great feature of this is you can essentially create real kits that are not in the game, something I'll be certain to be having a tinker with. For those of you who do not buy a Season Ticket, well, you'll have to pay for this adding of graphics to players, which is not so bad but it certainly makes me more interested in buying a Season Ticket for myself.

Membership Recognition

This gives you a special badge that is shown in lobbies that you do in fact have a season ticket. There is no amazing functionality with this but it is a nice little extra that others may not have.

All of this comes for $24.99 which is a pretty fair price for 5 full games for 3 days, 20% off DLC, Premium Web Content and a nifty little Season Ticket badge.

You can watch the video I got via e-mail below:

and for more details be sure to check out EA's official page for their new Season Ticket by clicking here or you can read the full official press release here

Kinect and FIFA...

2011-07-31T19:46:00.001+01:00

Ok, so for the 360 FIFA players this may or may not interest you but Kinect will be used for FIFA in FIFA 13. I think it's safe to say I've never been a fan of using Kinect in FIFA as I'm more of an old school gamer, I do have Kinect and I use it for some things but generally for me FIFA is there for me to relax and play, not jog on the spot and pretend to play football.

It's that age old argument, why would I want to play FIFA by running around, swinging my leg, jumping etc? I can do that by joining a Sunday league team and actually playing football, for me FIFA is that ability to sit down and enjoy something I love, football.

So if you head over to FIFASoccerBlog and check out the article written by Tom Mills called Kinect Support for FIFA 13, you'll see that he has highlighted some ideas of what he's seen suggested about Kinect being used in FIFA. There are a lot of ideas including taking throw ins/ playing the actual game, playing as a keeper, minigames, menu navigation, voice support and the one I'm interested in, gameface.

Kinect and gameface

Now I'm sure anyone who knows me knows I am a very big fan of the gameface technology and I love to play as myself in FIFA so to me the Kinects best contribution it could make is via gameface.

I'm not sure who reads this blog and what they will know about FIFA and how it's made so if I offend you by talking to you like a simpleton it's not because I'm trying to be patronising but more because I want every one to understand what I'm getting at. At the moment EA are heavily investing in a fantastic bit of software called 8 way facial technology where they capture a face of a professional footballer with 8 different cameras and then build the face up out of these images (see, simpleton). You can see the technology in the video below:

I don't see why the Kinect can't use a similar kind of process to make a gameface. I think essentially the Kinect is a good enough technology to actually tell the actual shape of your face due to it's ability to interpret 3D scene information from a continuously-projected infrared structured light. If it can do this then I'm sure EA could write a program to use this technology to scan your face and turn it into a gameface. I think the potential for this is huge and being as the Kinect can tell the shape of your face and facial features it should be able to avoid misshaping the face as the current gameface technology does. It would also stop a lot of issues with people not being able to get gameface to work on their PC.

At this point I have to say I'm not sure what else I would want Kinect to do because for everything positive I think of I find more negatives. An example would be custom celebrations would be great fun but if allowed to be used online I'm sure their would be many people making ~~wanker~~ gestures and so on causing a lot of younger players to maybe miss out due to their parents stopping them playing etc

I don't like the idea of gimmicks such as playing as a keeper or taking throw in's or set pieces so the only other thing I can see working would be mini games and I have to be honest, I'd rather EA didn't waste the disc space.

One thing I would quite like would to be able to use the voice function to record myself singing a chant and then for EA to have an option to add echo, reverb and duplication to create crowd chants. Now this may sound like a bad idea to some but it depends what you like, the idea of being able to make custom chants for my VP such as:

"Spike Chapman, Spike Chapman, running down the wing,

Spike Chapman, Spike Chapman, it's his name we sing,

Big, fat and bald,

starting to get old,

Spike Chapman, Spike Chapman!"

and then modify myself singing that to sound like an entire crowd chanting it would be great fun and would add to that realism of you actually being in the game.

I suppose my point is, if EA are going to add Kinect then they need to add functionality that we want, not gimmicky crap that the average user won't use again after using it a few times.

It'll be interesting this time next year to see what EA's plans are with Kinect and whilst I have high hopes I can't help but worry that FIFA 13 may be tainted for the more dedicated fans as EA reach out to more casual gamers with gimmicky Kinect features, I guess only time will tell.

Clubs, EA and the FIFA community.

2011-07-31T17:00:00.001+01:00

Ok so as I'm sure many of you who follow me are fully aware, I have been doing my very best to loosen lips at EA about Virtual Pros and Pro Club Championship but credit to EA, they have remained very tight lipped about the up and coming changes.

As you may be aware, recently on the Xbox 360 a number of gamers have ruined the enjoyment of playing clubs due to VP hacking, in which it has become very common for players to be hacked to be 8' tall, 127 overall rated and various other changes. Another hack attempts to hide the VP's hacked status by making the overall a believable number to try and hide the fact the VP is hacked.

For those of you who have not seen these 8' tall VP's, here is what I'm taking about:

Obviously this has not gone down well with respectful communities, such as the FVPA, and various users, such as myself. For this reason I contacted EA and asked for some information and whilst they could not give me any specifics I was given the following comment from a source that shall remain unnamed:

"The VP hack thing will definitely be fixed for FIFA 12. There's a bunch of work involved, but I was talking to the guys about that just yesterday and they're all over it."

This has obviously given me a little more confidence after the recent weeks where little has been said or done on an official level. The same source hinted that EA may even become transparent with their issues they have experienced with FIFA 11 which would obviously be great for the community as I feel the community feels detached from EA. Even some of the gamechangers have been the target of some abuse for not being "critical enough" of EA but I have continued to try and point out that I and the other game changers have been very critical of EA and FIFA and we'll continue to do so, even if it is not made public.

So why are the EA forums so hostile towards EA? Well my view on it is simple, EA have not been forthcoming enough with their customers who have complaints and have strayed away from confronting these hostile complainers. That said I can fully understand the frustrations of the community from time to time, maybe more than less, as there is nothing more frustrating than finding your favourite online game has been hacked, glitched or abused in some other form. Football has always been a passionate sport with a very strong competitive spirit, one of the reasons I never play 1 vs 1 but that's neither here nor there, so it's understandable that there will always be a clash of heads and a bit of abuse but when your opponent starts cheating it only further exacerbates the problem.

I can fully understand the frustrations of a player who plays fair when he matches up against a team full of 8' tall pros who are bigger, faster and stronger because they have decided not to play fair and the same goes for 1 vs 1 players who find their opponent trying to glitch a match up etc

I suppose looking at it from a neutral point of view it's a very hard position that EA's dev team and community managers and staff find themselves in because they want to deliver the best game possible but politics and various other issues will always make it very hard for them to share all information.

Right, that's enough thought on the community and cheaters, the main reason for mentioning that was just to highlight that EA seem confident in stopping hackers for FIFA 12, I guess we'll see what they have to say soon, which brings me onto my next subject, Gamescom.

For those of you are not aware of what Gamescom is, well to quote their website it is "

The world's largest trade fair and event highlight for interactive games and entertainment". EA are obviously attending and the word from Mr Rutter when I spoke to him in Guildford is that the online modes will be revealed there.

I've been speaking to many people and the general gist of what will be discussed is Virtual Pro's, Clubs and various new additions to the online catalog of FIFA. So now that we've established that clubs fans should be getting the information that they crave between the 17th and 21st of August, great timing for myself as it's my 30th birthday on the 28th ha ha.

So what will they announce? I have a few suspicions, one thing I have noticed recently is how they have removed the option to add facial hair via gameface and also have added the gameface platform to Tiger Woods which leads me to believe the VP gamefaces should be a lot better in FIFA 12. On that note I do hope they re-add the generic facial hair as ATM my pros cheeks are feeling a little cold without my full beard, sad times.

Anyway, off topic I go again, the point is I think EA will have done a lot of work on the Virtual Pro system, Personally I'm hoping that the "do A to unlock B" progression system has been replaced with a more organic leveling system, maybe by adding online form? I know they have brought back form for Career Mode so it would make sense to be consistent through the entire game by using it.

The one thing that interested me recently was the changes made for NHL 12, they have changed Be A Pro mode and renamed it "Be A Pro, Become A Legend", sound familiar? Well it will if you play PES as Become A Legend is what they call their version of Be A Pro. I was quite surprised by this as I thought it could lead to claims from PES fans that EA are stealing their ideas, that said I think both games are guilty of "borrowing ideas" so it wouldn't be too much of a surprised.

Again, I'm going off subject, the point of bringing this up is that upon NHL releasing this information they also released a video to show it off which I suggest watching, I've attached it below:

So as you can see there seems to be a large step forward in Be A Pro in the NHL series which leads me to wonder if the FIFA team have taken the same approach. I know NHL and FIFA are both made in the Vancouver studios and share a lot of technology and the kind of presentation used in that trailer is very similar to that of EA's new look FIFA 12. I certainly think it would be great if FIFA takes on this kind of presentation and style for Virtual Pros.

Another question that keeps going around my head is "what are they planning with creation centre?" For FIFA 11 there was talk about incorporating creation centre with clubs but obviously this never happened. I lightly remember being informed that EA had in fact worked on this but had not been able to finish it in time and have it working. I'm not sure of the truth behind this but it came from a very reliable source and so I can't help but believe it. This obviously begs the question of did EA drop the idea of using creation centre with clubs or is this something that may be announced at Gamescom?

Everything is a guessing game ATM but whilst I have been disappointed by the lack of talk about clubs it has left me very eager to see what EA have planned for people like myself who love clubs and want to see it continue to grow.

A second taste of FIFA 12

2011-07-12T13:45:00.024+01:00

OK so if you follow me on Twitter (@BigZombieMonkey – Oh yeah, cheap plug) then the chances are that you’re aware that on the 11th July 2011 I attended Guildford for a day of playing FIFA 12 and testing out the Career Mode. I attended Guildford on the 31st May and 1st of June this year also and many of you may have read my write up on the game on the 1st June where I talked about game play, but none of you would have heard about what we were doing on the 31st May until now as the embargo passes.

On the 31st May a select group were invited to play Career Mode in a very early form, so early in fact that many features did not work or simply were not in the game at all yet. The mode itself was fairly impressive and whilst the general opinion on that day was that Career Mode had a long way to go we all agreed that the steps being taken were at least in the right direction and that some of the new features were ones we’d wanted for a long time.

Obviously we were unable to come back and talk about this as you would have seen over at FIFASoccerBlog where they commented “Day 1 (31st May): All I can say about Day 1 is simply that myself and Tom will be there and whilst I appreciate that isn’t really news, we thought it was important you guys knew we’d be in attendance at EA. The embargo around this day is massive so sadly that’s all I can divulge.” But I can assure you that we would have liked to.

For those of you that do not know I frequent the EA forums (where I do some light moderating, amongst other things) and here (where I am work as an administrator) so I am fully aware of some of the things that are said about EA, their development team and a certain man who happens to be the Lead Producer of the FIFA series, a Mr David Rutter. So before I carry on I would just like to quickly say that despite the various comments such as “EA don’t care”, “EA don’t listen”, “EA are useless” etc I can assure you EA do care, they work very hard and they are listening, in fact you’d be surprised just how much they do listen.

I’d also like to point out that there is only so much EA can do for various reasons such as licensing, time constraints, technical build issues etc so whilst you may think “Oh that’s easy to do” it may actually be something that is in fact very hard to do and very costly and time consuming. For these reasons I make a suggestion, not something you must listen to or do but a simple suggestion; if you would like to be heard and would like to help EA just take into consideration that the ideas you have are not as simple as they may seem and have a lot more complexity.

Ok so that aside and onto 11th July. When I arrived I met up with Kelley, Craig and Ryan from the FVPA, for those of you who post on the FVPA you may better know them as FVPA Kelley, Cole UK and Sweat Dogg. I also met Giacomo from the iFVPA and numerous other new people who I had not met before. The big surprise for me was bumping into Marius Hjsepth who if you don’t know what he does then you’ve never been on YouTube and searched FIFA, you can find his channel here. Marius was a surprise guest and is very much a very nice young man, very polite, helpful and interesting to talk to, I can see why EA regard him so highly.

As we entered the room that EA had prepared a very large monitor had been set up and David Rutter was walking around looking very intent on getting on with things so we sat down and prepared to see what we he had in store for us. He started off with a quick introduction of himself and then moved on to inform us that the day would be about Career Mode and game play and that he would not be talking about any online modes, making sure to stare at me when he added “despite any campaigns on twitter” *gulp*, he then went on to explain some of Career Mode, EA’s aims and also gave us a little more information on “Football Club” and how it works. I must say I’d heard most of this information before but it was still interesting hearing it come from the lead producer himself. You could tell that despite having done this presentation multiple times in numerous places that he still had a desire to talk about it, the kind of attitude you hope for from the person who is the driving force behind a game we all want to be the best football experience in a video game.

After the presentation we all set about playing FIFA 12. Throughout the day I personally played a little career mode and a fair few games against various community players coming away with a 4 wins 1 loss record which I was quite happy with considering I do not play H2H and haven’t done since the two games I played on FIFA 10. Many people question me on why I do not play H2H and sometimes I cannot help but feel like I am not considered a big FIFA player because I avoid H2H but I have my reasons. My main reason is because when I play online I feel like I am no longer playing a football game, I feel like the video game side takes over as the general attitude of H2H players seems to be “win at all costs” and this is where you see 5-2-1-2 formations, high pressure pressing, spammed lobbed through balls, quick ping passing etc This is where I lose interest in playing H2H as it feels like the competitive nature is too strong for my liking, don’t get me wrong, I have a competitive side but it’s just not so strong that I’ll ruin a football experience to get that W. I think this is one of the key reasons I always enjoy these EA events, mainly because I know the people I am playing against are like-minded and more football fans than video gaming fans.

I honestly believe that there are two kinds of H2H FIFA players, the gamers and the footballers and whilst some may argue that high pressure, quick counter, quick ping passing is a legitimate football style I find it very hard to agree when FIFA has always favoured these styles due to a mis-balancing in the game itself. It seems that when I go online all I come up against is H2H players that have nothing but a desire to win even if it means exploiting the weaknesses of the game and rage quitters.

The good news for people like myself who want to play football or at least be able to play a game without having to ping the ball around quickly just to retain possession is that with the new impact engine, precision dribbling and the new defending system made my H2H games a much more enjoyable experience, even being torn apart by multiple skills moves from Marius. FIFA 12 now feels like a much more engaging game when defending as you actually feel like you have to defend and not just wait for the constant pressuring to bare fruit.

Now, I’ve gone off track as yesterday I think the idea that I may enjoy H2H games again came as a bit of a surprise, although this was an unfinished build with many bugs so I’ll have to wait and see how the retail release differs. To get back on track I think Career Mode has come a long very nicely since I first got to see it with two additions being my personal favourites, those being the transfer deadline day and the ability to loan any player as opposed to just those who were listed.

One major gripe for me has always been that as a lower league club I wanted to be able to search out players to potentially loan in to strengthen my squad but in FIFA 11 the option just wasn’t there and forced me to make a purchase or accept I had to loan in a player I wouldn’t have otherwise approached. When I was trying FIFA 12’s Career Mode I was very happy to see that when I started as Bristol City I was able to go to Chelsea and approach to loan Fabio Borini (a 20 year old striker who probably would have little to no chance of starting in front of Torres, Drogba etc). I was happy to find that Chelsea saw things my way and allowed me to loan him and thus I had doubled the strength of my attacking line, something I never would have been able to do in FIFA 11.

The transfer deadline was also something I’d asked for previously as it just didn’t feel like the real transfer deadline day where there is a mad scramble to get all of the deals finalised and for some surprise signings. Now you get 8 hours in which to sign players with an hour passing each advancement, giving you time to talk out deals on the final day and make a last minute swoop.

Career Mode also has had multiple changes such as improved visuals, scouting, youth academy player stories, form and morale improved player growth all of which add a lot more depth to Career Mode. Having said that it’s still not at a depth that I would like but that’s to be expected with the sheer volume of work EA have put into game play changes, Football Club etc

The changes that EA have made are all great changes and help further improve the Career Mode experience and actually give it some great depth but my personal favourite change about Career Mode was oddly the commentary. Now you can have two broadcast teams and Career Mode actually changes the team you have based on the type of match e.g. cup matches may have one commentary team and league matches another. Another great detail I noticed was how the commentators mention the clubs expectations during pre season and more importantly they comment on signings that have been made. One of the moments that stood out for me was when I managed to sign Messi for Man City after spending almost my entire budget, including that from players I sold and spending over £250k wages. It was a great moment because rather than the usual little story and nothing else mentioned I got some commentary as my next match started which mentioned how Messi was a great signings and had certainly broken the bank. A small touch like this is fantastic as it makes you feel a little more immersed in realism, it may not be badges changing with relegation, genuine managers on the sidelines etc but it’s a very nice touch that must have taken EA quite a bit of work.

The same goes with teams in general, one lovely bit of commentary was talking about how Bristol City were in the top flight a long time ago and how Paul Cheesley scored the winning goal in their first game in the top flight (something I, as a Bristol city fan, was fully aware of, but another fan may not have been).

Many people have commented this morning on how the buzz hasn’t been so big from those who attended Guildford but I’d like to think that’s because we’re far more critical than the press. To further extend that point I would suggest reading an article written by Xaor from the EA forums called “Gaming Critics are hurting FIFA: The Media's effect on football games”

I am still very excited about FIFA 12 but unlike past FIFA releases I am refusing to let myself get caught up in all of the hype as it’s a case of we’ll not know 100% how good the game is until it’s retail release and we own it.

Any questions, feel free to ask.

FIFA 12 - Game play write up

2011-06-02T17:00:00.044+01:00

Last year I was very excited after coming back from Canada about the promise that FIFA 11 showed, we were only privy to game play changes but the game play seemed slower, it had more of a genuine feel of football. The real side of things however was when I received my retail copy of FIFA 11 only to discover that there were some serious server issues in clubs, Career Mode felt very stale and lacking and as always, the VP exploit along with various other bugs and glitches has snuck their way in. This in turn left FIFA 11 feeling like a step forward, but with far too many issues to allow me to enjoy that step forward and so this year I have come back a little more sceptical.

I must add that the game we played was a pre-alpha build with many known bugs and obviously a lot of code needing tightening up and fixing before it was to be a build that we could critique without the knowledge that it was known to be buggy in many respects.

So, where to start? I suppose the menus would be the best part as that's what you'll see first when you play the demo, buy the game etc

Menu

The new menu is actually very nice in how it is presented, the graphics looked very crisp and the old menu system has been replaced by a single bar along the bottom of the screen that has a pop up bar. Rather than describing it in depth I think a screen shot of it would be far more suitable:

As you can see Kaka is in the image above the actual menu but what is very nice is he is animated as the menu loads. You'll see Kaka perform an action and then it freezes him as if it were a photograph at which point you can navigate the menus. The menu seems lag free which was nice but obviously we had no access to various options as they were greyed out, we were not connected to the servers and I imagine Ultimate Team was yet to be installed meaning these factors could potentially return the menu lag. That said we won't know that answer until the game is released and we have our copy to try it.

Presentation

Upon starting my first match of Arsenal vs Chelsea (the only two teams in the build we played), I was greeted with the arena as per usual. Nothing seems to have changed here but when the game was ready I clicked start and was greeted with a new introduction screen. The screen divided with the Chelsea badge presented in a 3D manner and then I was greeted with John Obe Mikel dribbling in a large close up of his entire player model. It was a very nice touch and was followed Van Persie sliding on his knees in celebration for Arsenal. This may be a small touch and very well may be skipped as you become used to playing FIFA 12 but it's very nice to see the detail on the players and the new 8 way camera faces that have been captured up closer. It would seem that EA are a little more focused on presentation this year which is always good from my point of view as I think it's an area that EA have always been lacking in, especially when compared to the other titles they make such as NHL, Skate etc

Game Play

Defending - Now an art of it's own

In my first game I expected to be able to just pick up the pad and play as I've always done from each instalment of the FIFA series, with a small learning curve. For this reason I was surprised by how much the new contain system changes the game. I instantly held down what was the press/tackle button to try out the new contain feature that replaces it and found that I no longer felt like I could charge a ball carrier like a wild boar that was out of control. The secondary press is now set to the RB button and B is now the commit to tackle button which does take some getting used to but adds a whole new layer to the tackling system. After playing the game a few times I was amazed at how removing pressing/auto tackling opens up the game giving you more space on the ball and yet it did not bother me that the game was now a lot harder when defending.

After some time of playing I began to adapt to this very large change in the feel of the game and noticed that by secondary pressing the opponent no longer felt pressured to pass the ball off as soon as possible as the secondary press will never commit to a challenge, instead it is up to you to switch to that player, make up the containing space and either walk into the ball carrier to attempt a tackle or press B to actually stick out a foot and commit to that challenge. This opens up a whole new dimension to defending so I now understand why EA have chosen to refer to it as "Tactical Defending". I think this name sums up the change perfectly as it really does feel as if I have to be tactical in how I defend.

I think the contain is best described as a tracking motion or automatic jockeying where the defender does not spread his body as much. It works nicely in the game and you cannot abuse the tracking as the closest you can get to the ball carrier whilst containing is around 1-2 yards meaning to actually commit to a tackle you have to release the contain button and manually attack the ball carrier either by running into him or by using the B button to put your foot out. Another great thing about contain is that it carries over onto the secondary pressing and so you cannot just let the computer do your defensive work by holding B as could in FIFA 11, instead when you use secondary contain you find your teams player nearest to the ball will track at a range of around 3 yards making it harder for the ball carrier to run freely but not forcing him to make the pass until that player or another attempts to make the tackle.

The combination of contain, secondary contain and having a commit to tackle button allows more space in FIFA 12, something that we've never really had in previous FIFA's and also adds a whole new depth to defending. I'm also positive that this will bring a whole new level of difficulty to clubs with defenders having to stay on their feet more as you would expect in real football, something I'm very happy to see.

To sum up the changes to defending I would say that it's easily the best change to FIFA 12 that I have experienced in terms of game play and adds a whole new depth that has been lacking for many years. It is quite easily the feature I am most excited about with regards to the game play of FIFA 12.

Dribbling

Dribbling this year is another area where FIFA 12 seems to have taken a large leap in the right direction. With the new addition of "tactical defending" dribbling now feels more powerful, it's almost as if I feel comfortable to try and beat a player with dribbling now which is something I've never felt before in a FIFA game. The new precision dribbling makes a large impact on dribbling as it feels more natural to twist and turn or just to hop out of the way of a tackle that has missed the ball but clipped me as I've passed him.

One thing that really stood out was how nippy Walcott felt when dribbling, his pace and acceleration felt right as when I attacked the wing I found Ashley Cole struggling to contain me if I got a yard on him and I could then use that yard to break away using Walcotts pace. This is something again that I never really felt I could do with Wallcott in previous games as his strength was so weak that the second I was touched I would collapse to the ground. The new precision dribbling allows me to dodge small fouls and then use that split second that the defender has mistimed his tackle to break free and really use Wallcotts pace as he does himself in real life.

To summarize the dribbling it now feels like you can attack a player and beat him, it feels as if smaller players can now eave in and out of areas they previously would have lost the ball due to lacking strength and it feels as if players are actually making an effort to get out of the way of fouls so that they can use their dribbling to their advantage.

Impact Engine

So with two positives it's about time I add a negative with potential to the mix. The impact engine at first feels fantastic with some fantastically realistic collisions and EA have done a great job in adding a lot more to the game with some of the rag doll like physics. To look at the new Impact Engine positively it really can add realism to the game in the sense that it allows players to remain on their feet when they would have previously fallen to ground, it adds more variety to collisions, it allows injuries to be "understood" and it has a lot of potential in a variety of other ways. The problem with this pre-alpha build that we played (I must stress that being pre-alpha makes a big difference) is that there seems to be a lack of understanding from the games referees as to what should and shouldn't be considered a foul and more to the point what would merit a yellow card and what would merit a straight red card.

To explain this further I was very happy whilst playing one match where I went around Petr Cech only for his arms to take my legs out completely. The referee immediately sent Petr Cech off which made perfect sense as had not only stopped me from having a scoring chance but had also made no contact with the ball. I have not had a goalkeeper sent off in all of my time playing FIFA 11 and so seeing this first of all showed me that not only did the dribbling help but the games impact engine recreated the situation a lot better than the current system does, as I have been taken out the same way on FIFA 11 many times before. This was a positive decision by the referee but it seemed the more that I played that I could not receive a straight red card unless I denied a scoring opportunity.

Once I realised this myself and Lee (a gamechanger and writer for SweetPatch.TV) set about fouling each other in the most viscous manners possible to test how the game reacted to it. Below are a list of collisons that occured and the results of them:

Lee dived in two footed making contact with both of my ankles forcing them down and causing a nasty bend of the leg - no foul given
I raised a leg and kicked Lees player in the back causing him to collapse to the floor with the ball no where near me - no foul given
I headbutted Lees player in the air causing him to collapse without making any contact with the ball - no foul given
Lee went through the back of my legs causing one to twist unnaturally and injure my player - yelow card

I think this is enough to get across my point. Most people who were playing the game were able to agree that this was happening far too much and that it made the game very hard to judge in terms of how the Impact Engine would work. If this carries over to the retail version then obviously this would put a major damper on the impact engine and there still seems to be no understanding of a dangerous tackle/foul which is a slight concern. Having said this if EA do tidy up the impact engine and the understanding of fouls then it'll be an amazing addition to the game as when it works it's very impressive and when it doesn't work it's a real problem for gameplay. Being as it is a new engine and this was a pre-alpha build I'm still not panicking about this issue being fixed as I think there is no way you can play the game without experiencing it so the devs are probably more than aware of it and looking to fine tune prior to release.

Here is where there is a mixture of hot and cold in big extremes. On a negative side the game still doesn't seem to understand intelligent off the ball runs, it's still a case of running in fairly straight lines or strikers getting in the way of wingers by coming out wide etc There is also in my own personal opinion a problem with the AI supporting players by coming to them to give them an option. Both of these have always been an issue with FIFA for me and I think until they fix it you'll never get that feeling of the team working together.

I also have a problem with how players still don't react or push that extra bit. What I mean by this is there are far too many occasions on FIFA where I find myself shouting "go to the f*@#$* ball!" as a player doesn't react to a loose ball. The AI still seems to do this far too often as you see a ball roll past them in the midfield and you know that had they been a real person they would have made the effort to collect the ball.

These problems aside one great new change is the AI's ability to create chances. Whilst I was watching Tom (from FIFA Soccer Blog) play one game there was a fantastic goal scored by the AI as Ashley Cole cut inside and side stepped one defender and then hopped out of the way of another challenge and poked the ball into the path of Anelka who fired the ball into the bottom corner. Whilst it sounds like a simple type of goal it is the exact thing that FIFA 11 is currently missing as the AI just sees to attacking via the wing by crossing for a header all of the time. Whilst playing against Arsenal as Chelsea I really felt as if I was playing Arsenal as they worked the ball around the edge of the area on both sides and in the middle. There was also signs that they had no intention to cross unless there was a real chance that Van Persie or Chamakh would get to the ball as they were aware that Chelsea were stong in the air whilst they were not. It was great to see just how much the AI was willing to try and beat a player whilst in possession or to work the ball in the middle of the field, again something that previous FIFAs have been missing.

To summarize the AI, I think EA still have a crazy amount of work to do as there are still too many things that massively frustrate me as I play the game. The majority of them were AI based but on the same note I have to give EA credit for giving teams a little more team individuality and that ability to be a little less predictable in how it attacks.

Heading

Just a quick thing to mention on heading which is that whilst the heading in the game is fantstic in so many ways the key problem with heading remains. First of all I'll put across the positives as there are quite a few with the first being air collisions. Due to the Impact Engine there are a lot better air collisions and you really get to feel like you're a victim to gravity should you jump and get it wrong. Positioning plays a much larger part of heading successfully now with headers going behind a player if the ball is too high or in a few cases the ball bouncing off of the floor and going over the goal if you head down with too much conviction.

One of my favourite additions to heading is how if you jump up to challenge for a header and the opposition player backs into you hen quite often it can result in you falling over his back with brilliant realism. Again this is where the impact engine changes the very way FIFA's key game play elements react and look.

So what is the key problem? As always in FIFA heading is a 2 man thing, only one player from each team can truly challenge for the ball which defeats the whole purpose of being able to crowd out a big man in the box. With all FIFA's you can have one striker in the box and if the cross is good enough he'll only be challenged by one play from the defensive team, even if there are seven men in the box all around him. This is something PES has always seemed to have had over FIFA and I just cannot understand how a game aimed to be a simulation of football can limit a single player from each team to challenging for a ball in the air.

Summary

To sum up my view on FIFA 12 I would have to say the game is defiantly a step in the right direction, however I still feel there is a long way to go before I feel like I'm playing a football game that will truly amaze people. There is a sense of revolution there, I just can't quite help but feel like it's more evolution than revolution.

I hope that as the game code improves so will my opinion on the game but due to being burned last year and some AI issues needing changing still I can't help but be somewhat reserved in my excitement.

Development Team Webcast Write Up

2011-05-20T09:09:00.003+01:00

On the 28th April a select number of members from the EA community were invited to attend a webcast to get an early look at some of FIFA 12’s new features and put our questions to the team who are making the game.

Upon connecting to the webcast we were greeted by Aaron Mchardy and Santiago Jaramillo who are both game play producers for the FIFA series and I had the pleasure of meeting last year in Vancouver, Canada. We were also joined (off camera) by Romily Broad who was helping take questions and feed them back to Aaron and Santiago.

The webcast started with Aaron informing us of an embargo that did not allow us to mention anything that we saw during the webcast until the 20th May. It was for this reason that I have not posted this until today as if I had mentioned anything that is about to follow I would have been breaking the embargo and I’m pretty sure EA’s legal team would have sacrificed me to the Rancor that they keep in their basement.

Onto the stuff that I’m sure you want to read and that we were all waiting eagerly to see. Aaron continued to inform us that he was going to talk mainly about game play as that was the main area that he and Santiago work on but did also point out that he would like to give us a general idea of the direction FIFA was going in as a whole. Aaron said “what we really wanted to achieve this year, as a game as a whole, is we want to make a game that feels really different from FIFA 11. Its change really every area of the game from the boot flow to the final whistle. We’ve done a lot of changes to the menu, to the presentation, a lot of things happening in game modes around the game but we’re not going to tell you about that today.” I have to admit at this point I was a little disappointed as I’m a big clubs fan/player and I was hoping to find out more information on clubs but Aaron went on to explain the focus of the webcast would be on game play.

I’ve been playing FIFA since its first incarnation on the Sega Mega Drive back when I was a kid, but it wasn’t until FIFA 08 that I started believing that a video game of a sport I loved could actually start to feel like the real game I played down the park, on the weekend for a local team or even the real sport itself that my heros such as Andy Cole, Roberto Baggio, Romario, Paolo Schmeichel or Paolo Maldini (who my brother is named after) played week in, week out.

Since playing FIFA 08 I’ve always been quite vocal in what I wanted from FIFA and last year my voice seemed to have been noticed as I was invited to join the development team in Canada for a FIFA 11 community week and try the early code of the game. Since then I have learned a tough lesson which is do not hype FIFA until it has been out long enough to discover bugs, glitches, potential flaws that can be abused etc after my good feedback to the community was rubbished after a few months of retail release because the game was not the same as the game I had tested. This was not down to EA changing their game itself but the good features such as pro passing being weakened in their finalisation process and the servers being a massive issue in clubs with many unable to play at all. For these reasons I am remaining a little more sceptical about the release of FIFA 12 and what is in store for us in regards to what we’ll be playing for a year commencing the October release date (educated guess, nothing confirmed).

I firmly believe that last years FIFA was an evolution of the game but after FIFA 08, FIFA 09, FIFA 10 and FIFA 11 I think it is fair to say we need a larger advance in the game as things such as the pressuring, AI and other key parts of FIFA are still too weak and feel too generic. So when lead producer David Rutter promised a "revolutionary year for FIFA, especially in the game play department." I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a marketing campaign or if we potentially had a very interesting game in the making. After seeing the full webcast I now think he is justified in his statement so long as what we saw can be delivered without any major bugs, glitches or exploits slipping through the testing. I will how add however that from what I’ve seen I would not say this game will be revolutionary to football gaming, it will however be revolutionary in how FIFA will be played, if that sounds a little cryptic in a sense then read on.

Back to the webcast, it was after this brief intro that Aaron went on to explain that each year EA’s main focus in gameplay is trying to take the key issues that were not so good in the previous years title and improve them, which was more about evolution than revolution. This year however the plan is to create a revolution by making some key changes that will in turn change the way user play FIFA. Aaron continued on to say that he was going to talk about four key features of which three “live together in what they like to call Trinity of gameplay features”. The three features that live together are:

• Tactical Defending

• Precision Dribbling and the

• Impact Engine

with the fourth feature being something referred to as Pro Player Intelligence.

Aaron then moved on to explain the first of the four new features which was:

Tactical Defending

Aaron moved into his explanation of tactical defending by saying how in the new system should change the way we think about defending. It has been a long time that the community have complained about the “heat seeking missile defenders” and argued that it lacks skill to defend as the game does the majority of the defending for you. When defending holding down the press and/or secondary press results in the defender going straight at the ball holder and automatically making the attempt to tackle. The argument was that this lacked skill and did not represent the real art of tackling which was largely down to positioning and timing.

On a personal note I’ve always enjoyed defending but my most satisfying moments are landing a perfect sliding challenge to prevent the ball carrier breaking through the defence and this is largely down to the timing of the tackle.

The good news is that pressing has been removed and replaced with a tracking jockey that Aaron referred to as “contain”. When you hold down to press it has been replaced so your player will track the ball carriers run by jockeying at a distance that you adjust with the left analog stick. What I was impressed with was that holding down contain and moving as close as you can to the ball carrier does not result in your player making an attempt to tackle, instead the automated tackle has been replaced with a button press so now you have to time your tackle affectively. Pressing too late may result in missing the tackle altogether or pressing it too early may give the ball carrier too much time to see the tackle coming and step away from the attempted tackle. The secondary press has also been replaced with the new contain system which means if you are using contain with your own player and you bring in the secondary contain instead of preparing a tackle, he will also track the player but will actively look to block off passing options.Essentially the new contain feature puts the realistic art of timing a tackle into FIFA where it was previously automated or as Aaron put it “bringing the skill of real world defending into FIFA”.

Unfortunately there was not much talk on how this will affect the pressure abuse in most games but my personal opinion is that it sounds as if it will be a lot harder to apply constant pressure without missing tackles and pulling players out of position. This is something that has always plagued FIFA making defending a rushed action to try and get back on the attack rather than being smart, positioning well and taking the chance to steal the ball at the right moment. Instead FIFA has mainly been about pressing with the secondary press whilst cutting off options with your own defending player, a very basic style of defending that lacked skill.

As a big clubs fan/player I can only imagine how much this will make good defenders a lot more desirable as it will require a lot more skill to be an effective defender who can time challenges well. It will also be great for wing backs as they will need a lot more skill to be able to get forward and do the offensive duties and have the skill to get back and time their tackles well.

One clip we were showed by Aaron showed how mistiming a tackle also opened up a realistic element of the game which was beating defenders through simple dribbling as opposed to having to use skill moves. In the clip we were shown Walcott was running down the wing but getting closer and closer to the sideline and thus running out of space as he has Bale chasing him down from behind and Modric tracking along side. On FIFA 11 it would most certainly ended in a tackle and the ball going out of play or a foul but with the new tackling system Walcott stopped his run and shielded himself against Bale as Modric committed to the tackle missing him entirely. This allowed Walcott to cut in between Modric and Bale and get infield without losing possession. What made this so impressive to watch was it looked like a real bit of football and it showed that the new tackling system allows for more realistic situations that you see in football. Another great detail was that Aaron had beaten two players using Walcotts basic dribbling, something that would rarely happen in FIFA 11 due to the missile like defenders.

Precision Dribbling

With the example of how the new tackling system will effect dribbling it allowed Aaron to move onto the next new feature, precision dribbling. Aaron summarized that the new precision dribbling as “the ability to dribble the ball, maintaining close control when you’re in traffic and when you’re near the sidelines, as well as giving the ability to shield players and dribble at the same time”. Now to me this sounded very similar to what we already have with the current precision dribbling so I did not understand how this differed until I watched a video demonstration. The video showed real life footage of Diaby playing against Blackpool and as he approached the edge of the box he had very little option so he took numerous small touches whilst looking for a viable option. Aaron then pointed out that it was five touches in the space of a yard or two and went on to further point out that if you tried to do this in FIFA 11 at jog speed you’d probably end up on the half way line due to the heavy touches. This also means in FIFA 11 you don’t have the ability to take small touches that change your direction in traffic/a congested part of the field without risk of running into an opposition player and losing possession. This in turn has been a key problem area in FIFA as it restricted the creativity of a player in tight situations, yet in real football this is where the best attacking players in the world would shine and it also didn’t allow teams like Barcelona to be realistically created due to this being an area of the game where they excel.

The reason why Aaron pointed out this video and the small touches was because he then led onto a video which we saw in FIFA 11’s build up where there was a demonstration of the jog speed turn radius followed by the new lower tier speed dribble. With the jog speed you could see that the player had good control but used a space of four to five yards to make all of his turns and twists which as we all know in real football and FIFA is actually a lot of space. Aaron then showed a clip of the newer lower speed dribbling (precision dribbling) which showed a player turning and twisting as he did in the jog speed video, only this time the space used was within a yard which in-game would allow a player a lot more ability to avoid a tackle or to turn his back to a defender allowing him to maintain the ball in a small space. I know this may sound basic but with the new tackling system combined with the ability for a much more precise dribbling could add a whole new depth to maintaining the ball. This will in turn make the pitch seem a lot bigger which was an issue in previous FIFAs as the pitch felt cramped and lacking space. Essentially the combination of potential to miss tackles and a more precise dribbling system should give us the space we have when we play PES which is something that has always been lacking.

Another great advantage of this new system is how it will affect the pace of the game as you will have three tiers of pace and this will be combined with various statistics such as acceleration, sprint speed, ball control etc giving you a very large variation of speed/pace. This opens up a whole new world when it comes to dribbling as you’ll be able to use the differing paces to beat players by going from a slow pace to a burst of speed or vice versa. The combination of the two systems (precision dribbling and tactical defending) will also allow you to create time on the ball giving your team mates to make various runs, lose markers or just get up field and give you support when options are lacking, something that never really happened in FIFA 11 as it was more of a case of keeping the ball moving constantly via passing to avoid being tackled by the heat seeking missile defenders.

At this point Santigo added that the precision dribbling system is “very sophisticated and very intelligent so it’s based on context and that means we’re not really alienating various users. It’s not just going to be for the community, the hardcore fans that really know how to use very complicated mechanics with the controller, it’s something that when you’re asking for it with the left stick it will recognise all these situations and give you a much more intelligent result and really what in your mind you were hoping for”. He then further elaborated that the precision dribbling is basically a combination of the games mechanics being a lot smarter in realising what the user is trying to achieve with simple movements of the left analog stick and that when you first play FIFA 12 you will “feel it” right away. He also added that there will be a button command for it too so that the user could use it certain situations when they wanted to which sounds much more like the current “precision dribbling” we have in FIFA 11.

Aaron then went on to talk about the ability to dribble whilst shielding and brought up a real life video of Toni playing against USA for Italy that showed Toni move his back to an American defender as he received a pass and take a few touches as he held the defender off. This gave his team-mates a chance to move up field, giving him options which resulted in him playing a simple pass off to an advancing team-mate, allowing the attack to progress. Aaron then went on to say that in FIFA 11 you had the ability to shield but it was stationary and was largely based on how strong the player you were using was, but if you were weak the option of shielding wasn’t really there due to a larger player being able to push you off of the ball which lacked realism.

Aaron then continued to give an example using Berbatov as his subject, explaining that Berbatov is not “the strongest guy in the world but he is able to take these little touches away from pressure just to buy himself some time, without really dribbling, but just knocking it away from the defender, changing his angles, using the dribbling to do those things to buy himself some time on the ball whilst his team-mates jump into the attack and he can find an outlet pass or go on the counter”. Aaron then stated that they really wanted to recreate this in FIFA and showed a test bed video of FIFA 12 showing the shielding system in action which looked great and very much like the Toni video he used as an example. He then showed how it could be used by the sideline to maintain possession and hold the ball up which again looked very realistic and organic.

Another use of the precision dribbling and shielded dribbling was then shown in a video entitled “change of pace” which went back on what I was talking about earlier with the three tiers of pace being implemented. The video showed a test bed set up of a player slowing up the play by turning his back on a defending player and as the defending player came in attempting to make his tackle the precision dribbling was used to turn the attempted tackle and then the player explodes out using his sprint into the open space. This was all executed using a change of pace and the new precision dribbling and shielded dribbling which leads me to believe that FIFA 12 should give us a lot more freedom to slow up the play without losing possession so easily, this in turn should have a massive impact on the variety of styles of football that we can play.

Impact Engine

The introduction to the new Impact Engine involved some big statements from Aaron when he said “we’ve basically taken out a large chunk of our game in our physics engine and put in a completely new one” and added “this is probably the biggest change we’ve made to our engine since we rebuilt it for the next gen consoles”. I personally have got used to hearing comments like “this really will be huge” or “this is the biggest thing in FIFA to date” but for once the big claims actually seem to have some weight behind them as a massive change to the engine of the game like this is always going to have a large impact. Impact Engine in a nut shell is a new physics engine/collision system which is one of the best technical advances that FIFA has had in a long time in my personal opinion.

Aaron began by talking about the motivation behind this change as the collision system on FIFA has always been fairly good with some fantastic animations. The motivation for the change was down to the technical limitations of the old collision system like how to solve things such as a player jumping up to contest a header and going over the back of another player, a mid-air collision during a diving head or a player poking the ball away as a striker shot and how the legs would collide.

The first video that we saw was from FIFA 11 of a player in possession running directly into a standing tackle which resulted in a tackle and the player who was in possession stumbling. The problem we’ve all seen in FIFA 11 is that this quite often results in an unrealistic stumble rather than an actual collision, especially when two players run right into each other. As we all probably know from playing football, when you run directly into someone it’s very rarely that you stumble but instead one of you, depending on the momentum, will end up getting knocked over. In FIFA 11 this never really happened due to the collisions being largely scripted and not understanding the physics of a collision fully, like how a knee makes contact with another knee at the same time that the shoulders collide.

Aaron then moved on to show us a video of the new engine simulating the exact same type of collision only this time the new engine took into consideration all of the points of impact and momentum resulting in the player who was tackled getting knocked backwards due to the impact of the hip, chest and knee. This gives a much more organic and realistic look and feel to the animations as it’s based more on rag doll physics style engines than animation triggers.

Aaron continued on to show us a further two little clips, one showing a player stumbling all over the place after making a basic tackle and another of a player clipping right through his tackler and explained these were issues that we’ve all seen at some point or another. I’d have to agree that I’ve seen this plenty of times in FIFA 11 and I’ve always put it down to how difficult it must be to get the right animation/s for so many situations and how difficult it would be to implement rag doll like physics due to a large amount of rebuilding in the engine. The great news of course is that EA have finally gotten around to doing this and it really showed in the following two short clips showing various slide challenges as there was no clipping and a lot more realistic animation/flow.

Santiago also added to what Aaron was saying by explaining that the variety of animations adds a whole new level of depth too as he said “last year you could play FIFA and then after a couple of months you would have seen all the falls and the stumbles that we had in the game, but when you get FIFA 12 because all of these animations are now getting modified in real time and giving you a different result every time then you can be playing FIFA for 8 months and every game there is potential to see something you haven’t seen before.”

We were then shown another example of how the new engine helps give a more realistic outcome in shielding by being shown a video from FIFA 11 where the ball was being shielded and arms were clipping through each other frantically and even at one point the aggressors head managed to penetrate the defending players shoulder. Aaron explained that this happened because the situation was changing so rapidly that the old engine could not string together animations well enough to prevent this from happening. He then went on to explain that with the new engine the information is being constantly updated and there is a more organic sense of impact which results in more realistic collisions. The video that we saw demonstrating this actually was very impressive as a defender came charging in from behind on a shielding player. Due to his momentum and the better detection of impact the charging player made impact knocking the shielding player over and then his own momentum caused him to fall over too.

The videos of how the impact engine affects the game was then followed up further with Aaron explaining how it can create something that they have been referring to as “unexpected behaviours” which essentially is animations that you would not expect having played previous versions of the FIFA series. This was the video that impressed me the most out of all of the clips we saw, the reason being was it gave a very distinct feeling of the realism/randomness you see in football from game to game. In the video clip it showed Jon Obe Mikel sprinting and Johan Djourou closing him down head on. As the two players near each other for the collision Mikel side stepped and Djourous leading knee makes contact with both of Mikels thighs causing his body to flip a full 270 and land on his back. This clip showed that the physics really are a lot more realistic and add a lot more unpredictability to the game which is something that has always been lacking. One thing that Aaron then cleared up is that you won’t see “extreme” situations like this all of the time and it was just one random outcome they wanted to show off as it was the kind of challenge you would only see once or twice in a season. The main thing is that it was possible whereas in previous FIFA titles it wouldn’t have been which gives the FIFA 12 a lot more potential to have a realistic feel with the anatomy and realism of collisions and physics in general.

Aaron and Santiago followed up to describe how the engine will create a vast variety of animations and how it gives them more time to work on other areas of the game as they will no longer have to go through a long process with engineers and animators to get these realistic outcomes. This can only be a positive step in the development of future FIFA titles, as an engine that improves the game and makes it less time consuming to add such collisions means both improvement in game play and more time to spend tweaking and weaning out bugs and glitches (I hope.... I really really hope!).

At this point Aaron handed over to Santiago to tell us more about “contextual dribble turns”. Santiago began to explain how in previous FIFA's it was common to try and dribble in and out of tight spaces due to players attempting to tackle you and how quite often, even if you managed to navigate the ball through the contesting players, the player you were controlling would make contact and go into a stumble animation causing you to lose the possession. With the new impact engine and contextual dribble turns the players now “understand” the context of their collisions and so if they weave the football through two players but get clipped on the leg it won’t necessarily result in a free kick and a stumble animation, instead the player will be clipped but will recentre his balance and maintain his run. This is one area in FIFA I think dribbling has always been made to be useless due to the fact you could beat a player but the poor collision detection would almost always end in a foul and stop you breaking away after taking two players out of the play. The example clip we were given was a great example as a defending player attempted a slide tackle as the ball carrier turned, this caused the ball carrier to attempt to jump/hop over the sliding players legs only for his trailing foot to be caught. In previous series this would have resulted in the player going to ground and being given a free kick but in this case, using the impact engine, the player managed to shift his weight to avoid falling over and carried on his run. Essentially it’s the addition of contextual dribble turns and the impact engine that allows players to battle through challenges rather than the game being started and stopped every two minutes due to lack of animations for various collisions.

Aaron then said that the last thing he would talk about was “the foundation for the future” and how this new engine is also laying a foundation for future FIFA games as it allows the team to do so much more than they could before implementing it. He then added that they have in fact added a few “cool new things” this year using it, one being “true injuries”.

True Injuries

True injuries can be created in FIFA 12 thanks to the new impact Engine. The engine and some new programming allows the understanding of impact magnitudes of every single part of the body, understands joint torque and when things happen how much force it applies on a joint or a limb giving realistic injuries.

In the demonstration clip we saw Torres being tackled by a defender but as the defenders outstretched leg collides with Torres’ knee he falls backwards causing his other leg to buckle under his own weight and twist backwards putting a massive amount of torque on his other knee. Instantly after he rights his leg on the floor he rolled back in pain and then leaned in to hold his knee on the floor whilst play went on. He also went on to get up and limp slightly and when this is all plays out in game it really did look genuine and realistic.

With this new system in place collisions can cause injuries all over the body in a realistic manner rather than it being a scripted chance as it seemed to be before.

Another form of injuries that have been added are self injuries. In the clip we were shown of a self inflicted injury the player had run himself down and then as he stretched to reach the ball he suddenly began to limp due to pulling his groin.

Another injury form that has been added is re-injury and in this clip we saw Fabregas wearing a knee brace after just coming back from a knee injury and during a tackle he falls to the floor and re-injures his knee.

Aaron then informed us of something called “push pull” which has been added with the purpose to create better and more realistic battles for possession via pulling and pushing.

Pro Player Intelligence

The final segment of the webcast was about Pro Player Intelligence which is basically an improvement for the AI players. Essentially pro player intelligence is about players knowing who they are playing with, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are and using that to an advantage.

A good example of this was when we were showed Peter Crouch winning high pass after high pass whilst playing for Tottenham Hotspur against AC Milan in a real match. We were then showed how this is replicated in FIFA 12 with players choosing to cross when Crouch was in the area but when Defoe was in the area instead the cross was not delivered and the ball was recycled.

The dev team are confident this will change the very essence of how the game is played with team mates making decisions based on the type of players they are playing with and the situation itself.

My Personal Thoughts

So after reading all of the information above what are my personal thoughts on how these changes will effect the game?

Well the more and more I think about certain changes the more and more sceptical I become whilst trying to remain positive. Last year I made the mistake of enjoying the beta so much that I never really considered how others may find the experience and I also never really got to play the AI which is FIFA 11’s biggest problem short of the servers. This year I really want to see a massive improvement in the AI, servers and Career Mode and these three elements were not actually talked about in the webcast with the exception of the Pro Player Intelligence. I truly hope as more details emerge that we will see that EA have not just focused on the new engine (although this is a massive improvement) and will have spent a good amount of time working on the Career Mode and AI as ATM I find Career Mode to be a shell of it’s potential.

My thoughts on how these changes will affect the quality of FIFA 12 are that first of all the new engine will add a whole new level of depth to the natural feel of movement, collisions and general physical feel of the game which can only be a good thing. I’m also feeling very positive about true injuries as this should make Career Mode a much more interesting experience if injuries can resurface and players can injure themselves. The idea of picking a team, knowing it’s a massive match and that I have my star striker ready for selection but he’s still not 100% recovered from an injury which could potentially result in a long term injury, will make for a very thoughtful process in team selection. Do I put him on the bench and bring him on if I need him? Do I start the match with him and keep an eye on him in case he shows signs of needing to come off? These were the things I never felt like I had to worry about in career Mode before, all I thought was “will this player last the match even if his stamina is very low when the match starts”. If I play a tired player this year I know I run the risk of him pulling a hamstring etc This instantly adds a lot more depth to Career Mode and it’s these kinds of changes I am looking forward to as they add more depth and realism.

With the single player modes cleared from my head I have some concerns to how containing will work in clubs, will the attack have a much bigger advantage now due to defenders having to time challenges and attacking players having the precision dribbling and new engine working in their favour as they’ll be able to weave in and out of player more freely? It’ll certainly mean defenders will need to be a lot more skilful and thoughtful in their game and that they will have to practice the element of tackling rather than hoping the game will do it for them as it has done in the past.

On another note my main hope for Clubs this year is the ability to set up your own leagues and tournaments, even if they are unranked, as this would obviously help the FVPA a lot and would make for a fun addition. I’m also very hopeful for creation centre to be implemented into the creating of a club, with the possibility of creating your own club badge and kits as well as allocating squad numbers.

I guess to summarize my thoughts would be to say I am impressed with the decision to push FIFA harder this year by making such drastic changes but I obviously have my concerns that the changes made could also mean a need to rebalance the game and leave potential for new exploits. For now though I think FIFA 12 is looking to be a very big change for the series and I hope that EA will deliver the game we’ve all wanted for quite some time now.

EA plan to launch new subscription service for EA Sports titles.

2011-04-26T11:49:00.003+01:00

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to say on my blog but with FIFA 12 news starting to come through in drips and drabs I knew it would not be long before I found my voice again. It was to my surprise however that my desire to get typing has not come from the first FIFA 12 screenshot or any game play related news but instead from the news that EA are about to introduce a subscription service for their EA Sports titles.

I first caught news of this on Twitter when @tem1985 (Tom Mills of FIFASoccerBlog) tweeted the following:

“RT @FIFASoccerBlog: [NEW] EA SPORTS Subscription Service Set To Launch - fifasoccerblog.com/ #FSB #FIFA12”

At this point I was not that bothered as my first thought was that EA were going to charge as subscription to play online and replace the current “Online Pass”, this didn’t bother me as my thought was with a continued subscription EA would have no ground to stand on if their servers did not improve drastically.

This year has proved to be hugely problematic for Pro Club Championship mode players what with button delay, lag and constant disconnections for those who tend to play in a team with 7 or more players, ironic when you consider FIFA 11s tagline is “we are 11”. Maybe this could be replaced with “we are 11 until the servers can’t handle it, at which point we’re reduced to as little as 3”.

Despite these initial thoughts I came off of my phone and turned my laptop on to read the full story which says the benefits of this plan are:

• Discounts on all downloadable content for participating EA Sports titles (possibly up to 30% off)

• Full downloadable versions of participating titles before they come out in stores

• Exclusive membership recognition badge that appears on both your online and in-game profile

• Ability to transfer paid content from current participating titles to future versions

• Free and exclusive opportunities to extend your EA Sports experience to the PC and Web

• Free and exclusive EA Sports downloadable content for participating console-based titles

Whilst these sound like good things to have it actually just seems like yet another way for EA to generate more money for things that in the past have actually been cheaper. Take the “benefit” “Discounts on all downloadable content for participating EA Sports titles (possibly up to 30% off)”. This is basically translated to “we will reduce the price of UT card packs by 30%” but when you consider you are paying a subscription for this “benefit” anyway it’s likely that EA will make up that 30% in subscription fees.

Then you have the “benefits” “Ability to transfer paid content from current participating titles to future versions” and “Free and exclusive opportunities to extend your EA Sports experience to the PC and Web”. In terms of FIFA this would probably mean that Ultimate Team would carry across to each new FIFA title and you’ll be able to use the web app for Ultimate Team, both of which were free this year. So does this mean if I want to enjoy Ultimate Teams full experience I have to pay extra for something that was free this year... fantastic (yes this is sarcasm).

The only real benefit I can see is “Free and exclusive EA Sports downloadable content for participating console-based titles” which means I’d probably get a boots pack or maybe a stadium (like the additional Bernabeu). The problem with this is again; I am paying for these via a subscription rather than deciding I want the item and making a single one off payment.

After looking at these benefits I can’t help but think I will be paying my subscription to get the exclusive membership recognition badge which will be more likely to be referred to as the “I paid for things I had for free last year badge”.

I was quite happy with the idea of the online pass as it didn’t really have a large effect on FIFA buyers who bought the game new but with this I feel EA have taken a completely wrong route and will only anger the fans of various EA Sports titles when they could have added a monthly subscription for the online modes and used a large proportion of that subscription to improve their servers. This would have still angered many fans but at least they would be getting what they want for their money, server stability and a more enjoyable online service.

So now this begs the question, are the fans of EA sports titles going to be paying further fees for a service that will remain largely faulted by its substandard servers, I truly hope for the sake of EA that this is not the case.

Hands on with Creation Center Beta

2010-09-03T13:04:00.001+01:00

It’s been a while since I used my blog due to various reasons, the main one being the birth of my second daughter Layla-Rose Paige Chapman.

I was due to go to the Emirates on the 23rd August to play test the demo build of FIFA 11 but 5 minutes before I was due to leave my kitchen was greeted by the cries of “my waters broken”, great timing hey. After my initial disappointment of the timing I was off to the hospital and holding my daughter within an hour of leaving the house and the Emirates was out of my head.

However, this does mean I don’t have much to talk about as far as game play goes as I have not played a build of FIFA 11 since I went to Canada. Luckily for me this week saw EA open up their new feature Creation Center to those who had pre-ordered with GAME, GameStop, bought a code on EBay or who was lucky enough to receive an e-mail of a lovely Englishman named Romily and so this is what I will be talking about today.

OK so if you’ve been out of the loop or just not following what’s been going on with FIFA 11 Creation Center is a new web-based tool that allows you to create your own teams and players and import them into FIFA 11.

After much discussion about this tool on the EA forums it was apparent there was a lot of interest in what could and could not be done and as of yesterday a lot of questions have been answered.

The first thing you’ll notice when you visit Creation Center (http://www.ea.com/uk/football/fifa/creation-centre) is a nice clean layout with 3 options, a search box, create a player and create a team. The search box is pretty straight forward allowing you to search for either a player or a team and is a fairly run of the mill search engine so on to creating a player.

Creating a player.

When creating a player the tabs are broken into 6 subjects, General info, Appearance, Accessories, Attributes, Traits and Save.

General Info:

On general info I would say everything you need is there, first name, last name, kit number, kit name, commentary name, nation, position, role, footedness, D.O.B and what template you would like to use. It is only when it comes to the details that you begin to find that Creation Center is lacking many things that you would consider as basic. The first thing that really bothered me was when I looked at the Position and Role of the player I was about to create as it turns out many positions cannot be created. When creating a defender you’ll find that you are given three roles, right, left and center which begs the question what about sweepers or wing backs? It appears you cannot create these positions and the same problem carries over to midfield and forwards. When selecting a midfielder you have 4 options, left, right, center attacking or center defensive meaning wingers and box to box cm’s are also missing as an option as is the striker position in the forwards section with only options for a left, right or center forward. This is particularly disappointing when you consider that personality + is such a big part of FIFA this year and here we are in the creation center with no option to create players of certain positions.

Appearance:

This is the section where you create the look of your player and was also the most disappointing part of the experience for myself. When you select this tab the first thing you’ll see is a lovely high resolution image of the generic player you are about to modify and your options to modify which are ethnicity, face type, facial hair style, eye colour, hair style and colour and body height and weight.

Straight away I was disappointed that there were only 4 types of ethnicity which I would classify as Caucasian, Black, Middle Eastern and Asian. This made it very difficult when I wanted to create a Spanish player or my friend who is from Holland. To add to frustrations there are no sliders or any way to modify the face, instead you are given 8 generic face options per ethnicity using face type and this is the biggest short fall for Creation center. When creating a player it is their face that makes them identifiable and being as there are only 8 face types per ethnicity it drastically limits the players that you can create. I hope for the sake of the success of Creation Center that this is replaced with a sliders based face building engine in the future as currently it is very hard to make a player look like the person you are trying to create, be it real footballer or just your mate from the pub.

Once you have chosen your generic face you have six facial hair styles and many hair cuts to choose from as well as a slider for height and weight and three choices for the body type (average, stocky and lean).

Accessories:

When you move on to the accessories there are various options to select that gives your players body a little more uniqueness which are ankle tape, gloves, left wrist, right wrist, kit style, sleeves and select your boots. Essentially everything you would expect is here just as it was in FIFA 10’s VP creation; however one thing that is missing is branded boots. I’d imagine this is down to EA and licensing and whilst it’s fairly disappointing that you only have the option to choose from EA sports generic boots I am not too surprised about licensed boots. I can’t help to wonder if there is a genuine license issue or if it is EA being smart and not giving away what licensed boots are planned for the retail release of FIFA 11 as this is still a beta, I guess we’ll see come the 1st October.

Attributes:

The attributes screen is one of the stronger points of Creation center with sliders divided into seven categories which are attacking, defending, skill, power, movement, mentality and goalkeeper. In each of these categories there are sliders, for example, in the attacking category you have crossing, finishing, heading accuracy, short passing and volleys so there are a lot of stats to be changed, tweaked and perfected. I would say the best part of the attributes tab screen is there “overall graph” which is a heptagon shaped graph that shows the overall ability of a player, also in the top right hand side of this graph is the OVR stat for those who prefer to deal in numbers.

Traits:

The traits tab has two sections, traits and behaviour and between these two you can really create the personality of a player. In traits you find various traits such as “Crosser – Early Crosser (performs early crosses often)” or “Diver (Player is known for diving to earn a free kick or penalty)”. It’s these traits that can help you create some real personality in your created player and make each one feel original by selecting multiple traits.

In behaviour you can set the players mentality with sliders for work rate in both attacking and defending, free kick animations, the level of skill moves a player has, how well the player uses his weaker foot, his socks style and even the celebrations he does. I do think this window could be improved by including a preview of the celebrations as at the moment they are text only and it is very difficult to know exactly what a “point to crowd” actually looks like.

Save:

As you can imagine this is where you save your player and you are given three options which are draft, publish for my personal use only and publish for public use which is all straight forward to understand.

Player Creations Summary:

After having made an entire teams worth of players I am very impressed with the overall functionality of Creation Centers player creation as it runs smoothly and is very easy to understand and use. My main concern for creating a player is the nonexistent option to create a face and the sheer lack of face styles to choose from, this massively hinders the creative juices that could be flowing through the community and also leaves creating realistic looking recreations a very hard task.

However, I will say that for a beta almost everything I expected is in there and the functionality is good so with a few additions such as the ability to create a face, some more hair and facial hair colours, licensed boots and obviously more positions such as CM, wingers and wing backs the player creation tool could be very impressive.

So now we’ve covered creating a player, what about creating a team?

Creating a Team

Well as with create a player there are also seven tabs in creating a team which are general info, stadium, crest, squad, team management, kit and save.

General Info:

The general info is as expected with the options name your team, short name, team city, team country, commentary name and team colours. These are all self explanatory but one thing I was very happy to see is that you can select the commentary name as I imagine this is something that will also be an option in clubs seeing as Goldenballs can be found in there (congratulations to Dan and the lads), I also noticed that a team I used to be part of the management staff are in there which is Rocksteady and whilst the key staff of that club have moved on to other teams/games it’s nice to know that all of the hard work they put in is remembered. There are also numerous names such as “Dragons”, “Athletic”, “United” so your team will not go unnamed.

Stadium:

In the stadium tab there are two options, one is to select a stadium and the other is to name it. There are 29 generic stadiums to choose from and you cannot choose real stadiums.

Crest:

The crest section is a bit of a disappointment as just as the stadium tab you only have 2 options, one is the shape of your club crest and the other is two colours to choose from. I was a little disappointed by this at first as a crest is quite an important part of a club and is also something that shouldn’t be held back too much from licensing. However after having thought about it for a few moments I can understand why EA cannot offer a little more in terms of creating the badge and this is down to the users. If there was an option to create a badge using various shapes etc as there is in say Forza III, EA could be facing the exact same issue as Microsoft are with Forza III and that is abuse of this tool. On Forza III it’s not uncommon to come across such things as manga porn designed on the side of a car and should EA implement a crest building tool they could have the same issue. Whilst many may argue that this is unlikely to happen I think playing clubs throughout the year only to see team names such as Gary Glitters under 16’s and player names such as “haha your gash” would suggest otherwise.

I think unless EA can find a way to police designed content then the crest options may have to remain as limited as they are now.

Squad:

This is where you finally begin to create the heart of the team, the players and the formation. When selecting the formation the only options are standard non custom formations with the majority of realistic formations covered.

In order to publish your team/finish creating it you must have eleven outfield players as well as seven substitutes and there is an optional seven spaces in the reserves giving you an option to create a squad of 18-25 players. The squad screen is well designed with every unused position having a create player button next to it for quick access to creating a player and another tab called find players offering you a search engine that allows you to find your own or other users created players to use for your squad.

Once you have filled your squad you can also drag and drop players from the starting 11 to the substitute’s bench or reserves which makes for very easy use.

Team Management:

In team management you have two tabs which are roles and style. Roles is a very simple drag and drop screen that allows you to select a captain, penalty taker, short free kick taker, long free kick taker, a left corner kick taker and a right corner kick taker using your starting 11. I think the addition of being able to select a throw in taker would be a good addition, especially considering there is a long throw trait option in creating a player.

In style you get to give your team a style of play using sliders to adjust build up speed, passing, defensive mentality, crossing and shooting and some positioning options. This is where you can define the way your team play allowing you to create a Barcelona style attacking team or an npower league 2 defensive long ball style team. All in all the options are very simple to use but allow for a great variety of team styles.

Kit:

This was one tab that impressed me a lot. Whilst the kit is treated as one single item as opposed to shirt, shorts and socks there are brand name designs from Adidas, Nike, Puma and Umbro and of course generic options supplied by EA Sports themselves. You will need to install Unity player to see the preview of the kit but one great thing about it whatever crest you have designed is actually on the kit, a very nice little touch.

The process of designing your kit is still very simple with you choosing the style you want and then the two colours you want the kit to be. This I think does need to be divided between shirts, shorts and socks so that you can create kits which have three different colours such as Blue shirt, white shorts and red socks for example. Whilst being very basic having branded kits is a great bit of work from EA as I can only imagine how hard it must be to get brands such as Adidas and Nike to allow people to edit their kits.

There is also a tab called “stamping” and what this covers is name and numbers on the shirt and shorts. You have the option to have arched text or straight text on the back of the shirt, you can change the name font case, the colour, name font type, number font type and the short colour number. These all make some very nice additions and over all you can make some very nice kits within the game.

Save:

This is no different to the save tab on create a player allowing you to save as a draft, publish for personal use only and publish for public use.

Team Creations summary:

Overall I would say the team creation is a lot better than the player creation but still could do with the odd changes but it is a great start.

Full Summary:

Whilst many expected more of EA with the creation center I do think it’s an ok start to something that has a lot of potential. In a few ways it has been a small disappointment but with a few additions and rebuilds this tool could be a fantastic addition to FIFA 11 and add a lot of play time to the game. I personally love the idea of creating my football team which I have already done and is available for bookmarking (CSKA Sophia) and without this tool I could have never done it. I think whilst this tool has a few disappointments the best way to look at it is that it will offer more to FIFA 11 and especially future titles if EA do continue to build upon it.

Layla-Rose Chapman, born 23rd September at 15:13 weighing 6lbs and 12ounces