Soccer Gaming Catch-All

Honestly, after the demo, the last two paragraphs are a surprise. Guess i'll have to see for myself in November.

Tips were good this week, which means the copy of FIFA 10 is now in my hands. If you haven't seen it, please, please seek out the North American cover with Frankie Lampard, Crazy Mr. Blanco, and Sacha Kljestan. I only mention this because someone's really got to tell Sacha that he's got a astonishing case of "To Catch A Predator" mustache going on, and he's got to do something about it. Some men can rock the mustache Sacha, and some men look like they have a not-particularly-well-hidden folder of pictures on their hard drive that would get them arrested. You fall into category II.

Expect a full, spittle-and-frustration filled review by the weekend. Good times!

EDIT: EA still hasn't taken the hint and still doesn't allow you to edit players as you see fit. Utterly inexplicable.

So, I put in a bunch of matches today. Let me be frank before I start this early review. I have become an increasingly curmudgeonly and exacting sports gamer who believes that, in some areas sports games have been atrociously stagnant and need to be seriously improved if they even want to aspire to the "Sim" title.

That said, let's be frank. If you're a "Sim" fan these days, the "Simulation" experience for the single-player game is essentially limited to "niche" titles like Out of the Park Baseball/Football Manager/Front Office Football/Eastside Hockey Manager. Games where players have input over the every action and move of the players on the field can occasionally approach sim status, but rarely do.

FIFA 10 approaches Soccer in the same way Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 approaches the "Tactical Shooter" genre, or Ace Combat approaches the Flight game genre. Either you'll read that as being a good thing, or a bad thing, and that'll probably be your reaction to FIFA 10.

Gameplay: As I write this, i'm watching the AI play itself, with Chelsea taking on Barcelona (hooray for random team selection). Last night, I watched Inter play Juventus. I've done this since a much earlier version of WE/PES, and began using that as a good opening litmus test for the AI and the way the game plays. Sure, it's not perfect, but it puts the AI in an ideal setting, against an opponent who isn't going to try to dribble through the entire opposition with their goalie to score, or eschew regular tackles altogether in favor of slide tackling anyone that moves. And there are good things to see here. With the game speed turned down to "Slow", Barcelona is working the ball through their midfield with short passes, playing it to their front trio who are trying to make incisive runs.

The single-player experience doesn't quite reflect this however, and for one reason I feel. No game, in the history of soccer games that I can remember, has made an honest effort at accurately modeling defense. And they are all much less for it. FIFA 10 continues the proud tradition of the AI defending from the front, closing you down all over the pitch with little visible issues for its players. Fouls, while significantly increased, can still dissapear in a haze of snappy tackles, as heretofore lead-footed centerbacks will still come charging head-first at you to nick the ball away just as you try to pass with an inch-perfect tackle. This goes as much for Nemanja Vidic as it does for Will Haining. The game exudes an old problem in single-player, which is that you are still not playing a team primarily, you're playing a difficulty level, the team is secondary (perhaps even tertiary). Cruel reality of gaming or not, it's kind of frustrating to have Huddersfield Town play ManU the same way Inter Milan does. For some, that's just how games are, for me, that's a near-controller-throwing frustration.

Moreover, even with the game speed set to slow, there is no "thinking time" in FIFA. Never will you see Andrea Pirlo step on the ball in midfield, look around, give his teammates a chance to move upfield, and then deliver a pass. Everything about this game is done with the sprint button, save for the skill moves, which i'm going to have to take people's word on, as I've been trying to use them for two full years now and perhaps pulled them off effectively four times. Their use seems to be highly like a puzzle-game, that they are built for a specific situation and timing, rather than organic and built into the flow of play, which I find a bit disappointing. You should have to do some thumb flexibility exercise to buy a yard with a skilled winger, something as simple as a feint or a change of pace should be enough to throw off a defender. To EA's credit, this does work this year without requiring PES's mathematic frame-measuring precision, but rarely still.

All of that said, a lot of the new changes are fantastic. EA is actually quite close to fully implementing full 360-degree control (something that, based on the Demo, Konami is still only dimly aware of), although it takes a great deal of getting used to (there will be a lot of running out of bounds, I assure you). The ability for defenders to more effectively muscle forwards off the ball is a very nice addition as well, although the mechanic seems to play only strength against strength and doesn't take into account the quickness of feet that allows the more slight players to still have a huge impact on games.

Goalies are much improved. They will make good saves, they will blow easy ones, they'll almost make the save and watch in despair as it trickles into the net. And shooting feels much nicer as well, although setting the level of assistance to "Semi" or "Manual" (for me) still feels like i've strapped on Luca Toni's/Mario Gomez's boots circa Euro '08. Crossing, while improved, still feels a little stilted, as if the ball just isn't whipped into the box with enough pace. Passing is a joy however, although players actually seem to make less intelligent runs than last year (or perhaps the defending is better, who knows).

There are other niggles. EA has done so much to make the ball feel disengaged from the players, which results in a fair number of goalmouth scrambles and kicked shins whenever there's a loose ball, and at the same time, in certain animations the ball feels utterly locked into the player. As noted with the AI's super-snappy tackling, it is entirely possible for it (or the player) to judge exactly when to challenge a player sprinting with the ball and nick it away every time, no matter the quality of the defender or the dribbler, because of the particular length of the dribbling animation for sprinting. The same goes for the skill moves, which, if not used in the (apparently) EA-sanctioned window of opportunity, won't even cause a moment's hesitation from the defender before he knocks the ball away.

The sum total of all of this is that scoring and shots are down, fouls are up, and the game does play a bit more like soccer. But, as I noted, it's in the same way Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 represented Counter-Terrorist operations or Call of Duty has ever represented "war".

Graphics/Features: The game is gorgeous. I mean gorgeous. I mean gorgeous. The stadiums, the players (I'm interested to see what the finished version of PES will be because EA has ironed out all of the "soccer Zombie" problems they had in 08 and 09 and just done an astonishing job. Like, curb-stomping the competition astonishing.), everything. They have ever single little scar on Tevez's poor excuse for a neck, and not a hair on Iker Casillas' face is off. And they emote, react, smile, curse... Huddersfield Town's Nathan Clarke looks like Nathan Clarke, and i'll wager 9/10ths of the people playing this game don't even know Huddersfield exists. There are a litany of contextual animations, tons of little flicks that players do, reactions from goalies, from players, from the referee. Even the grass looks fantastic. My only gripe, if I have one, is that the crowd are still a bunch of pixel-blocks of color.

Sheer volume of features has always been EA's strong suit, and they're doing the business again here. A revamped and tweaked Manager mode, an improved "Be A Pro" mode (now branching out into "Virtual Pro"), a even deeper and more engaging "Live Season" mode, and, lo and behold, the much awaited arrival of an actual practice mode. "Be A Pro" is still a smidgen hit or miss (you're still penalized for a mis-hit pass if your cross doesn't find a friendly player, no matter how badly it may stretch the defense or if it forces a corner).

The features lead into Multiplayer, and I have to say, in the few games of "Virtual Pro" I played, I had a blast, even with teams full of gibbering idiots. With the Pro Club Championship (or whatever they call it), people can now match-up with 11 friends (or random f*cknozzles) and take on another 11 random idiots. And while the game doesn't look like anything even vaguely resembling soccer then, that's largely because of your idiot teammates who think that it's always a good idea to try and do a 360-turn past a onrushing striker with the Center Back. But I played a 3-2 thriller and had a good time. Which brings me back to my original point.

FIFA 10 is a game very much designed, I think, to be played against other people. It can be played against the AI, but in all honesty, the game's pretty weak in that area, with a litany of issues that EA either A.) Had to do to keep the game challenging for players or B.) Are too lazy/don't have the time to fix or do anything about.

Being someone who'd still like to be able to play a game of realistic football without spending 10 minutes worrying about the minutiae of my tactics and opposition instructions, i'm hoping PES will come good this year, although I do fully agree with many of the points raised in Eurogamer's review (As I noted last year, I believe, PES is still, essentially, a PS2 game that's been given a nice coat of paint and ported to the next-gen systems. The old battleship is starting to show a lot of wear and tear.), when I played it, it felt a bit better than EA's own breakneck version of the sport. And that's what you're in for with FIFA 10. While scoring may be down, this is still very much a soccer game that's about the offense, although now it is about good passing and taking your chances smartly, rather than slaloming past the entire opposition and scoring a screamer from 45 yards. The AI even seems to have a plan on offense now that is more detailed than last year's (Last Year's Plan: 10 CHEAT | 20 GOTO 10), although you're not going to see quite as much individuality from teams as i'd like.

So yeah, returning to my original point. FIFA 10:Soccer::Rainbow Six: Vegas 2/Call of Duty:Counter-Terrorism/War. Either that floats your boat, or, like me, you're left feeling a little disappointed.

Yes, because I'm more than dumb enough to buy both games. Hey, at least FM 2010's out!