It’s that time of year again when a new FIFA game comes out and usually I go out and buy it. However this year I decided to not line the pockets of EA and just stick with the FIFA games I’ve got. I’ve bought FIFA 10 last November and 2010 FIFA World Cup in August, so I didn’t think it would be prudent to acquiesce to giving more money towards a 3rd EA football title in the space of a year. It’s just that I think nothing has really changed enough for me to fork out for a new version. Yes I admit that I hate it when the squads aren’t updated but aside from that, how different is the game going to be from it’s predecessor?

A friend of mine brought round a copy of FIFA 11 last night and I had a go as we thought we’d have a quick tournament. Ok so the intro is completely different as it now has Kaka running into a stadium, which I suppose is an improvement from watching that mutant troll Wayne Rooney ambling about. The music is still terrible, I do believe that the first song on the tracklist was the Scissor Sisters, which made my ears bleed. The gameplay isn’t so much different apart maybe being a tiny bit more polished than the World Cup edition and you can Be A Pro the Goalkeeper and they’ve introduced handballs. That’s about it. I wouldn’t go as far to say there aren’t any improvements but all the same, is there enough to significantly change the dynamic causing you to stump up another £40 for a new copy? Probably not.

My issue with EA over this is that why isn’t there an option for a patch to upgrade the squads in previous versions? Surely the in-game database which holds all the information about the players’ stats, appearance and traits is consistent across all versions? If the tournament, career and exhibition modes are essentially the same, then surely that makes them compatible? So why don’t they update the previous incarnations of FIFA 08, 09 and 10? Because no one will buy the new one? Is that it?

It’s like Microsoft stopping all patches for Windows XP because they want everyone to buy Windows 7. Its stupid. Not everyone is ready to upgrade immediately and EA now have a catalog of producing identical sports games, the only difference being the number on the front of the box. But this spans through so many different sports; Basketball, American Football/Armoured Peanut Hugging, Ice Hockey, etc so basically the tough part was making a game that works and they’ve been living off the dinero from just rebranding it every year. It’s not as if they try to get a different dynamic going.

It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of game developers, I see interviews with them all the time on Xbox Live and while they try and portray that they’ve totally revamped the entire game, they’ve just rebranded a previous paradigm and tried to sell it at full price. It annoys me if they did redo the entire mechanic like they so reprehensibly claim, then why are the referee decisions and offsides still diabolically crap? It makes no sense to me. If they released a squad update patch on live for something like 200 Microsoft points, then I think you’d find that more people would probably get it rather than the few idiots who pay £40 on opening day for it. Otherwise, it’s mainly people like me who wait for Sainsburys to sell it at £25 to even consider the purchase.