Synyster Graves

FIFA 10

by on Jul.02, 2010, under Xbox 360

Despite it’s name this is the 16th FIFA title excluding the world cup, euro and street versions. I know you can argue that reviewing a sports game in the EA series is like trying differentiate between octuplets all called Alice but every year/season, FIFA releases a new game with different features. In my personal opinion FIFA 09 was really good, the game dynamic was very balanced and the game had a very good sense of fluidity. When I heard that this has been revamped some eyebrows were raised. FIFA 09’s glitches were just about tolerable, the whole lack of assigning squad numbers was annoying as the best player in the team was always assigned #2 which was stupid seeing that it was usually David Villa who got that number and #2 as a centre forward was stupid.

So FIFA 10 is another title of total Rooney worship and seeing how he was a fat useless fuck in the World Cup, could provide rather bad marketing. There hasn’t been much of an improvement in the graphics and the ever annoying commentary team of Andy Gray and Martin Tyler are back coming up with completely retarded comments with gems like “goalkeepers are so brave, that’s why they earn so much money” and “the unmistakable Ronaldinho” EVERYTIME he touches the ball.

The main game itself has changed the way it plays completely from FIFA 09. My main strengths of piling down the wings and delivering devastating crosses had to be changed, because the engine for that had completely changed. The shooting was far too sensitive now and it took me about five matches before I hit the bloody net! They’ve also changed the free kicks completely and have gone from being sensitive to being fucking sensitive. The first 30 free kicks you’ll get (if you’ll get them because the AI ref is rubbish) will go sailing over like a Johnny Wilkinson conversion. Going back to the refereeing, I suppose it’s very realistic in the fact that the referees are completely useless. It’s the case that the referee will send one of your players off for a standing tackle with minimal contact and yet being through on goal, dummying the ‘keeper and him bringing you down won’t even warrant a penalty, let alone a red card. Computer teams get exponentially more freekicks and decisions which can get quite frustrating. The offside decisions are very inconsistent and usually show a replay of whereby it shows a line of the last defender and the striker and to be honest, close decisions are always wrong. The lines are complete bullshit and its another decision that seems to always favour the CPU team. Sometimes it wont even show a replay and you can see that your player is miles onside and just hurries up to the freekick.

The game is also a lot harder than the 09 edition as Professional difficulty is very challenging now. There does seem to be a chronic lack of research in the ratings of the players as quite often certain awful teams will be really good and vice versa. For example Portsmouth have a higher star rating than South Korea, who were in the last 16 of the World Cup. Portsmouth however got relegated bottom of the Premiership. EA boasts of these form updates but unless the update department are closet Portsmouth fans, fringe players in their (well diminishing) squad seem to be better than international superstars. It’s also a stupid rating system in that weaker clubs always have slower players than better teams. Just because a team lacks ability doesn’t mean it lacks pace! And this is a trait which as been replicated throughout the FIFA series.

The next part I want to talk about is the Manager Mode. This is slightly improved aesthetically as the feel is getting towards Championship Manager which is definitely a good thing. The transfer system is just odd, as the gross birbery involved to sign a player gets a little bit stupid and the constant interferring from the board I suppose is realistic but as games are supposed to be escapist, it’s fucking irritating. Signing a player will also completely fuck up your first team line up, moving players out of position and fiddling about squad numbers. At least in FIFA 10 it has the option of changing the numbers back. Another huge glitch which is in the manager mode is the “disappearance” of players. I have spoken to many friends who this has happened to on the PS3 and the Xbox who have been playing a manager mode and their transferred players have just vanished from the squad. Then it happened to me. I bought Sylvain Marveaux from around £2m from Stade Rennes and from August to January had a decent run in my first team. After the january window had closed I noticed that he wasn’t in my squad anymore. So after much searching I eventually found him…playing for Palermo in Italy! But I didn’t sell him! I checked the transfer history and allegedly I’d sold him for £7m. The fucking stupid thing was that I didn’t have the money for him either as my balance was exactly the same as it was before January. So why did he just randomly move on a free? It’s a fuck up which EA still haven’t ironed out. This has happened to several players and really dissolves the point of starting a manager mode, especially when the team you’re trying to build spontaneously migrates. The other serious gripe I have with the Manager mode is how unfit the players get after3 games. You have to spend most of your transfer kitty in the beginning getting the fitness regime to max otherwise every single match in mid season will be like playing with 11 OAPs on the pitch as they’ll all start the match with fitness below 25%. I mean these are PROFESSIONAL footballers, yet they will gain the stamina of an elderly smoker.

The other mode which I’ve always found to be frustrating and crap is the Be A Pro. A nice touch from EA was the ability to upload a picture of yourself into the game, which in all fairness is really well presented. While Rabit has suggested that scanning a picture of your bum and uploading it to EA would be funny, I’m not sure if that would be moderated. Funny still. But playing the matches in Be A Pro mode aren’t much fun, seeing that you are just controlling one player, not the team. Needless to say your character is usually invisible and always seems to never get passed to even though you have the freedom to get into really good positions. I have checked the options and Emile Heskey mode is not turned on so I can’t understand why the rest of my team refuse to give me the fucking ball. Plus the Be A Pro camera is terrible, almost adopting the Gears of War perspective if you’re running after the ball. I had to change it back to Dynamic camera before I got motion sickness. The Be A Pro accomplishments are really good and doing certain criteria makes your player better. However, this is assuming the damn accomplishments register. I have scored well over 20 free kicks in my “career” yet my progress only says 6. I know how many I’ve scored because I always upload them onto the EA profile. This obviously makes it rather hard to try and improve your player.

Lastly the other HUGE glitch with FIFA is the awarding of random achievements when the game crashes. I have read about this and it’s only happened once for me. I was playing a manager mode with Stuttgart when the game froze. Naturally I restarted the console to find I’d unlocked a new achievement… 0G for Quitting Early when losing 5 times. Um excuse me? I have never quit early ever before and I’ only ever go on Xbox Live for FIFA if I playing a friend, as I hate playing random twats. Why is this an achievement in the first place and why didn’t EA fix this before release.

In summary FIFA 10 really feels like it was rushed out with even beta testing and while EA have attempted to release patches for this, you still feel like you’ve paid £40 for a Beta version because the glitches are horrendous. Fuck ups aside, FIFA 10 is a competent football game.


LOL

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1 Comment for this entry

  • BrianDennehy

    I agree about EA rushing games out, a lot of this game is so clunky. I remember in Rugby 08 if you wanted to custom select a national squad you had to manually scroll very slowly through a list every single player of that nationality to pick who you wanted!

    They will usually pass to you on Be A Pro by pressing x!

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