FIFA 10
A Junkie Gamer Review
Simply the best.
Let me start off by saying, FIFA 10 is great, and no I’m not going to finish that phrase by saying “for a football game”. FIFA 10 is a wonderfully polished and refined gaming experience that has so much to offer it would be a pity if you didn’t have it as part of your gaming library. I want to clear the air from the off, I hate football; I think it’s the most boring game on the planet and I would never watch a game on the box. But having said that, I still love FIFA 10 and it was one of my most anticipated games of 2010, as I guess it is been every year.
So what’s so good about it? Well it has bundles of features, from Manager Mode, to Virtual Pro, to a fantastic online mode. But it doesn’t just stop there, the whole engine this year has been refined to offer a more realistic and perhaps a more strategic playing experience. Let me start off by talking about the game plays.
New this year is the ability to use the full 360 axis for dribbling, this might sound a little underwhelming, but believe me this is a ground breaking improvement. Before players were confined to 8 directions (read as North, North-East, East, South-East etc.) Now while this was a little tricky to get used to, for example, when I tried to perform my patented sideline run leading to a deep cross, I ran out of play. Once you master these controls you can carve an opposing team in seconds, with a more refined passing system where you can pass the ball exactly where you want to, leaving defences rooted to the ground. Defence awareness and positioning has also being strengthened up, and dribbling at pace has also been made harder to accomplish, making the oft used counter attacks from FIFA 09 a little harder to pull off, leading to a more balanced and composed game. Player fatigue is also quite evident, use that sprint button too much and you’ll find that not only does your player fade away towards the end of the game speed-wise, but their skill will also be found wanting when it comes to passes and scoring opportunities.
So the game plays amazingly well, so what about the game modes? My favourite game mode has to be Manager Mode. Here you pick a team from the many leagues available and set off on your way to manager immortality. Manager mode has seen a few refinements to again allow for a more realistic and I say fun experience. So, you take over managing a team, what’s the first thing you automatically do, go to the transfer market to load your team with all the hottest talent. Well, not so quick, you now have two deciding factors that will dictate whether or not a player will sign for you, firstly do they have any interest in signing for your club? And secondly, do you have enough coppers in the wages budget to afford them? Gone are the days when a lower division side signs an international star, hell, I’m even having trouble attracting anyone to join my newly promoted team Darlington. While this can be frustrating, it leads you to use your scout a lot more and just make do with the players you have. Also added to this mode is an Assistant Manager option, which if enabled will look after your team selection, taking into consideration the strength and quality of the opposition and the importance of the match. This is so in-depth that it actually looks ahead to games coming down the line so that key players are rested coming up to Cup games, instead of being used in a bottom of the table clash.
While manager mode is a fine game in itself, we also have Virtual Pro, where you create a player to use in the Be A Pro mode. Here you assign your created player to a team and then you assume that role. It’s certainly a lot different from the standard game as you only control that player. The player’s stats improve with their in game performances unlocking accomplishments along the way. The accomplishments are linked directly to the player’s stats, for example scoring goals will improve his finishing ability while successful passing in turn improves the passing ability. But while before the virtual pro was restricted to use in the Be A Pro mode, the shackles have been takes off and your virtual pro can now be used in all game modes and thankfully accomplishments can also be unlocked in these game modes too, once you are playing on at least semi pro difficulty.
But the game isn’t without its draw backs, the commentary really got under my skin. While it is sublime when you are playing as a top team, playing a lower league team the commentary did have a tendency to repeat itself. Also, I found that players got cards for no good reason, this can occur when you decide to substitute your players, or at other odd times during the game. For example, I was playing a game against the CPU recently and it was on a break, my keeper came out quickly to snuff out the shot and took out the player. Result, well a penalty was given, my keeper got a yellow card….. Ok so far….. another one of my players unrelated to the incident got a red card and a third player went down injured. Wow, that was totally out of the blue, but it gets better, I substituted my injured player and before the penalty was even taken that newly arrived player got a yellow card too. You can imagine how frustrated I was, especially since this was a Manager Mode game where injuries and cards follow over. While this is not a game breaking error, it certainly annoyed me for some time.
That issue aside, this is a complete experience for anyone who is a football fan, or even for those who aren’t. Pick it up and you won’t be disappointed.
