After being disappointed by the franchise’s recent offerings, I decided to give FIFA 10 a shot. It was a desperate move that I had been considering for some time. I was just looking for something to recover from the terrible disaster that is PES 2008. Thanks to PSN, I was able to get an impression of the game before I dig into my pockets. I jumped into the demo with little expectations and played an exhibition match. The first word that came to mind was ‘brilliant’. I didn’t think twice and purchased the game soon after. I was amazed by how much the series has evolved. The fluidity of movements and animations were very pleasing to the eyes. The controls were rather confusing at first, but I guess it’s just something that I’m not used to. The jump from PES was rather difficult because the gameplay in FIFA is more complex. If you play like PES and expect a star player to dribble your way to goal, you’ll lose the ball quickly. You are expected to pass a lot and play like a team. Scoring a goal in FIFA gives me a greater feeling of satisfaction. If you’re willing to dedicate time to learn FIFA, it would be a rewarding experience.

Now that I played FIFA, I really can’t look at the PES series the same way again. I downloaded the demo of PES 10 a couple of days ago and I’m really sad to admit that PES is definitely inferior in terms of realism. Although it is a major over PES’08, it’s still the same game with better graphics. I’d still consider buying it because the majority of my friends still play it. I couldn’t really say that I’m a FIFA/PES fanboy. I’m sure that competition is good and I look forward to the next installment of FIFA/PES. Moral of the story is, don’t be a fanboy.
Rating: 4 / 5

Let’s start with the 2 improvements:

(1) In FIFA 09, your attackers were entirely oblivious of the offside rule, which was extremely annoying – this has been fixed. Well done, EA Sports.

(2) In FIFA 09, team tactics (wing play, counter-attack, box overload, etc.) had very little effect when used. In FIFA 10, using them has a very obvious effect on the flow of the game. Again, well done, EA.

Now for what I think are 5 key flaws with the gameplay in FIFA 10.

(1) Players are sluggish and this makes the controls feel clumsier. Even with the gameplay set to fast in the game settings, players do not respond quickly to commands – this detracts from the gamer’s ability to control them precisely. Trapping is slower. Switching directions is slower. Charging a shot is slower. They stop sprinting often a step or 2 after you’ve told them to. Real soccer requires quick reactions and footwork, and these things go missing in the game.

(2) Playing on the higher difficulty levels makes the computer luckier, not smarter. In FIFA 09, the computer played smarter when the difficulty level was higher – it would make smarter passes, not dribble into traffic, etc. In FIFA 10, the computer is just luckier at higher difficulty levels. Where you had to be smart about full field tactics and defend the pass more often in FIFA 09, you have to defend the dribble in FIFA 10. In FIFA 10, the computer typically gets the ball to a striker and then more or less runs straight at defenders – often enough, either the ball will bounce off a few tackles and stay with the striker, who puts it into the back of the net nearly every time he shoots in the box, or defenders will move out of the striker’s way for some reason when he receives the pass (even when you commend defenders to move between the striker and the goal, they often magically run out of the way; another really annoying variation on this is that defenders run into and bounce off each other). It’s typical to have 65% of the possession, and to take, say, 20 shots to your opponent’s 2, and still tie 2-2. You know how it feels to play against a friend you’re sure is cheating somehow, because he isn’t very good but seems to score on you over and over? That’s how it feels playing against the computer nearly all the time.

(3) The movement of your teammates off the ball is generally ludicrous. They don’t get into good positions for passes. If you have a break down one of the flanks, your central striker will be square with you until you get to the top of the box, and then he’ll retreat for some reason, letting defenders get between him and you. So scoring with a cross on the ground hit between two sprinting players – the most stylish way to score in FIFA 09 – is nearly impossible in FIFA 10.

(4) Shooting is very, very difficult. You can have 10 one-on-ones with a keeper and score once – the computer can have 10 and score 9 times. And scoring from long shots is a thing of the past.

(5) Players are incapable of completing the shortest passes between one another – they’re okay about 10 yards apart, but get them 2 yards apart and they’re hopeless. This was also a problem in FIFA 09 – it seems like a very obvious problem and it hasn’t been fixed. The effect of this is that when you get into close quarters – which tends to happen at crucial moments, like when the ball is in one of the boxes – it’s nearly impossible to do anything but dribble, shoot or (on defense) clear; and since control of the players is so sluggish (see flaw 1 above), dribbling gracefully is basically out of the question.

In short, save your money and stick with or buy FIFA 09.
Rating: 3 / 5

1. graphic: yeah much better, a big improvement. Some things are more fifa08, e.g. you will see the player entering the stadium (that you do not see in fifa09)

2. goalkeeper handling definitely an improvement

3. corners : I am still undecided , definitely is more easy to hit by head or do complicates evolutions but fifa09 offered more control on where the ball will go

4. music: what a delusion, I loved the musics in fifa08 and fifa09. I likes them so much that I bought the individual mp3 files from amazon.com. In fifa 10 is only music (no singing) and definitely not so good

5. controls : the pointer works ok in the open play, I still don’t like the shaking on when kicking penalties or kick , I liked more the fifa09 with the ability to address the ball , here in fifa10 where the ball goes is pretty much random. I also miss the possibility to pass the ball just using the arrows on the wii controller (in fia10 the arrow are used to do tricks instead)

6. stadium and ball : you can choose the stadium, you can not choose the ball, you can not even accumulate points to buy new stadiums, new jersey and new balls . Overall not so good

7. choose of jersey: this is actually a big improvement. I hated in fifa09 when you team has a away jersey similar or same color to the home jersey (or viceversa) of the opponent and essentially you play and all the players have the same jersey color. In fifa10 you can chose the jersey e..g you can use your away jersey even if you play at home, so no more color confusion

8. buy/sell: ahhhhh, what was good about fifa09 and the manager mode was that each player has a price, was easy to search across countries, you will have a budget, tickets revenues and salaries. Forget about this in fifa10, all you have are points. You can spend points and players are evaluated in terms of points…e.g Sculli will be 16 points when in fifa09 was a 78 and 5 million dollars price tag

9. I was initially thinking about trading in fifa09 to get some money back but I have changed my mind after playing fifa10 : fifa09 will stay in my library

10. commentators : 3 games later (08,09,10) I thought theye would spend some more time on getting different comments or voices . It’s over and over the same comments you heard in 08,09 so they are not funny anymore

I will definitely play a few more days but so far 3 stars but no more then 3
Rating: 3 / 5

1. The interface is extremely annoying and dumbed down. It gives you very few ways to customize your experience.

2. The statistics page is dumbed down. You can no longer get the detail of stats you could in 2009, which I feel is one of the most important ways to get involved with your team and how the individual players perform. Reviewer #1 doesn’t know what he is talking about in this regard.

3. You cannot adjust the level of difficulty in a season/team/manager without starting over with a different season/team/manager. This is retarded as I would like to get comfortable with the format before increasing the difficulty as I get better.

4. Again, the interface is better suited for an arcade and is actually mildly insulting in its simplicity.

5. The slow motion shooting thing Reviewer #1 spoke of is really annoying. Also, the game does not recognize that you’ve already played the game before when you start a new season/team/manager so you are frequently interrupted with instructions/tips.

6. In- and post-game Match Facts are dumbed down and not interesting any more.

7. You can’t manage the franchise the way you could in 2009. The “business side” is completely gone.

2009 was a great game. EA had the opportunity to tweak some things (such as pass accuracy, which is one of the few things better here) to make the game even better, but instead took away a lot of small things that made the game more fun in an effort to keep you buying next year’s game. Better wait until then.
Rating: 1 / 5

1. Throughball doesn’t work automatically unless there is a developing play where a throughball is the best play. In `09′, you could just randomly throughball and somehow the offensive player would end up with the ball with a near breakaway too often.

2. Defenders are positioned much better so defense is easier to play. Also, because stars like Ronaldo can’t just run away from the pack when they have the ball, defenders will have a better chance as long as they are in a good position. But the improvement in defensive positioning also resulted in heavy traffic near the goal where the play seemed a little bit clustered. At times, the phrase pinball action came to mind when it became clustered like that.

3. The view when the GK has a goal kick or instances where you have a corner, the view has changed to a more zoomed view and less overhead perspective. I personally didn’t like this change due to the change in depth perception, making it harder for me to judge the players’ positioning.

4. The collision physics is much more realistic and players actually bounce off each other in more realistic fashion.

5. It is much easier to bend the ball, maybe too much. On several corner kicks, I had kicks bend too much that the ball was no where near the goal almost half way between the penalty box and the half line.

6. Overall, the offensive player is forced to put together a well constructed attack and rely on crisp passing and play development more than relying on the speed and power of players like Ronaldos and the Etos.

7. The online play is smoother and when playing ranked games, the skill points is calculated after each game and displayed for you to see,showing you how the points were calculate. This was a very nice feature for someone who plays online as much as I do.

One thing that didn’t change:

My number one pet peeve for ‘09: The number of shots hitting the goal post per game is way too much. I was hoping that this would change, but so far, the occurrence of shots hitting the goal post is still way too frequent and unrealistic.

Overall, I would say ‘10 is more realistic but not necessarily more fun to this veteran of ‘09. I definitely think ‘10 is a great game but I will not be getting rid of my `09′ right away because they play different enough for me to consider it two different games

UPDATE: 11/5/09

So after playing for a few more weeks, I will say that I am appreciating the subtle differences between ‘09 and ‘10. I really like the new collision mechanism. It is realistic enough so that I often thwarted the other players attack by just getting in the way of the opposing team’s players who don’t have the ball to deny their space when there is a pass directed toward them. I have also experienced the advantage of 360 degree control as I manuever my player with the ball. Definitely a solid improvement over ‘09.

UPDATE: 11/23/09

A huge negative has popped up for with this game. Goalie AI. Maybe it’s not even AI. Glitch is more like it. The goalie in ‘10 is worse than in ‘09. I suppose goalies making errors should be expected since a real life goalie would make can make mistakes too. But goalies have a much harder time handling shots that are directed right at them if it’s low. Goalies are allowing shots that are literally next to their legs. (The animation in replay suggests that the goalie, instead of stopping the shot by moving a little to the left or the right, instead tries to squat down and tries a mini dive save on a shot. That allows the shots to go under them.

What is infuriating is that given the number of great opportunities that end in a shot off the goal post if you try to aim for one of the corners of the goal, the way the goalie allows this cheap score, it’s a huge imbalance. Goalies that leap like panthers to save shots 10 feet away or sure goals that somehow the computer directs right at the goal post yet the goalie can’t save balls hit next to them. What’s up with that?

UPDATE: 11/30/09

I don’t know what I was thinking by not mentioning this. In FIFA ‘09, (and I call this just plain stupid on EA’s part),they didn’t include a practice mode. Sure, you could pratice your skill moves 1on1 with the goalie, but that too was not that helpful because no one would play an actual match in that perspective, thus making you learn the skill moves one way but then have to make adjustments to the stick work. In FIFA ‘10, there actuall is a practice mode and a pretty darned good one at that. You can set the practice match to have as many offensive and defensive players as you want. You want to practice breakaways? 1 offensive player vs. goalie only. 5 vs. 4, 5 vs. 3. Any combination you want to hone your offensive skills. Also,you can actually practice set-pieces (FK and corners) the way it would be in the game with real defenders. By practice in this mode, I can score on about a 1/3 of my FKs inside 30 yards because I know what kick with how much power to execute. (The other 2/3 of my FKs bounce off the goal post, LOL.) If you are serious about being a good FIFA player, this practice mode will let you maximize your chances.

Rating: 4 / 5

Cheat Effect
Left Trigger, Right Trigger, Up, X, Right Trigger= Unlocks Gnome

Square 4 times, Left Trigger= Max current Food and Resources

X, Right Trigger, X, Right Trigger, X =All Plans

Square, Triangle, Right Trigger, Down, Down, Up =All Craft and Resources

Yeah, these favorites bring nothing new to the current gaming libraries, but still… Ghosts n Goblins is still a blast to play with me (though it is odd to press up, to get out of the squatting position). Which reminds me of another feature. When you exit a game in play, it ’saves’ that spot, UNLESS you opt out to get the coins to spend on the slot machine.

And another nifty feature is the select button. Even while playing a game, you can simply hit the select button on your PSP, and it will change the screen size, most have about 3 different screen sizes, but the shooters (GunSmoke, 1942, etc.) have about 5. Because it gives you the choice of playing on it’s side. Now this puts the D-pad on the bottom and the buttons on top, but it’s quite easy to get used to with games like 1942 and 1943 or Vulgus. For $20 or less this collection is a no brainer for the PSP owner looking for a game to warm their handheld. All your Classic CapCom games you rode your bike to play at your local gas stations ages ago? They are all here! You’re still reading? Hurry up and buy it! You won’t be disappointed. Nothing like having an arcade game that used to be worth $300+ a machine in the palm of your hand.
Rating: 5 / 5