FIFA 11 Review
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Last year, we thought it was all over. FIFA 10 was excellent and its advantage over rival Pro Evolution Soccer seemed greater than ever. Developer EA Canada still had a lot of work to do - Manager Mode was broken in places, keepers could be idiots and there was a clockwork precision to passing and moving that grated over time - but with a year of development and all the momentum, a sudden turnaround in fortunes looked about as likely as a Northampton win at Anfield in the Carling Cup.
Big changes this year have come in response to fan feedback, and the result is a game where your mileage will vary almost second to second. Spend a few minutes mucking around with a player in Arena mode - the interactive load screen where you're one-on-one with a goalkeeper - and you realise that no two shots are the same. Successful passing sequences used to be about movement, timing and very little else, but now they are also beholden to a player's inherent skill, the speed they're moving at, whether they're off-balance and all sorts of other quiet stats.
Passes also need to be better timed and weighted by you using a new passing meter, and you will need to be aware that the ball is more likely to deflect or be intercepted than in FIFA 10. Ball trajectory and pace have become wild cards, and so Wayne Bridge is not going to fluke a goal from the halfway line when you're 3-0 up any more, and there isn't as much point going short at a goal kick, because you won't be able to zigzag the ball past the centre circle without running into trouble or losing your composure. The crazy videogame stuff has virtually disappeared.
Heading has also changed, as you have more direct movement control of players on the receiving end. In our early multiplayer games this led to a flood of goals from crosses, but with practice you can often overcome this by positioning your defender more carefully. It also means you can do some interesting things in open play - when a goal kick is soaring upfield, a smart striker can sometimes muscle a hapless centre-half under the flight of the ball and attempt to run onto it.
Goalkeepers have also had some work done - or at least some work done for them. FIFA 10 was eventually pilloried for the ease with which charging goalkeepers could be lobbed, so this summer's World Cup release glued them to their six-yard boxes with double-edged results - most of our goals would eventually be scored by breaking into the box and using the through-ball button to roll the ball left or right to a team-mate for a tap-in. FIFA 11's solution is to make lobs rubbish. We've yet to score one. EA says it has also given goalies more distinctive personalities and better perception, although that one's going to be hard to call for a while.
Off the pitch, EA has condensed Be A Pro and Manager Mode into a single, all-encompassing Career Mode, where you choose to be a player, player-manager or manager across 15 seasons. Transfers now involve separate fee and wage negotiations, coaching feedback is more detailed and relevant, and if you opt for player or player-manager roles you can choose to play as an individual or the whole team when you take manual control. Management is a bit light on detail if you decide not to play the matches yourself, but there's always Football Manager 2011 if you're that way inclined, and FIFA 11 hardly pretends to compete with that.
The changes made may be logical, and Career Mode is perfectly playable and occasionally tense as the end of a transfer window rolls around, but it's also pretty dull in some respects. You're never going to see a Career Mode in a FIFA game where someone can't play in midweek because he's depressed that his super-injunction didn't go through, or where you have to wrestle with the morality of employing a convicted sex offender who's just left prison. But getting emails telling you that so-and-so isn't available because of a "medium injury" is so far down the other end of the scale it's depressing, not to mention off-putting.
At least you can still get away with silly transfers. We used to wonder why EA didn't hard-code barriers against unlikely deals, but the answer dawned on us when Liverpool lined up for their season opener with Patrice Evra in defence and Van Persie leading the line with Torres. It's fantasy football. Of course it is. Add a bit more personality to the rest of Career Mode and it could be a great hit.
FIFA 11 also introduces the option to play 11-versus-11 online - and yes, that means you can play as the goalkeeper. Your range of abilities between the sticks is much as you would expect, and there are various stabilisers to help you on your way, although goalkeeping can be extremely boring - trust me, some of us used to do it. Overall, the online experience is largely consistent with FIFA 10, although there are changes to Clubs mode which mean you won't end up with five-foot AI-controlled centre-backs if your team is short of a few human players.
There's fan service elsewhere too, with different-shaped nets (we always wanted this but thought we were being petty - turns out everyone agreed!), the ability to save replays locally (hurrah, welcome to 1999), and the option to turn on handballs or record your own crowd chants. You weirdo. Celebrations are more ridiculous than ever, too, although you still can't beat the dead fish. L2/LT and hold left on the right analogue stick, kids.
These changes are all welcome, then, but - to borrow one of EA Sports' favourite phrases - they are not game-changers. Heading back to the pitch, it also feels as though FIFA 11 has taken a natural step forward in a lot of areas, but has lost a bit of its heart in the process. The gameplay changes sound as though they make for a subtler game where knowledge of your players and mastery of the controls are the ultimate currency, but the reality for some players is that matches are a slog.
FIFA 10 may have had zippy sci-fi passing, moments of madness and goals from the halfway line, but you felt like you knew the rules and quirks and the latter gave it a likeable personality. FIFA 11 is more realistic and less predictable than ever, but it turns out this doesn't make it much more fun - instead it results in more situations where the game's margins of error determine the outcome rather than your instinct and logic, where midfield feels clogged up a lot of the time, and where the many genuine improvements EA has made are lost in frustration.
At its best FIFA 11 is enormous fun and brilliantly engineered, but in its battle to be more varied and realistic it has lost some of its momentum, and off the pitch returns are starting to diminish too. Looking ahead, it will be very interesting to see whether the wholesale changes Konami has made for this year's Pro Evolution Soccer bed down quickly enough to close what seemed like a huge gap just 12 months ago - because, against all odds, this one now looks like it could go to extra time.
8/10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-27-fifa-11-review?page=1
Big changes this year have come in response to fan feedback, and the result is a game where your mileage will vary almost second to second. Spend a few minutes mucking around with a player in Arena mode - the interactive load screen where you're one-on-one with a goalkeeper - and you realise that no two shots are the same. Successful passing sequences used to be about movement, timing and very little else, but now they are also beholden to a player's inherent skill, the speed they're moving at, whether they're off-balance and all sorts of other quiet stats.
Passes also need to be better timed and weighted by you using a new passing meter, and you will need to be aware that the ball is more likely to deflect or be intercepted than in FIFA 10. Ball trajectory and pace have become wild cards, and so Wayne Bridge is not going to fluke a goal from the halfway line when you're 3-0 up any more, and there isn't as much point going short at a goal kick, because you won't be able to zigzag the ball past the centre circle without running into trouble or losing your composure. The crazy videogame stuff has virtually disappeared.
Heading has also changed, as you have more direct movement control of players on the receiving end. In our early multiplayer games this led to a flood of goals from crosses, but with practice you can often overcome this by positioning your defender more carefully. It also means you can do some interesting things in open play - when a goal kick is soaring upfield, a smart striker can sometimes muscle a hapless centre-half under the flight of the ball and attempt to run onto it.
Goalkeepers have also had some work done - or at least some work done for them. FIFA 10 was eventually pilloried for the ease with which charging goalkeepers could be lobbed, so this summer's World Cup release glued them to their six-yard boxes with double-edged results - most of our goals would eventually be scored by breaking into the box and using the through-ball button to roll the ball left or right to a team-mate for a tap-in. FIFA 11's solution is to make lobs rubbish. We've yet to score one. EA says it has also given goalies more distinctive personalities and better perception, although that one's going to be hard to call for a while.
Off the pitch, EA has condensed Be A Pro and Manager Mode into a single, all-encompassing Career Mode, where you choose to be a player, player-manager or manager across 15 seasons. Transfers now involve separate fee and wage negotiations, coaching feedback is more detailed and relevant, and if you opt for player or player-manager roles you can choose to play as an individual or the whole team when you take manual control. Management is a bit light on detail if you decide not to play the matches yourself, but there's always Football Manager 2011 if you're that way inclined, and FIFA 11 hardly pretends to compete with that.
The changes made may be logical, and Career Mode is perfectly playable and occasionally tense as the end of a transfer window rolls around, but it's also pretty dull in some respects. You're never going to see a Career Mode in a FIFA game where someone can't play in midweek because he's depressed that his super-injunction didn't go through, or where you have to wrestle with the morality of employing a convicted sex offender who's just left prison. But getting emails telling you that so-and-so isn't available because of a "medium injury" is so far down the other end of the scale it's depressing, not to mention off-putting.
At least you can still get away with silly transfers. We used to wonder why EA didn't hard-code barriers against unlikely deals, but the answer dawned on us when Liverpool lined up for their season opener with Patrice Evra in defence and Van Persie leading the line with Torres. It's fantasy football. Of course it is. Add a bit more personality to the rest of Career Mode and it could be a great hit.
FIFA 11 also introduces the option to play 11-versus-11 online - and yes, that means you can play as the goalkeeper. Your range of abilities between the sticks is much as you would expect, and there are various stabilisers to help you on your way, although goalkeeping can be extremely boring - trust me, some of us used to do it. Overall, the online experience is largely consistent with FIFA 10, although there are changes to Clubs mode which mean you won't end up with five-foot AI-controlled centre-backs if your team is short of a few human players.
There's fan service elsewhere too, with different-shaped nets (we always wanted this but thought we were being petty - turns out everyone agreed!), the ability to save replays locally (hurrah, welcome to 1999), and the option to turn on handballs or record your own crowd chants. You weirdo. Celebrations are more ridiculous than ever, too, although you still can't beat the dead fish. L2/LT and hold left on the right analogue stick, kids.
These changes are all welcome, then, but - to borrow one of EA Sports' favourite phrases - they are not game-changers. Heading back to the pitch, it also feels as though FIFA 11 has taken a natural step forward in a lot of areas, but has lost a bit of its heart in the process. The gameplay changes sound as though they make for a subtler game where knowledge of your players and mastery of the controls are the ultimate currency, but the reality for some players is that matches are a slog.
FIFA 10 may have had zippy sci-fi passing, moments of madness and goals from the halfway line, but you felt like you knew the rules and quirks and the latter gave it a likeable personality. FIFA 11 is more realistic and less predictable than ever, but it turns out this doesn't make it much more fun - instead it results in more situations where the game's margins of error determine the outcome rather than your instinct and logic, where midfield feels clogged up a lot of the time, and where the many genuine improvements EA has made are lost in frustration.
At its best FIFA 11 is enormous fun and brilliantly engineered, but in its battle to be more varied and realistic it has lost some of its momentum, and off the pitch returns are starting to diminish too. Looking ahead, it will be very interesting to see whether the wholesale changes Konami has made for this year's Pro Evolution Soccer bed down quickly enough to close what seemed like a huge gap just 12 months ago - because, against all odds, this one now looks like it could go to extra time.
8/10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-27-fifa-11-review?page=1
Comments
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A fine performance from one of the genre's finest series.
FIFA 10 was a crowning achievement for EA Sports' soccer series when it launched last year. It took massive steps forward in both gameplay and feature set design, and while FIFA 11 doesn't quite pack the same mammoth punch of its predecessor, there's little doubt that this year's entry builds modestly on the series' rock-solid foundation.
FIFA has always been about delivering the most realistic depiction of the sport of soccer. FIFA 10 brought us 360-degree dribbling for the first time, which was a huge improvement over the traditional eight directions. We also got Virtual Pro, a feature that allowed you to create a player, put him on a team, and then watch him progress as you used him in any of the game's modes. Bringing the physicality of soccer to the forefront on-screen is another longstanding tradition for the series and one that FIFA 11 takes to the next level with something called Personality Plus.
Personality Plus doesn't just mean that players are going to display authentic emotions on the field. It's more that players that you know and love will look, run, shoot, dribble and react to physical interactions authentically. The best part? Personality Plus actually works for the big name guys of the sport. Some of the lesser-known players don't get the same treatment, and I'd love to be able to develop or assign traits to my created player, but for now Personality Plus impresses. If you're a mainstream soccer fan who only tunes in for the World Cup every few years, the benefits of Personality Plus might be lost on your lacking knowledge of the prominent soccer stars of the world.
More impressive still is the fact that FIFA 11 ratchets up the physical play and allows for even more jostles, bumps and slide tackle variations than the series has ever seen before. You'll see guys get knocked off the ball by big defenders and smaller, quicker forwards can pull off some impressive moves even without the skill moves mechanic (hold left trigger and maneuver the right analog stick). It's rare to see these moments of physicality not come through in a realistic manner, but when they falter it's noticeable. Don't worry, though, it doesn't happen often enough to be an annoyance.
Elsewhere you'll notice a new passing system that allows you to hold the pass button to target a comrade further down the field. The only issue I found was that sometimes I wanted to make a hard, quick pass to the teammate closest to me, but the passing system thought that my elongated button press meant I wanted to pass the ball further down the field. These annoyances didn't happen often enough to be a real hindrance, but when unexpectedly poor passing broke up a potentially good offensive set it was a bit of a ? .
One issue that I still have with FIFA has to do with AI. While I think the players do a slightly better job of positioning on the field, their aggressiveness still wasn't up to the standard of real life players. Too often players wouldn't make an attempt at a slow-rolling pass because it wasn't originally intended for them, despite the fact that it was clearly going to be intercepted by the other team if they let it go by. Players also aren't all that aware of what's going on around them unless they're directly interacting with another player on the field. None of these problems are new to this year's game, but it's a shame that they haven't been corrected at this point in the series' lifespan. Here's hoping they can make the virtual players aware of everything that's going on during a game, just like real players.
Overall the core gameplay on the field is extremely solid, but much of it relies on the past accomplishments of FIFA 10. None of the new touches hurt the gameplay experience in any way, there just aren't the same amount of innovative steps forward. FIFA 11 still has some of the annoyances that have hurt past games, but the touch-ups to players' personalities reap cool benefits on the field. Plus, there's no denying that FIFA presents some of the best flow in terms of gameplay that you'll find in a sports game.
Another interesting addition to the fleet of FIFA features is the Creation Centre. It allows you to craft players, teams and tactics on EA's website and then download them onto your console. It works similarly to NCAA Football's TeamBuilder mechanic and is a very cool addition for FIFA fans. You can also create custom chants and anthems for your team either through homemade audio tracks or tunes you have on a portable storage device that's compatible with your PS3 or Xbox 360. Once they're imported you can then assign them to different situations in a game (like scoring a goal or during team introductions).
If it's an awesome new game mode that you're looking for, FIFA 11 might leave you wanting more. The Be A Pro career mode has been expanded into a new "Be A Goalie" mode in which – you guessed it – you play as only the goalie. While this does allow for online play with up to eleven players (every player on a team is human-controlled) it's also not very fun. Playing as the goalie puts the camera behind the goal itself, giving you a third-person view of your player. Realizing that this is a pretty boring vantage point, FIFA 11 allows you to press the back button (select on PS3) to warp up to the action ahead of you. This gives you slight control over the passing and shooting of your teammates, but no direct control over their movements. It's more of a tease than anything. From there it's up to you to warp back to the keeper in time to position yourself for an incoming shot and flick the right stick to make a save. It's fun when your outstretched fingers just barely alter the ball enough to force it outside of the goal, but those instances are few and far between (as they should be for the sake of realism).
There's a new item on the game modes menu titled "Career Mode" but don't be fooled, there actually aren't any new career modes to be found. Instead what you get are the same Be A Pro Mode (play as only one player throughout his career), Manager Mode (play as only the manager) and Player-Manager Mode (manage your team and play the games) that have been available before but with a few helpful tweaks like a new calendar system that actually lets you simulate matches on your schedule (unlike the calendar in 2010 FIFA World Cup).
I'd like it if they streamlined Be A Pro a bit more, as it currently still takes an extraordinarily long time to get your player to a reputable level. I certainly appreciate the length and the depth of the mode, but its density could scare off some new, more mainstream soccer fans. Another issue I found with this year's Be A Pro is that you can't carry over your star from last year's game. That's going to be a big letdown for those looking to continue a promising career. But hey, at least there are nearly twice the amount of accomplishments (including goalie-specific accomplishments) to earn once you kickoff your new career.
The setup and design of any of the three career options is just about identical. You're given the same hub page with news items and stats from around your league regardless if you're a manager, player-manager or just a player. I would've preferred a tailor-made experience depending on your role on the team, but there really isn't much of a difference beyond the fact that you have a bit more control of your organization as a manger.
The look of FIFA hasn't progressed very far from FIFA 10, but that's not necessarily a negative mark as the visuals had plenty of polish last year. The replays seem to have been smoothed out a bit and Personality Plus has given different player models a larger discrepancy so that the big bruisers look the part. Another nice change to the visuals are the new user celebrations that are triggered after a goal. Simply run over to a teammate (it also works in co-op play) and he'll hop on your back with his hand in the air or tackle you to the ground or some other variation. These little tweaks are certainly cool, but they aren't grand departures from what's already been established. With all of this good-looking soccer action, EA Sports has seen fit to add a functional replay system that auto-saves highlights from every match. You can pick and choose which of them you want to save or upload to the web after the dust has settled. -
Online functionality obviously isn't limited to uploading replays, though. The regular suite of features is back with online leagues and full 11-on-11 soccer aptly represented. There's also a new leaderboard setup that does a nice job of comparing your accomplishments with your friends' online. Every experience I had online contained little to no lag, but that likely had something to do with IGN's speedy network connection.
Closing Comments
FIFA 11 is by no means the sizeable step forward that FIFA 10 was, but that doesn't mean that you'll be disappointed with this effort. There are little nuances and tweaks to the gameplay that people will enjoy, namely the Personality Plus integration. I still found annoyances with the lack of awareness in the artificial intelligence and the fact that your Be A Pro accomplishments don't carry over is a real ? . Still, FIFA 11 delivers a more refined soccer experience for fans of the sport, while also giving us things like enhanced physical interactions and the same solid online package. In other words: if you're looking for a great game of soccer with a fine feature set that offers plenty to do online or off, FIFA 11 will end your search until next year rolls around.
IGN Ratings for FIFA Soccer 11 (X360)
Presentation 8.5
Everything has the expected level of polish and the new leaderboards setup is a welcome addition.
Graphics 8.5
Relatively unchanged from last year, but thankfully that's not a bad thing. New physical interactions help the overall look of the soccer.
Sound 8.5
The commentary is as solid as ever and the soundtrack seems better than in years past. I'd like to hear more chatter on the pitch, though. The new ability to customize chants is wonderful.
Gameplay 9.0Personality Plus does some nice things, but the AI still needs some tuning when it comes to aggressiveness. The flow of the soccer in FIFA 11 is as great as ever.
Lasting Appeal 8.5
Not being able to carry over your Be A Pro is a real shame. Online modes are robust as ever and any of the career modes will take you quite awhile to complete, while remaining fun throughout.
OVERALL 8.5 (GREAT)
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