FIFA 11

As the game gets another year older, how is it maturing? Not too well..



FIFA has reached the difficult adolescent years. Since the vastly underrated World Cup game was brought out in May, I have been extremely excited by this years FIFA offering. The gameplay in WC was superb, graphics, as per usual fantastic, and a pretty seamless game.

After a fair few days spent attempting to immerse myself in FIFA 11 however, I am unbelievably disappointed. The game is nowhere near seemingly finished. Even a true FIFA purist/fanboy, must acknowledge the cheek of EA to put out this game, especially promoting it with promises of improvements from FIFA 10, which, in my opinion was the best club football game released in a long, long time. The hard truth though, is that this game is a drastic step back.

It almost feels like it is not actually you playing the game, the reaction speed and response time of the players is often comparable to a dead slug, and even worse online. Players often disappear, and will sometimes reselect who you are controlling for no real reason.

The career mode is a welcome highlight – no longer stuck in a 4 year cycle, there is more depth to the mode now, with more choice over your playing, or now managerial life. The Virtual Pro mode, as many will discover is extremely addictive, but the fact that gameplay is so slow, means it can be incredibly frustrating. Starting off at Bradford, my first season was a mixture of lows and other lows. Its hard to level up your pro, when you cannot pass (although that's just the game in general, not just my player), cannot shoot, and seem to care about the game as much as Tevez cares who he plays for.
The other main edition is the ability to play as the goalkeeper. Some will turn this into an art form, but I got bored extremely quickly with waiting endlessly to do something.

I always harp on about realism in games – and in effect, I am sure this game is extremely realistic to real life top flight football, but the fact that passing is so frustratingly inconsistent is a painful reminded that FIFA, and all computer games are supposed to be fun and enjoyable. Is this game? In the most, not at the minute. Is it too realistic?

Player growth in career mode makes career mode unplayable for me. Its random, and despite getting emails that your players are improving, they dont. I've been on the forums and EA have listed it as one of the things they are fixing for the next patch. Apparently if you play the career mode till players are like 25+ the growth speeds up... But what of younger players until then? You can play 2 or 3 seasons without them improving at all. Who wants to do that? And how does that make sense anyway? - Ekeke, www.redcafe.net

As for online, I can only really speculate how good it is/will be. Out of my 12 attempted online ranked games, I have managed to complete 2 of them (other friends have a lower %), and I am 0/9 on completion of the Pro Clubs online version. Its appalling. As mentioned earlier, the lag makes the game unplayable too, sometimes a full 4 seconds after pressing a direction, will your player make that move. Its just not good enough for a game which so many look forward to.



To be honest, I could continue to look at the bugs, glitches and canyons of faults with the game – but I fully expect EA to provide us with multiple patches to fix these at some point or another.

Maybe we have just been spoilt with FIFA's last few years releases. Few would argue that FIFA is sitting on top of the football sim pile over the last few years, but with Pro becoming a little more well respected this year, next years releases will be extremely interesting. I also fully expect to get a torrent of abuse about this review - but as always, it is my personal opinion. I do not enjoy this game the the minute, and cannot see it being worth the RRP of £44.99. Nowhere near.

Get working on your patches EA, then bring us something memorable next year please.

Rating – 4/10
Fair Price - £14.99

(Rating and Price will change, dependant on patches)