2010 FIFA World Cup

brunnoce said:
For me two big +:

1-Picth and gfx in general are amazing, stunning!

2-Ball is heavier, this leads to better(more realistic) shooting, headers and passes.
Click to expand...

Really? I thought the ball still felt so light and long range shooting floaty.

From the 2 minute demo i have yet to see how GK's fair with saving normal shots. They seem as weak and as realistic at struggling to deal with shots that roll along the ground but i'd like to know whether people are still finding them stupidly good at saving normal shots.
 
First reaction:

"Meh".

Positives:
- Pitch, without confetti please!
- Play seems just a tad tighter which is good, even on WC I could reasonbly easily dribble away from tackles by just changing direction.
- Faces and stuff I guess, not something I focus on anyway.
- Ball has a bit more zip
- Goalies seemed better "offtheline", even when letting them run out too early the AI didn't chip. But that was only once so not sure how well it will hold up with more play.

Negatives:
- Pressure, still had two players chasing my CB in possesion everytime!
- It may be because it's tighter, but play and movement seemed a lot more angled to me. Offcourse I play with the d-pad, but also the AI seemed more angled in their running. Have they removed, or lessened the angles for "360"?
- Player positioning for Corners, CB on post for defense, attackers waiting in midfield for attack
- Goalies seemed pretty poor at saves from around the box. Scored and conceded with balls flying in on 25% goal (so if you have the goal with the goalie standing in the middle even when the ball was halfway between the goalie and the post he still couldnt save it). Looked a bit cack imo.

There really isn't much difference between the games (10 and WC) and nowhere near to justify buying it, atleast not for me. Gameplaywise it might aswell be a patch. And I would hate to have to adjust all the tactics again........

It actually made me want to go back to 10 (which I'm still playing) with my own tactics as that makes it reasonble to play.
 
Last edited:
Whats this business about you press the pass button and it decides WHAT type of pass and what teh speed of the pass is?

come on man what is going on here?

you press X and apparently it decides if its a low pass on teh floor or a high ball?

same with shooting? I have not played this yet but if true then WOW. Theirs me and other thinking why they added assist mode but THIS brings it down to a whole new level
 
Something i noticed:

I play usually on slow. It seemed to me a bit faster than fifa10. So, i changed the speed to both normal and fast to see the difference. But nothing happened! I think the speed in the demo is the same either you choose slow, normal or fast!!!

If thats true, it is good becuase the speed of the game looks like default normal. On the full game i think the slow option will be slower than we see now in the demo...
 
Basically, the presentation is ace. I like the sound of the ball hitting the side netting too. It makes scoring a goal enjoyable, as does the awesome Italian crowd.

But I don't think I actually got to play the game. Two minute halves, with cutscenes after pretty much EVERY stoppage?? I can tell you more about Vicente Del Bosque's moustache than I can about whether they've actually reduced sprint pressuring (which, it seems, they haven't).

I may rant a bit here. It's that song. I can feel my teeth falling out from clenching.

2 minute halves for people to decide if the game is worth the extra £40 over a normal footballing year. 2 minute halves.

I'm just going for stream of consciousness right now, so apologies if this is all over the place.

----

For the first 5 games (so that's what, 20 minutes?) I felt they made some good steps in the right direction with the gameplay, allowing for the fact that ping pong passing was clearly still in the Youtube vids we saw (and yes, it's still in the game itself, even on semi assisted - seems like FIFA 11 will be the one to address this). Slow seems like a good pacing, and normal seems to have been reduced too..

The ball seems to move much more convincingly at times too, but there's still no such thing as gravity on longer shots. No vicious bouncing efforts that give the keeper something to think about. No high shots that dip violently at the last minute. It's all long, flat shots that rise all the way to goal, unless you shoot from 50 yards.

The crowd is miles better. I feel I can crank the sound right up for this. Clive Tyldesley does give a very faithful representation of his real commentary as well (except he didn't talk incessantly about 'that night in Barcelona').

The left stick movement does feel tighter than FIFA 10 which is rather slack, as Jamez pointed out in the past. There seems to be more decisiveness in a player's control of his own momentum. Consequently the game feels stiffer, but in a way that gives you more control over what you're doing, rather than leaving you overshooting the whole time a la FIFA 10. I noticed too, for example that the turning circle of the standard jogging speed is a lot bigger as well, which is a good thing. In FIFA 10, as I pointed out to Gary P, you can spin on a sixpence.

----------

Once I had a break and came back, it was all too clear that the same physicality issues remain. It just seems just too effective, with players getting shoved about far too much. Left stick dribbling IS improved to an extent, but putting yourself in the way of the tackler other than using R2 shielding still seems mostly useless unless you're 100% between tackler and ball. A number of successful attempts to dribble past a player without using tricks end up with your player being fouled rather than gaining ground, or swiftly ploughed into by the next guy who is brazenly sprinting at me in order to flatten me, not to jockey me out wide or make me slow up my play. Admittedly this is Spain vs Italy, but in which case why not give us some rubbish teams as well?


The knock-on seems more effective with wingers, specifically David Silva is great at juggling the ball from one foot to the other, tempting a challenge and then knocking the ball away, but it's missing the point. Wingers were already the ones we could dribble with in FIFA 10. It's Xavi who needs to be able to keep the ball. I don't need him to beat players for fun; I just want to be able to retain possession.

Combined with physicality still being too high, the game was doing what FIFA 10 does, forcing me to go down the wing, forcing me to pass forwards because each pass takes something like 30 seconds of game time to reach it's target, and, quick, quick, run forwards as fast as you can, you can't test the shooting AND possession play in the same match, why aren't you just relentlessly attacking??

2 minute halves. Appallingly short, especially for a semi-assisted or manual player. It takes us 1 minute of possession play to fashion a non bog-standard chance! I can't make anything of the game from this. 4 minute games with 3 additional minutes of cutscenes of managers stroking their chins.

Shame. I wanted to try out the two button control too, to see how well the game knew when to do what and how well it worked with manual controls.
 
one of the best write-ups i've read so far. nice one.

all this needs to be forwarded to ea, i swear.
 
Absolutely loving it so far.

They've tightened things up so everything flows better, and they've finally fixed crosses so it's possible to score from them now. Same goes for corners and crosses from set pieces.
 
Although, funnily enough, now that I've muted the music I think I've over-reacted! :P

The left stick dribbling is much better than I thought. I've just completely made idiots of Italy's right hand side with Silva, just using conventional dribbling and the shoulder buttons to stop and start. I've also noticed that the more technical players are able to turn 180 degrees on the ball very quickly, falling away and taking the ball with them rather than doing the clumsier turn of the centre backs.

As this complete flip-flopping by me has shown, the demo length is just too short to form proper opinions. Combining it with ONE gaudy music track and bucketloads of cutscenes is begging for trouble.

I still feel like we're being forced down the flanks every time and that pressuring is overimportant (it seems fine vs the cpu to me but I can see it going far too far online again). However I do think the gameplay is what FIFA 10 needed to be. It's not perfect at all, but it shows that FIFA 10 was very likely rushed due to overambition with fitting in 360 dribbling etc. They didn't have nearly enough time for QA testing and to get the balance of dribbling right. The team making this, meanwhile, were handed a mostly finished game and told to spend most of a year making something atmospheric and improving what they inherited.

I was just expecting the presentation to be very fancy - and it is. That side netting sound - perfect. But now that I've manned up, have stopped trying to test particular things rather than playing the game, and can go through menus in utter silence, I'm thinking hard about buying the full game. It's not perfect at all - but I'm enjoying it a lot now. Just goes to show how important music is. In films, it makes you shit yourself, or well up at an emotional scene. In demos, it makes you want to kill things with hammers.

Given what I said was the focus of FIFA 11 from the horse's (gameplay director's) mouth, I do think FIFA 11 will leave many of us, or at least me, feeling very moist indeed.
 
Last edited:
I found the dribbling worse to be honest, I think the players aren't as nimble anymore and pressure causes you to lose it.
 
romagnoli said:
Given what I said was the focus of FIFA 11 from the horse's (gameplay director's) mouth, I do think FIFA 11 will leave many of us, or at least me, feeling very moist indeed.
Click to expand...

The focus had better be a proper, improved, bug fixed manager mode after that ass rape that was Fifa10's.
 
YoungGun_UK said:
I found the dribbling worse to be honest, I think the players aren't as nimble anymore and pressure causes you to lose it.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on this and dare I say it, I'm having response issues with the players. It may be because they've slowed some of the animations, but my players feel like controlling tanks and take an age to do some simple actions such as turning or knocking the ball into space. This is very worrying when trying to defend. Some of my one touch passing earlier on semi settings just didn't register at all and moves that I tried to cancel didn't cancel :CONFUSE:. I'm hoping it's my controller, not the game. Player switching is also a pile of shite as usual.

The presentation has improved a lot though, wish they had less mug shots of the managers, but glad the substitution cutscene has changed and we don't see the same celebration cutscenes. The players look very nice aswell, e.g. David Villa and Torres are spitting images and the player models seem more proportional. The grass looks great aswell and the overall lighting on the pitch is fantastic. Also enjoying the broadcast camera angle.

Having 2min halves is a shame though, just getting into playing and creating something in the game and it's all over and done with. Am I alone in thinking that full manual settings on professional is really hard?
 
mjsmith2k said:
I'm with you on this and dare I say it, I'm having response issues with the players. It may be because they've slowed some of the animations, but my players feel like controlling tanks and take an age to do some simple actions such as turning or knocking the ball into space. This is very worrying when trying to defend. Some of my one touch passing earlier on semi settings just didn't register at all and moves that I tried to cancel didn't cancel :CONFUSE:. I'm hoping it's my controller, not the game. Player switching is also a pile of shite as usual.

The presentation has improved a lot though, wish they had less mug shots of the managers, but glad the substitution cutscene has changed and we don't see the same celebration cutscenes. The players look very nice aswell, e.g. David Villa and Torres are spitting images and the player models seem more proportional. The grass looks great aswell and the overall lighting on the pitch is fantastic. Also enjoying the broadcast camera angle.

Having 2min halves is a shame though, just getting into playing and creating something in the game and it's all over and done with. Am I alone in thinking that full manual settings on professional is really hard?
Click to expand...

The thing is with the dribbling that you have to be very conscious of who you're doing it with.

What they seem to have done is made certain players 'tanks' - less nimble and less capable of carrying the ball forward with momentum. Players like Xavi, Camoranesi, David Silva etc are a lot more responsive. While specifically trying to muck about with left stick dribbling and judicious use of the shoulder buttons just now I found myself doing players fairly effectively. Not to the point where it was exploitable, or even 'easy' - but certainly well enough for it to be well worth navigating your way out of trouble if you're using the right player. I was tempted to save a couple of vids of it in action - Camoranesi was a real menace.

Reducing the agility of the other players and increasing the sense of inertia when controlling the ball is one of the biggest pluses to come out of the demo for me. It gives you much firmer control of what you're doing compared to FIFA 10 where the players were zooming all over the place to the extent that it was hard to be particularly precise. Your first touch would always be away from you and into trouble, rather than bringing it under control while turning as it is here (mostly).

Not had problems with first time semi. Are you on slow settings? It's doing the job for me. The problems I've been having are more about the continued inability to cancel left stick knock-ons and some unnecessarily weak shooting in seemingly prime positions to shoot.

I've only had one incident of full backs playing everyone well onside btw. Hopefully it was an exception rather than the FIFA 10 rule. Manual through balls seem to leave me controlling the wrong player (again, a lot less often, but it's not vanished completely) and I've had the usual problem of my players being very one dimensional with their runs. I'm sure I'll run into other problems soon enough but other than my initial anti-2 minute half rant I've been relatively fine.
 
Not only pressure and physicality are still crap, the game is still to fast and so on...but AI and positioning is even worse, and I think is mainly to the pitch being bigger.

Defending AI is as lame as it can be: defenders are still meters away of strikers, even in the keeper's area! It's hard to believe this crap is still in the game.

About being forced to attack the flanks, it's not true at all. In fact, you can exploit the game endlessly. You simply have to play the game as if it was a table top football. You take the ball with the defender, do a straight pass to the midfielder who simply turns and does a long low pass to one of the strikers. They are always unmarked and always receive alone. You're now at 3/4 of the field and only have to turn, run a little and shoot or do a 1-2 play with the other striker.

Everytime I'm around the halfline, I do the straight pass to the striker and he always receives alone. The CPU exploits this to no end, and it's irritating to see how their strikers are completely unmarked inside the area and can receive and turn without opposition.

Defenders tend to be completely unaware of danger and run away from the ball or striker too many times. Clearances and corners are still a pattern thing, and you end up all the time saying "oh, yes, that's the play the defender clears the ball just in fron of the area where 2 players jump for the ball at the same exact point every time...".

Lobbed through balls are even more accurate and more effective than ever, preparing the land for exploiters. I've found many players that abuse of lobbed through balls in Fifa 10 already, can't even think how would it be in this game, really something they have to redo completely by making it much difficult to perform, specially on long lobbed through balls. And too many times defenders act like stunned idiots to lobbed balls, giving all the time in the wolrd to forwards to gain terrain.

Yep, it's true ball physics have improved and other things, but overall I find it unacceptable to even try to ask money for this.

Many of this issues can be seen here:
http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/18755073
Goal scored with full manual in Profesisonal mode (wolrd class is against an annoying collection of cheats and cpu players on steroids).

Things you see in the video:
1- The killer pass to the unmarked striker. This pass can be done again and again all the time, no matter the formation and strategy. This is a terrible thing to exploit, as it was in fifa 10, but this time is even easier and much more effective! Oh, dear...

2- The killer lobbed thourgh ball to the striker. Too easy to do and too "perfect". In real life this pass is difficult as hell, even for the likes of Xavi.

3- Lame defending AI. Now look closely the 2 players that are following Torres. First, they are unaware of the pass. Second, they suddenly stop following him by no reason and seem to go somewhere else or simply face a completely irrelevant direction. And once the CPU realises Torres is controlling the ball, then they get activated again towards him. How sad... it makes what should be a decent goal replay turn into a joke.

4- Excellent finishing. This game has improved finishing a lot. I've scored many many goals in many many ways, and have seen a lot of new animations. Keepers are a little more "human" but just a little. Finishing and ball phyisics in shots are the only things I've seen improved.

This game is even more frantic than fifa 10, it forces you to SPRINT all the time and building up play doesn't reward you at all. It's much easier to make the dreaded straight pass to the striker or simply run the wing. I'm not liking the direction of things, at all. Since Euro 2008 I feel the franchise is quickly stagnating after a promising start on this gen, mainly because of the physicality and importance of strength and speed above everything else.
 
Last edited:
Placebo said:
Yup noticed the same here, it's erratic though as it seems to randomly decide oh that pass will go way off target for no particular reason.
Click to expand...

I've noticed that too when I switched to semi but another issue that I noticed (on manual this time) was a light tap of the Y button to try and a short pass ahead and to the right of Torres resulted in a pass going all the way across the field towards the sideline where Iniesta was running along the wing. It never allowed me to control Torres but the ball was moving so slowly that I thought that surely he was the only one that would be able to receive it. The other team's players didn't even react to it either and they could easily have taken the ball.

Seems the game randomly decides who to pass it to, as you said, to maybe simulate an errant pass.
 
Last edited:
I'm actually enjoying the Demo. I've scored some very nice and realistic goals from outside the box. The player controls feel tighter and headers have been improved a whole lot better than PES. I'm loving the long ball physics/animation. This game looks great. The pitch looks luscious and reminds me of Futbol Kingdom. The long ball animations/physics remind me of FK as well. You can really nail some belters in the demo with the right player.

Ofcourse, the ultimate test for me is multiplayer against a human. Darn it if only EA would loosen up the goal nets just a little more.
 
Placebo said:
Am I the only miserable git who can't stand all the confetti on the pitch and thinks it gets in the way visually?
Click to expand...

You seem to be the miserable git who hates everything, you have said you nearly hate everything!

Do you actually like anything?
 
Yellow card for the keeper. Right decision?

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/18769787

My first & only pen so far

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/18769970

Good to see! Advantage played for foul, but resulting pass is stopped for offside. Play pulled back for original foul

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/18769120

Tame cross, WTF Keeper!

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/18766643


StuartCulli said:
This is so ridiculously hard on manual... :FAIL:
Click to expand...

I'm finding all manual a lot easier actually, I don't seem to get caught on the ball as much because my players are quicker to release the ball (or the pass power fills up quicker)

A few other observations:

1. It seems very easy to beat the offside trap and be 1 on 1
2. Shooting feels a lot better
3. I've been able to use Xavi in midfield to hold onto the ball using his strength holding off bigger players
4. Iniesta is very lightweight and can't do the above
5. Totally agree with Drekkard. Far to easy to pass to the strikers who then turn and shoot or do a quick 1-2
6. I thought we were moving more towards a flowing game of football instead of adding even more cut scenes
7. Freekicks are very easy to score (both myself & CPU have scored lots in the few games I've played
 
Have you guys noticed that now the teams have 3 "Star" players each just like (off the top of my head) in the original Sensible Soccer?

Thing is, they aren't the strongest overall players either (like, I think Italy got Buffon, Cannavaro and Pirlo even though Chiellini is actually stronger than Fabio stats-wise)...

Also, the referee makes a whole lot more calls on players being "knocked off" of the ball by standing tackles and the likes, so yeah, the sturdy players' ridicolous and artificially augmented effectiveness is still there but has been somehow mitigated (dribbling was also made easier, even just with the left stick which feels a lot more tighter).

In my humble opinion lobs are the real problem here, hope they'll get tweaked in FIFA 11 cause as of now they're just overpowered.
 
Last edited:
It's typical that even though the penalties are a "big" new addition they haven't even bothered to allow you to do a penalty shoot-out.

Odd to see so contrasting views, game is faster/slower, game control is tighter/less accurate.

Changed the difficulty setting from WC to Pro but it seemed to be exactly the same. Haven't tried the speed setting, but with the pressure it forces you to play fast anyway.
 
TikTikTikTikTik said:
Odd to see so contrasting views, game is faster/slower, game control is tighter/less accurate.
Click to expand...

Demo's too short, hard to tell either way really.

I'll be honest, I'll get it regardless just because Japan's fully licensed, had I not been a die-hard Samurai Blue's and japanese soccer fan it would've been an easy pass though (since the differences with its prequel are slim and definitely not worth the 65 € pricetag).

That being said, it's a(n albeit tiny) step in the right direction, here's to hope that FIFA 11 will fix whatever is left.
 
Last edited:
I think that they must reduce the speed 30% in the final version (if they can). Slow speed is not so slow anymore...Other than that i love it!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom