FIFA 08

Dusted it off and started a new Manager mode career with Leeds United.
This game is hard as nails when playing with manual controls, even on Professional difficulty. Shooting is brutal and unforgiving, even when clean through on goal. I love it though, such a great game. Had some incredible games so far and fistpumped several times out of sheer ecstasy of scoring a late winner, something that recent FIFA's haven't been able to produce.

Why can't they make more games like this..
 
zlopasha said:
Dusted it off and started a new Manager mode career with Leeds United.
This game is hard as nails when playing with manual controls, even on Professional difficulty. Shooting is brutal and unforgiving, even when clean through on goal. I love it though, such a great game. Had some incredible games so far and fistpumped several times out of sheer ecstasy of scoring a late winner, something that recent FIFA's haven't been able to produce.

Why can't they make more games like this..
Click to expand...

you serious? FIFA 08 was the start of good things for EA but it has many many faults.
 
Benni said:
you serious? FIFA 08 was the start of good things for EA but it has many many faults.
Click to expand...

Sure it does.
But it also has an almost personal touch in it's design, career mode that is twice as deep as the one we have now, decent individuality of players and teams and a high degree of difficulty for those willing to invest time and effort in it. To me it still feels rewarding and well rounded, even with all it's flaws. I wish they invested the same amount of effort in what really matters in all the titles since 08, we'd all be better off now.
 
Ok, I'll try.
FIFA 13 Career mode has improved negotiations over FIFA 12's. As far as I've gathered that is more less it, the rest of the improvements are cosmetic things like more articles on the main screen and things like that - perhaps someone gets immersion from it but to me they're just irrelevamt. That's where we are this year and the last. As far as things to do in FIFA 12/13 you can hire a scout, scout young players, buy/sell/loan players, play games and answer some questions that mean little. Spending you money? Players and a limited number of scouts, that's it.
In FIFA 08, as clunky, simple and unelegant it's menus were, you could do all those things but you could also earn and spend experience points to improve your players, you could upgrade staff and some of those upgrades like Fitness made a very significant difference. You could upgrade your stadium to increase income or yor negotiator to get better players for less. As crudely as all these things were implemented they provided a certain level of strategy and depth where in last three implementations of the mode it's basically buys sell players and play, you had little else to do and little else to spend your money on.
 
I didn't play 08, but the same Upgrades screen in 09 was so lame. There was no strategy to it. Just plough in your money (of which you always had excess anyway) until the bars were full, with zero feedback on whether any of it made the slightest bit of difference. You just made a boring bar fill up and then nothing.

It always felt like The Emperor's New Clothes to me, and short-lived at that.

There still isn't enough to do now, but I'm not going along with the idea that the upgrades added much depth at all, never mind 'twice as deep'.
 
The reason that stuff disappeared, as far as I'm aware, is that it was far too easy to make a ton of money (even with a League Two team) and max out your staff, facilities etc. in a pretty short space of time, making Lincoln City a new global empire - not in league position or status, but in terms of the club itself.

It wasn't realistic - having staff and facilities exactly the same quality as Man Utd's side-by-side, while you're still in whatever league you happen to be in, and within seasons (or a single season depending on the club) rather than decades.

It made the management aspect far too easy (improving your budgets and your ability to persuade big players), although you could "control yourself" and not spend money to accelerate your club beyond its realistic capabilities - but you shouldn't have to, and it was so poorly implemented.

So to stop being able to make it far too easy for yourself, they made it all automatic.

It would have been better if it was tweaked to cost much more money to do much less, but obviously they've considered it too much to program or too much to go wrong again if they try within the development time. The way it was, I'm far more pleased that it's gone - otherwise I'd be still be maxing everything out and making it far too easy to be successful.

(I think it was also related to the stadium improvement bar - which led to more income etc. but didn't actually change the stadium, and there is all the licensing issues that changing certain stadia brings.)
 
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08 was by far the best one.

Played it every day for the entire year, something I've never done with any other FIFA game.

09 onwards have been a series of backwards steps IMO. 08 is probably absolutely horrible to play now though.

Ronaldo was an absolute demon on it, skinning everyone in sight.
 
I agree that it wasn't that well implemented but it could have easily been tweaked to be much better, potential was there yet it was left the same until FIFA 11 when everything was ripped out. I still preferred it to 11 and 12's CM, as shallow as it was.
 
my favourite fifa is still World Cup South Africa but FIFA 13 demo has blown me away so that will probably be the best FIFA, maybe even the best football game ever?
 
Even I liked FIFA 08. Played it mostly 1vs1 local multiplayer against a mate. That game was a lot of fun. Most importantly I had high hopes for the new direction EA looked to be taking with this game, but unfortunately Rutter stepped in and the series lost a certain something from then on.

I still maintain that EURO 2008 was the best EA football game but I'm probably alone in that opinion.
 
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