Re: FIFA 08 (360 & PS3)
http://www.psking.net/news/Xbox 360/FIFA 08/7636
New video, check out the wicked animation at 1.17 when he misses a header and falls over. The AI looks excellent and as if it will provide a stern challange, something which has been lacking in Football games for ages. I'm 100% sold on this. I was a huge UCL fan anyway and this is a definite leap in the right direction.
Looks absolutely stunning. That's how free the game is, you can leap to try and head anything, but if you miss, you fall flat on your face. The ball doesn't come to you (like it's scripted in PES), you have to go to the ball.
As I said before though, the online through-ball cheat still worries me, and the guys who don't like the response time issues still won't want to play the game (please note, despite my praise for the game
I am not a fanboy and I am concerned about various elements - for example, dribbling is pretty impossible when you've got an opponent one foot in-front of you and the reaction time of your player would suggest he's pissed).
I'd just like to make a quick comment on this, even though it's been answered already:
Another thing I'd like to know about is what seem to be stamina bars beneath the players' names in the videos. I'm assuming that the blue bar is how much stamina the player has left as a whole but as they sprint, there's a white bar which decends down the blue bar. Is this short term stamina (ie. the player running out of breath as he makes a run)?
This is what most people I know who I've convinced to play FIFA/UEFA at some point would like to see in PES the most. It's ten times more realistic than in PES, not just in its invention but in its application. Completely unlike PES, in my experience, you find yourself running out of stamina very quickly, even by half-time (and inviting an injury onto yourself),
if you just hold the sprint button down throughout the entire match - which I do in PES, because it has absolutely no fucking implication. In FIFA/UEFA you have to think to yourself, is it worth me running for that, is it worth me pressing/marking this guy, should I let him have a shot... Which is a great feeling when you let them and they miss. And a shit feeling when you let them and they score. But energy and stamina is a big part of football. Your positioning skill will give you more time than the others, and that's another area where I think PES is miles behind. Your player doesn't start running into awful positions, it's up to you.
The way that FIFA are going down the route of slow-sprinting and fast-sprinting, stamina bars and breath bars, shows how serious they are now. And I'm sorry but they're miles ahead of PES - perhaps not in all areas, but most definitely in some (including gameplay areas - the stamina is a part of the gameplay and EA do it better, most PES fans I know will admit to that readily).
Do the goalies, in UCL, still do those stupid skip/jump/chestcatch saves they did in 07? I remember all my shots from distance, no matter how hard they were being saved by the goalie making a small forward jump and catching the ball in the air near his chest. It looked so stupid and completly destroid the feeling of hitting a great shot. Ive tried a few distance shots in the UCL demo and havent seen any of them yet, but ive only had limited time with it and im not at home this weekend to be able to test it some more. Maybe you know/remember.
If you see my first post in the FIFA 07 thread (which shows how sceptical I was of EA SPORTS this time last year), that is the first thing I noticed in FIFA 07. Stupid little hops to collect the ball when all you'd need to do is stick your arms out and grab.
It doesn't happen in UEFA CL, I'm 90% sure (my memory is pretty poor but I was so annoyed by those bunny-hops that I'm sure I'd remember that).
looks great the animation, i also love the fact ai players are trying to block the ways of opponent team-members, something i've not seen before
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