Finally the postie came good so I've played 4 matches thus far.
The first was a regular exhibition me v cpu match. Manual player switching is terrible, virtually never goes to the man you want. Using the RAS to point to which man as often as not switches to a guy in the opposite direction. Probably won't play that mode ever again.
I then tried 3 Be-a-pro matches. Absolutely brilliant! A joy to play. The reponsiveness is excellent. The close control, the first time passes/shots, it's all feels so tight and so right. Even using the tricks have a tightness to them so you're not waiting for some clumsy anuimation to unfold, by which time you've lost the ball.
You can jump early for balls, stretch late to make a last ditch challenge.You seem to control your guy all the time. I keep forgetting at goal kicks that the cpu is no longer forcing my guy run to his "position"...I'm actually still controlling him.
The AI plays with such intelligence. Your team-mates tackle and jostle like you would want them to. They vary the play. They play some amazing one-touch stuff, show great imagination. They create chances and score goals all by themselves without you having to be at the heart of everything. And when you do get involved, the don't feed you useless passes which the cpu invariably intercept, or delay unitl the moment has passed. They even "see" when you're in space or making a good run and pass to you without you even having to ask for it. Even from 60 yards.
The cpu team actually makes mistakes, quite often. They even sometimes just hoof clearances into the stands, rather than every defensive clearance being an impossible 180 degrees turn/60 yard pixel perfect pass all in one move.
The refs are actually sometimes fair. The cpu team will tackle you and the ref will actually award you a free-kick (shock horror!). And your defenders can make challeneges/tackles without it automatically being a free-kick to the cpu team. What are EA playing at here? Surely the whole point of computer refs is to be 100% biased in favour of the cpu team.
Played one be-a-pro match, Arsenal (me) against Grimsby. No faulty underdog logic at play here. We won 8-0. Grimbsy hardly touched the ball first half. 2nd half, they managed to pump a few long balls forward and create a couple of scrappy half-chances from set-pieces, but the Arsenal defence was generally far too strong and jostled them off the ball. The Grimbsy defence weakened towards the end and we easily opened them up to pick off a few late goal and rub in the misery. And Grimsby weren't given that traditional last 5 minutes cpu boost with a scripted goal. The game just played out fair until the final whistle. Bizarre!
One nice moment during my first Be-a-pro match, Wycombe (me) v Barnet. We'd had a corner which end up in their keepers hands. All the players went back up field ready for the kick from the keeper, but one of our strikers remained up to hustle the Barnet keeper. As the keeper went to take the drop-kick from his hands, he stumbled under pressure from the striker, swung his leg but the ball hit his knee and rolled out beyond the edge of the 18 yard box. The striker made as dash for it, as did a Barnet defender dashing back to help. The striker just got there first and tried to hit a shot on the turn, but fired it well wide. Was nice to see such detailed moments unfold all by themselves as I just sat and watched.
On the negative side, still moments when you need super-cancel and there are still times when it doesn't have any effect. Also, you still get marked down for getting in a cross but it not going straight to a team-mates head.
Haven't played be-a-pro career yet so perhaps cpu cheats-a-plenty await, but so far, it's the best single-player footy experience I've ever played, and by a long chalk.
And the mighty 10v10 online beckons.