These impressions are all from the latest build we played, not from the final game.
And when you wake again, please talk a little about stamina affecting the gameplay, and about positional play: are teams prone to get countered again? does it really pay to buildup play? do you really find holes in weak deffenses?
Edit: Oh, I forgot about manual through balls. In Fifa 09 doing a large through ball pass took a lot of time pressing the button, did they made any change to the time it takes to "charge" a pass?
I think Chris already mentioned something about stamina on his twitter page. One of the guys playing on the latest build must have sprinted everywhere with Alves in his match, because about 70/80mins in he was completely knackered. Forget trying to run with him again, he was done.
Teams are a lot better positioned now, and even on professional we could all tell it was a lot harder to break down the defences. On world class, I noticed teams were a lot stronger and played a more physical game. Previous exploits such the chipped ball over the top or through ball out wide to chase were gone. Even when trying to run through or knock the ball through was likely to get snuffed out if you had other defenders covering. Build up play is a lot more important and this is where your 360 dribbling shines as you can beat a man this time if you have the skill. I think we were all impressed most with that.
Manual passing and through balls. Manual passing has also been tweaked. In 09 I felt that if you just tapped the pass button it would pass to the player providing you held it in the right position and if you held it too hard it would zip across the pitch, so many used the through ball button as it was a lighter touch. However, in 10 passing is much more responsive and if you just tap pass your player will just tap the pass, you really have to guage how powerful you want it. I was often using taps for 1-2s, medium power passes for normal passes and long hard passes to the wings. You'll just get used to these though, it became second nature for me after a few matches. I thought this was a great addition and once you get used to it, it felt really nice and responsive. I found through balls a lot harder, but that was a good thing as you really had to pick your moments when building up your play to get an excellent through ball (as in real life).
now on to my 2 questions, both which deal with something i feel has been very underlooked by the community with the improvements to dribbling and shooting... how is PASSING?
i have become a huge fan and convert to manual the past couple of months with fifa 9 and am extremely curious to know if this has at all been improved in fifa 10... if so, I would be pleased beyond words.
now the 2nd question.. do you guys think that ping-pong passing and the lobbed through ball exploits have been dumbed down?
i hope that these questions contribute to the ongoing dialogue of your guys experience and want to thank anybody a head of time for their answer
As above.
Guess the next big question for us lower leaguers, is did anyone get a chance to try manager mode, or get any more info out of EA?...
It wasn't available on the day, and we were pretty much sworn off anything that wasn't exhibition mode as they weren't ready.
couple of questions
any of those horrible "letsfifa" boards next to the goals?! yuk
just thinking you probably won't know about goalkeeper kits yet, are there more licensed ones in the game.....did any of the PR guys confirm this?
not much mentioned so far about goalkeeper animations, if possible can you expand abit more? diving, coming for crosses etc
I know Peter Cech had the correct jersey, but I can't really remember any more. Perhaps others will. EA are going to be sorting all of that anyways so we don't really know, we only played an early build.
The goalkeepers are a lot more aggressive coming out to punch the ball, collect the ball on corners, punch the ball on corners, chase the ball on 1 on 1 situations and the general reactions were very good. They were quite hard to score against. I did have a couple of incidents where I held Y to bring the keeper out in open play and he didn't do anything though. He did come out eventually, but that was more of an automatic response. Hopefully if we can give feedback that will be tweaked.
Like the sound of that...
