Assisted, Semi & Manual
So on to my favourite topic, the whole assisted/semi/manual debate. As I have already expressed briefly in various places, I don't feel that the order has been repaired. I still found assisted controls to generally be more effective than semi (bar with crossing), and manual controls harder than the assisted version in every case. Semi far too often seems to be described and designed to be a harder form of assisted, and that mentality is where the problem lies. The debate will rage on next year, but I have a strong will to see the back of it for FIFA 12. EA must choose, within the first few months of the year a long term solution. It doesn't matter if it takes 2 games to get it fully there - the main thing is to decide on a viable policy and set on achieving it. It needs to apply to all online game modes - and it needs to be satisfying to the whole ccommunity. I would vehemently (!) recommend that EA discuss this at length with their community to make sure that whatever solution they decide on will work.
In other manual related news, as we knew a bit ago now (thanks to someone who went go Gamescom) there are now quite a few more assistance settings. It will be interesting to see what setup the manual/semi filters apply for these. Player switching has been changed quite a lot, as opposed to the multiple settings we used to have, we now just have three. Manual, assisted, and 'Air Balls'. Manual leaves it to the player, and won't change for you - assisted changes for you - and air balls will change for you only when the ball has been put in the air - which is very useful for situations where you have large groups of players in one place, like corners.
Another new one is the movement assistance. This was roughly described by David Rutter as a buffer to continue a players run when you switch to them. So, if you are running in one direction, then switch to a player who was running in the opposite direction, the player will continue to run in that direction for a brief period of time. High, presumably has the largest buffer, low, just a small one, and manual removes it altogether. Turning this off allows you to instantly resume control of your player.
Finally, we have the 'Analog Sprint' - new mechanic which allows you to move at speeds between jogging, and sprinting. The more you press the trigger, the faster you go. This can be turned off, or on. I tried this quite a lot, and disappointingly (partially because I dislike the PS3's triggers) didn't find it to be especially useful. I'm fully subscribed to the idea of annalog speed, so I'm not sure whether it's not being used to it, or the implementation, but I didn't see it being especially useful. I partially believe that it may need to be entirely analog speed - rather than just analog sprinting. One of the main reasons I didn't fall in love with it was that, once sprinting, even if it was just a tiny bit faster than jogging, it seemed to start ruining your stamina just as fast as it would if you went full out (not sure on this but it was what I felt), and secondly, the maximum turning angle seemed to decrease to 22.5 degrees even if you were just going faster than a jog. For me, this is the main thing which needs to change. When I'm only half sprinting, I expect to be able to turn more than full sprinting, and for my stamina to reduce less... but maybe it's a case of needing to play with it for longer to get used to it.
As a note, in regards to manual passing, I found that #1, the tapped pass flying off like a rocket bug was fixed (though I didn't play for that long I'm fairly sure I would have experienced it if it was still there), which should save a lot of manual controllers a lot of anger. Disappointingly, I did find that short passes with the direct pass button (X on PS3, A on 360) were still very difficult to do. They seem to have a sort of lowest-distance which is just too far. I have mentioned this to Gary Paterson (and I'd like to hear other manual players' views on this one), so maybe this will see some improvement for release.
Et Cetera
Be a Goalkeeper
One feature of the build we had was a minigame played in the loading screen. Instead of one player in the arena, you now get to have one attacker, and the goalie. This gave me my first try being a goalie in any football game. I have to say that it was actually a lot better than I expected. What really sums it up is -something-completely-different- and I can actually see it being an enjoyable mode online, even if you're going to be doing a lot of waiting, and watching. The controls are simple, and intuitive, whilst not overly simplified. Like with normal play, there are assistance settings here too. I hope, that unlike the assists for normal play, using manual will actually give you some advantage to make up for the increased difficulty. Whether it does remains to be seen - but it will be interesting to see whether EA have gone in here with a balanced system, or, like with every FIFA on the current gen consoles, given the player on assisted huge advantages over semi/manual users. I'll definitely be giving this a go in FIFA 11 - and for those who've written this off before it came to fruition, you shut your mouth until you've tried it
AWOL
One feature which was touted to be in the game after the Vancouver/Guildford playtests was the fact that the game now allowed multiple people to jump for the same ball. I have to admit that, if I did see this, it was on one occasion, and I'm not even sure if it was this feature. For me, this is rather disappointing. Corners/crosses are still almost always 1v1 affairs - which makes them look stale, and they also have the tendency to feel over before they've even started. As opposed to those fantastic moments when you just don't know who will get their head onto the ball, it turns into a standoff between the two men the game have selected. For me, I'd prefer to see lots of players going for it - even if they miss by a fair way. A player doesn't look at the ball in the air and think - no, wait, I'll miss that by an inch, and the player behind me will get it instead - football is a lot less calculated than that. Everyone with a chance of getting the ball should be jumping for it - and this just isn't the case for FIFA 11 from what I played, in fact, it would be difficult to argue there had been any progress with this at all.
On the bright side, headers do seem less erratic and more controllable now. Generally easy headers were going on target, as opposed on on FIFA where my player seemed to love to hit everything over the bar regardless of his position or what I pressed or how much pressure was on him. This at least may make heading more of an art and less of a lottery.
The new Lob
Fortunately, the driven lob is not absent without leave. Using R1 as modfier for a lob, you can now hit hard, quick balls below head height across long distances. This feels great on use, and even though I didn't get to try it out much (as to be honest I forgot its inclusion for the first few games) I did manage to utilise space on the flanks a lot better thanks to this.
A case for the defence
I've obviously put quite a lot about defending in the Pressure/Defensive AI segments in the first sector - but I'd like to just elaborate on what I feel is quite disappointing in general. Becuase pressure now is a lot less effective of a tactic, it does mean that the balance of sorts in FIFA 10 between defence/attack seems a bit rickety. An already small repetoire of choices dwindle further. The offside trap activation through the d-pad is as clunky, risky, and poorly implemented as before - simply not worth using. Non-controlled players still don't jockey themselves - so only your player will be making himself big when close to opponents - and it's still difficult to pressure in the way that pressure is applied in real life - not a homing-tackle like FIFA 10, but a slowly moving in, waiting for the error. As hopefully pressure has been neutered, this makes it difficult to effectively/realistically use any other man than the one you control, which is a pity.
Interceptions are still far fewer than I'd like - and I still found many balls just dribbling over my players toes whilst they walked on. There were a couple of occasions where I saw the first ever effective interception animations in next gen FIFAs - a player lunging out to get in the way of a pass and actually controlling it - but there were still the occasions of my player triggering a stupid animation and allowing it to bounce off him. Blocking however was a different story - players throwing themselves in the way of the ball all over the place to stop goals - perhaps with a little too much effectiveness but it's difficult to say in a short playtime.
First Touch & Chesting
One of the things which really annoyed me with FIFA 10 was the consistently awful chesting. It would always be slow, and it would always push the ball away from your player, and always in one direction - ultimately making any ball in the air a good way of losing the ball - as it was so easy to predict where the ball would land once it was chested.
This has improved a lot - you no longer feel so constrained by the animations and there are a lot more in there too.
What's more, is that first touches feel more realistic to the situation. Good balls are easy to take under control - poor balls much harder - and player to player you see these differences highlighted. I found that defenders were a lot better at taking a ball down and clearing, which is nice, much less of them stupidly allowing the opponent to take the ball whilst they bumble around chesting, setting themselves up and taking a teabreak in the middle of it.
On the other hand I did see a number of controlling touches which were just bizarre moments. You see a larger variety, but it still feels a bit soft in certain cases. There is a video floating around of Cech taking down a ball like the best target men in the world. It's a general case of being better, and more varied, but there are still occasional moments which just show a bizarre lack of footballing realism.
Personality+
More or less, I've managed to write all of the above without mentioning one of, if not FIFA 11's main additions. Unfortunately for me, Arsenal not being available in the build I played, I couldn't make the comparison to real life per player that I'd have liked to make - but having played with some of the most recognisable players in the world in Barca, Chelsea, and Real Madrid, I got a good feel for it.
I think the word which best summises what Personality+ achieves is empowerment. When dribbling with the ball as Messi, or Ronaldo, you feel empowered to take on your man - and yes, I did find it much easier to dribble past a man without skills. With Xavi, I felt empowered to pass. With Essien, I felt empowered to tackle.
There are definitely questionmarks in my mind whether it could go further, whether it could infect more areas of the game - but in the areas it does, which is a lot more than FIFA 10's, it seems very solid. Finally in FIFA, you will find that players like Ronaldo, Messi, Villa, Terry, are not just good versions of any old player in their position but individuals with their own styles.
Visually too players are a lot more distinctive. Running with Ronaldo may not be perfectly recreated, but it's a huge change from a game where every player moved in the same manner more or less. The new array of player models are apparent. How much these intricacies will play down to lower level teams remains to be seen. Visually, I'm sure we won't find much personality in lesser players - but in terms of gameplay I hope we'll find a lot more variety than previously.
I'm not really ready to give a strong verdict on P+ until I play with the team I support - but I felt it was certainly a strong opener for a series which is notoriously low on personality. I still feel that perhaps there isn't quite enough differentiation in certain areas. Whilst there are now clear differences between good dribbler, and bad dribbler, there perhaps isn't quite the level of detail to differentiate between different types of good dribbler, as an example.
Generally, I'd say the step has been that, in FIFA 10, there were a small, small number of stats which went together to make a player. In FIFA 11, there are a lot more, but, there are still stats/differentiations which seem to be missing, or too weak.
To Conclude
If I had to sum up my experiences and my extrapolations, I guess I'd sum up FIFA 11 by saying - lots of steps in lots of right directions - but maybe not big enough steps in a lot of them to really improve the game. This is the case with the passing - which whilst the worst of ping-pong is gone, we still see 180 degree passes, and extremely easy assisted passing, and I am fairly sure it's a similar case with a lot of the other elements of the game - stamina, defensive AI, and so forth.
If I had to say what an optimistic view of the full game will be, at least for online players, is an experience free of many of the frustrations of FIFA 10 - but in some areas the route which EA have taken to fix the problems are a little questionable. Initially I was both happy (in that it was nowhere near as bad as most videos would imply), and underwhelmed (in that it still wasn't what I'd hoped for in quite a lot of areas) - but having left a lot of time to collect my thoughts, and to play FIFA 10 to compare, I know that I can't wait to play FIFA 11 again because of how much more I think it has to show me - and the fact that it may allow me to get out of FIFA 10 what I would have if FIFA 10 wasn't so broken, in so many ways.
So i sucked more than normal haha.
).
The left/right back, hand on heart, doesn't roam unless you select and deselect him in the middle of a move. The best thing is to take control of a defensive mid or defender and hold the line yourself while pressuring with the mid or vice-versa. It works well that way. You'll have to re-learn how to defend with the limitations on pressuring though. 
Another piece of insane skill I did was beating 3 players (real madrid players) with Iniesta and you can ask a guy called "starfleet" from EA forums. I think it was him I did it to. I hit the shield button to shield away from the first guy and then let go and turned into the next guy and then hit shield again and then lightly tapped the run to esape from him to which led to me bursting past the third guy (and then i fucked-up my pass 
hahaha) but the animations this produced were SICK. There is clearly a lot more to see of P+ under the hood, and especially with EA able to add more without patching.
