FIFA 12 Discussion Thread

Does anyone know how to jump as a gk, at penalties using the keyboard?

Cheers
 
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Cant believe GAME has failed me. They sent it Monday! What by, Mule?

Ah, so me and my friend werent the only ones who never got it today from GAME.

I 100% bet that it needs to be signed for, and no one is in the house tomorrow untill I'm home from College :(
 
Ah, so me and my friend werent the only ones who never got it today from GAME.

I 100% bet that it needs to be signed for, and no one is in the house tomorrow untill I'm home from College :(

Surely signed for is for special delivery only? ANd anyway ive been in all day
 
Really struggling to find some enjoyment from this game while trying to cope with tactical defending. How are you guys coping with it? I'm getting hammered... I also feel like the CPU most of the time manages to keep the ball even though I time the tackle.
 
Start with Professional (no higher) bro until you get a hang of it. I've just moved up to World Class after a few days and I still find it challenging but in a good way!
 
I don't know if it's fixed but the CPU did get a yellow card against me in a match. I think there were 2 more fouls in that match.

That's promising. I've gone through around 20 games in career mode and i'm yet to have a yellow or red card given to the opposing team, and probably about 1 or 2 freekicks in an attacking position.

I'm not even sure if i've had many more freekicks in general. I take players on quite often, so you'd think i'd win a lot more freekicks.
 
Yeah go down a level or two and work your way up, no point being frustrated, I'm on professional whereas I normally play on world class, slowly improving but still prone to some bad defending at times, got a great video of that to upload!
 
Not very impressed with the Arabic commentary TBH, doesn't sound much like real life, I get the feeling they were told not to say "Allah" which takes so much away when a goal is scored!

BTW has anyone received theirs in the UK yet? Can you confirm what it shows for height/weight of players? Mine's metric :( Need my feet and inches dammit!
 
Not very impressed with the Arabic commentary TBH, doesn't sound much like real life, I get the feeling they were told not to say "Allah" which takes so much away when a goal is scored!

BTW has anyone received theirs in the UK yet? Can you confirm what it shows for height/weight of players? Mine's metric :( Need my feet and inches dammit!

Weight is in pounds and height is feet and inches :)
 
The more I play of the FIFA demo the more I think its worth picking up over PES. The only thing I find lacking is team mate AI, apart from that it seems to be better than PES in every aspect. can someone with the full game tell me if there is a big difference between say Barca & Bristol Rovers, I remember in FIFA10 I could play exactly the same football with a shitty league 1 team as the best team in the world. I dont think this will be the case because I noticed the difference in passing abilty between Arsenals back 4 and Ramsey, it was night and day. But just incase I would like confirmation it is EA after all(I have been F'ed enough by them already).
The way the CPU plays is really good, people are creaming themselves over the PES CPU play but in all honesty FIFAs destroys it.
It feels very floaty compared to PES but I think thats mostly down to how the ball is more of a seperate entity compared to PES where it will stick to the player, sure I will get used to it. The ball physics are brilliant, the shooting..... :WORSHIP:
Also have they guys that put in alot of hours come across any nasty bugs yet?
 
I don't get all the praise. This game truly sucks on PC .. I don't know about consoles but all the reviews suggest this is the best footy game ever? NO way, not even close.

Attacking play is heavily scripted, CPU never commits fouls, generic goals , slow build up play (no momentum) , players still skate like they're on ice, Impact Engine... what Impact Engine? Barely do players actually collide. Fact is, FIFA 11 was much better than this.

:FAIL:
 
Yeah go down a level or two and work your way up, no point being frustrated, I'm on professional whereas I normally play on world class, slowly improving but still prone to some bad defending at times, got a great video of that to upload!

Just moved closer to the TV, it helped :)

The variety in how teams play is absolutely tremendous this year. Play against Barca and they'll rip you apart. Play against Swansea and they'll panic when you start dominating possession.
 
I had a go on career mode and the CPU is just shite

You go near them and they turn away every time, i had minnows in friendlies passing the ball like Barca and skinning the life outta me
 
I haven't mate no

I'm not a fan of slider settings really because i just play against mates and online so if i start changing stuff it will only come into effect when i play people on the same Xbox so would mess up online play against randoms or mates
 
Can anyone pls confirm does UK version have Arabic?

placebo what console u playing i may take u up on ur offer u want UK version right?

do u mind if u can upload a clip with the Arabic commentary giving a sample
 
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Weight is in pounds and height is feet and inches :)

Damn I definitely need a standard UK one then, need 2nd commentary team and feet and inches! ;)

placebo what console u playing i may take u up on ur offer u want UK version right?

do u mind if u can upload a clip with the Arabic commentary giving a sample

Xbox 360 Pal, yup I want just a regular UK version :)

I can do but it might only be with my phone as my camera seems lost, but I'll try to find it and do something tomorrow :)
 
Not very impressed with the Arabic commentary TBH, doesn't sound much like real life, I get the feeling they were told not to say "Allah" which takes so much away when a goal is scored!

BTW has anyone received theirs in the UK yet? Can you confirm what it shows for height/weight of players? Mine's metric :( Need my feet and inches dammit!
What's the point of screwing everything up EA?! :( I would like to test the Arabic commentary but I think I'll settle on a UK version instead.
 
Which buttons are modifiers for volley and backheel please? Please tell me what they do in defense/attack, becausei have changed the configuration so I dont know what L1 or L2 does for you:SHOCK:
 
Loving this game online, getting a manual game every try.
Just had a nice game spurs vs Madrid, was a 0-0 stalemate until I switched 442 and brought on the live wire Defoe who got a quality hatrick. Individuality is a lot better here, felt it so much with Defoe.

Anyone on ps3 fancy manual games then add me : sullivinho
 
Seriously considering buying this after absolutely slating it when the demo first came out. Reasons? Well, I've got the hang of defending, kind of, but mainly because the prospect of slowing down the speed the players accelerate via the sliders is making me want the game. I think if the acceleration in the way players turn can be slowed, then it'll be a great game.

Switched the camera from the new one to traditional broadcast, lowest height, highest zoom, it looks lovely, feels slower and I actually scored a goal! :P
 
I didn't want to buy the game, but yesterday my wife arrived home late with a surprise. And the surprise was a gift: Fifa 12. She was very happy to surprise me, as she had heard I wasn't going to buy it soon.

So, after properly hugging her and thank her for the gift, I started playing. My first impressions were quite good, but the moment I started a CM the game has been going down and down to the point that in only two days I'm growing bored of the gameplay already.

I put a lot of my thoughts about it and will put it in spoiler brackets not to highjack the thread. This is all about single player experience. Multiplayer is a better game, though it has some of the same core problems of offline modes. But I buy the footy games to play mainly single player (it's hard to find the proper people to play full manual online, with a fair experience), so to me single player IS very important.

Tactical Defending
Tactical defending feels like something imposed on an engine that is designed to work just the other way. It would be good if it worked, but you contain a lot better just by moving the left stick and a little of the left trigger.

It would be great if this Tactical Defending had at least something of Tactics in it. I can't order the team to act as a unit, I simply feel I'm doing efforts to close stupid gaps that my stupid teammates go opening for no reason. There's no context to it, so the best moments of real tactical defending end up as a joke. See an example:

I was pressing a RB with 2 men, closing all the gaps, trying to reduce space and at least harrash him. It was hard to get near to him, because all of a sudden in this game there's always a forcefield that prevents you from go for a tackle. But at the end the RB started to track back. He did like 20 meters running backwards and I totally shut down his options. Now the 2 men had managed to be 1 meter away. The RB suddenly does a 180º turn while he perfectly passes the ball to a teamamte 40 meters away. Inch perfect. Just perfect. Now, where's that EA video talking about Vision? They're just pathetic.

Containing
And what's that nonsense about containing? So, if you press X your defender will perfectly mimic the striker, no matter what???? And even so, it's worthless as you can't get near him. What's the bloody use of it? None. Besides, in the attempt of lowering presure, now it's impossible to go for the ball properly, and all the attacks of the CPU invariably end up with my team in my own area even if I do a great pressure as a team. The CPU simply passes around until some pass forward to an alone striker evolves the play.

Accuracy and inertia...
Mainly because CPU accuracy is stupidly high. Yeah, you can change sliders, but why on earth the default is like this? Besides, the moment you get near anyone, the CPU begin to turn as if they had spasms, they are perfect at that, never turning to the wrong side. That's utter bullshit. There's no slider for this ballerina turns.

Your teammates hardly mark, or simply ignore what's happening around them. You try to press with someone, you raise the custom tactics and sliders, yet you feel again and again that you're playing alone and if you want something you have to go selecting players and move them. Not that it's useful, either, as the moment you deselect someone, he will go somewhere else. When my left back is out of position, I bring the LM there. But the moment I deselect the LM, he will simply go away leaving the winger unmarked and my team exposed. Great for EA, after so many years of hard work!

Crosses, crosses...
Let's go on... CPU AI goes to the sideline. You can't get near, and you know that sooner or later, between the shakira-turns of the winger, he will perfectly cross (with a totally assisted cross that has NOTHING to do with stats, context or balance) and you CAN'T avoid it. Even if you're one meter away of the winger.

Of course, most of the crosses go perfectly aimed to a striker that many times is absolutely alone, and even if they're not alone, it doesn't matter because they simply are stronger and jump higher than you when needed, specially in the 45th and 90th minute. Bollocks. Always. No matter who you control.

Stats, individuality
Stats apparently are binary. There are fast players and slow players. Good and bad dribblers. Strong and weak players. And that's it, unfortunately. Plus, all the CPU players can pass like Xavi, turn like Iniesta and cross like Beckham. Great.

Now to team individuality. There isn't. All the teams do the same patterns in attack, going to the wind obsessively or simply receiving alone in dangerous positions. The only difference is that big teams are quicker and stronger. Nothing else.

More AI
Strikers will receive confortably alone and you can't do nothing. Your midfielders can be just watching a dangerous attack and let pass the opposing midfielders. There's hardly a sense of context or movements that make you suddenly excited about a potential play.

Once you attack there's a worrying lack of movement. I talk of intelligent, real football movement, not just running forward until you're off-side. Even if you fiddle with custom tactics and sliders, you hardly see intelligent movements of your teammates. At the end all it's down to the same patterns of the last years depending most of all of the formation you play. Given a formation, players are like statues most of the time, unaware of possible runs or unable to come and help you. You have to continually force things to happen, and your teammates seem ressiliant to it.

The same positional problems of the last years
That said, some of the stupid all-time problems persist (I didn't expect any change). When starting a counter, you can ALWAYS do a long, ground pass to your striker who will be totally unmarked to receive the ball to start the play. Your striker will be generally alone and unmarked 5 or 6 meters of the opponent area when doing static attacks. Given a minimal, almost dumb-skill, you can always pass to him. Defenders never anticipate, never make it hard to cut the lanes. It's exploitable to death. Against the CPU, playing Bilbao in my CM, if I want I can ALWAYS bring the ball to Llorente in the same exact position and the same exact movements. It's all so mechanic.

The resulting experience is hollow, I don't get any excitement of scoring because scoring hardly comes out of a great team movement. It's down to one or two individual efforts and simple finishing. For all the great physics that the game has, something must be really bad when you get bored of it so quickly.

Where are the fouls?
I don't know. I played +20 matches and had only 4 fouls awarded to me. I counted them. That's pathetic and it's a hint of how unbalanced the game has grown to be. It's a series of patches and late-thoughts added over the others and right now it doesn't feels at all like a cohesive experience. There was a time that I wanted to do a foul to stop time and do some subs... I couldn't do a foul. Really, I couldn't get near my opponent, when near him I would even slide tackle to force the foul but the CPU would simply dirbble me, even with a roulette (an ADO player, note that).

Not having fouls at all it's only a clear sign of how the game has been built upon marketing features and not as a complete vision of how would be better to simulate the sport.

The balancing cheats
I know the word Cheat makes some people angry, and I know technically it's not cheating. But the feeling of being cheated continually persists in the game, more than ever. While it's hard to tackle, the CPU can perfectly tackle your players again and again, no matter the stats. They win headers that shouldn't win, they play totally assisted and can perfectly read your movements every nanosecond to avoid the sliding tackle the very moment you press the button and so on. The CPU teams continue to have a boost in the last minutes of all halves, even if they're far worse than your team.

All in all, it's very predictable. "Oh, now they will cross and score to draw at the last minute". And they do it. Yes, very exciting.

It's about time they change the way CPU teams perform, but with the game so oriented to online play (that's where EA has always put the money) I feel like EA is literally laughing on us with this AI. It's simply unacceptable at this age and time to be playing the exact same game we were playing years ago.

Closing appraisal
All that said, the CM finally is what should have been 3 years ago. Presentation is great and the overall polish of the game is AAA. Everything is just excellent, except the gameplay. It's an irony to have this deep CM mode when I'm absolutely fed up of the game. After playing more than 15 matches (Professional, all manual, 10 minutes, slow, different sets of sliders) I can hardly remember moments of magic, moments of joy.

Unavoidable comparison to PES
Then I put PES demo again. The game is technically awful. The animations are a joke and the engine of the game is old and limited. It has some problems Fifa has, specially in the CPU AI and the railing feeling of things. In every department, PES is absolutely worse than FIFA. Absolutely. It's like comparing a Ferrari and a Skoda.

And even if all this is true, I perfectly remember some team moves I did with PES that made me shout and scream tothe TV. Some players that clearly work in different way, the way some forward will use space and drag defenders to create a passing lane. PES is a game that has a lot of crap in it. But it's a game of football. FIFA it's a great game, but has very very little football in it.

I hope people respect my oppinion and try to understand where it comes from and what I'm criticizing here. How can it be that me, being a great footy fan, loving videogames and having played all Fifas from 08 to now... how can I be utterly bored after 2 days of playing it? Something is definitely wrong here.
 
Just picked up the game late this afternoon. Great graphics great presentation a lot of fun to play. I will hold judgment on the gameplay as time goes along but so far it is superior to any FIFA I have ever played.:))
 
Thanks for your honest opinion drekkard. I have started enjoying the demo but that's probably purely because I've got better at the game and am actually starting to score some goals, but your opinions on the offline game are really interesting.

Is that true that the sliders do nothing to affect the speed at which the AI twists and turns on the ball? It really pisses me off in the demo.

So, hmm, I don't know. You may have saved me £40 here. Most of the things you complain about are things that made me turn FIFA 11 off in fury and sell the game. The pinpoint accuracy of tackles, the crossing to strikers tactic that only has to work once in a game but results in a goal conceded with nothing you could do about it (which has happened in the demo a fair bit), overpowered AI that feels like it's giving itself an advantage to simulate difficulty in a really crude way.....and I don't understand how more people also haven't noticed the AI's total obsession with going down the wing. I've seen ONE long range shot attempt since downloading the demo last week. It does keep possession of the ball much better, but goes through the same routine when it actually goes for goal.

I remember loving FIFA 11 when playing friendly matches but the CM games were a whole new ball game, the things mentioned above suddenly came into play when you play a competitive mode against the AI. If this happens like you say, I'm avoiding this game, at least for now.

So thanks drekkard, I think I'll reconsider now and maybe get the game if I get bored with PES (which I absolutely love btw), and when the game is cheaper. I got swayed by some more relaxed gameplay in the demo once I got used to it, and the gorgeous graphics and presentation. But if, like you say, the gameplay goes 'turbo' in favour of the AI in that really artificial way again, then yeah, you've just saved me £40. :)
 
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