Ihave those games too and I think FIFA12 holds up okay. In particular player faces look really good up close. They're on a par with any of the sports titles I've seen.
But in gameplay terms I think this generally gets a bad rep from people. The gameplay is spot on (with a tiny bit of tweaking). I beat and dominate teams I should, but play the really top sides and I get pinned back, struggle to keep the ball, and the CPU keeps more possession. The AI is a huge leap over previous games and IMO the CPU offers a far more realistic game than anything yet. Gameplay feels balanced yet tough, sometimes the CPU caves in and you run riot, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you take a thrashing. It's nicely unpredictable which is streets ahead of previous FIFA titles and streets ahead of the terrible was the AI behaves in PES. I really hope EA choose to build on this version now.
Top teams are so dangerous, it's great playing them away from home in CM. I manfully held out away to Liverpool for 75 minutes or so only for Gerrard to smack in a screamer from 30 yards when I double pressed a player leaving Gerrard in too much space when he controlled the resulting pass. Felt so realistic. And the awful overly physical, constant sprinting side of the game has been totally eradicated. With the help of the close control button you can use it in so many different ways to keep the ball.