My mind is still boggling, by the way, not just at how amazing this game is, but at the fact that some people think it's crap. Most people, apparently, if the forums are anything to go by. It's really, really depressing.
I can totally understand someone getting extremely frustrated with the little glitches, the lack of off-the-pitch stuff and the lateness of the DLC, and protesting that in this day and age it's just not good enough - yes that's right, Sir. But people think the game's crap? How can anyone who likes or understands football honestly think that?
Yeah, my goalie sometimes chucks one in at the near post. Yeah, I'm halfway through a season with Fiorentina and my home stadium looks not a jot like the Artemio Franchi. But I'm playing the most absorbing, intricate and fundamentally satisfying football game of all time - BY MILES AND FUCKING MILES.
I'm even getting used to the loss of the old R2 button stuff, thanks to the right stick. Pretty much the whole game is now about the right stick, in the way it used to be about R2: you can do so much with it, in almost any situation. In attack, in defence. The fancy stuff; the ugly stuff.
Incidentally, here's a really good tip. Before you start a league, go through all the teams, including your own, in Edit Mode, and move their defensive line down to 5, or maybe 6 or 7 for a team that always plays a pretty high line (you have to change their default tactic to "Custom" in order to open up the sliders, but all the other settings will just stay as they were so you haven't actually changed their basic tactics). Suddenly - assuming you defend properly - there are one or two 1-on-1s a game, or maybe even none in a particularly tight one. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this transforms the gameplay. It doesn't make them sit really really deep, it just makes them play a less suicidally high line. Then later in the game, if you're winning, the cpu will often switch to one of the more attacking tactic options, and suddenly you're aware of its DF line coming right up the pitch, dangerously high... THEN you start looking to catch them out on the break with a killer through ball. Much more true to life.
I've got this on 30 minute games. Loving every minute. Every match is a story in itself. So unbelievably deep... so many individual phases, so many little moments, the game turning on a handful of incidents, ongoing personal duels (stuff like man-marking works far better than it ever used to)... it's just amazing. Without fail, at some point in the second half, usually around the hour mark (as the twisting, turning story of the game is about to enter its final phase) I find myself staring at the screen and muttering "this - is - amazing." It's almost enough to make an old ISS-head like me cry tears of happiness. Not quite, like - I'm not a complete knob. But close.
The idea that a load of moaning twats who don't actually know what football is, and just want to run up and down with Ronaldo doing fucking rainbow flicks, might force Konami into changing direction and never developing this particular game, with all its incredible potential... well, if that ever happens it really is time to give up on humanity for good. I want to go round all these forums clipping these idiots round the back of the head. "Shut up, you bloody idiots. Go and play bloody FIFA, for God's sake. Let there be a football game for adults."
Because that's what this is, and my God we've waited a while.
