The Retro FIFA Discussion Thread (All FIFA games by EA are welcome!)

[Sami 1999]

The curse of FIFA 09 PC port has been finally lifted after 17 years. The stupid T-pose bug is finally resolved: https://soccergaming.com/forums/threads/cursed-t-pose-bug.6467687/post-6913900

There are still some visual artifacts like flickering black lines outside of the play area. But this is a huge progress.

 

[sleevel]

The curse of FIFA 09 PC port has been finally lifted after 17 years. The stupid T-pose bug is finally resolved: https://soccergaming.com/forums/threads/cursed-t-pose-bug.6467687/post-6913900

There are still some visual artifacts like flickering black lines outside of the play area. But this is a huge progress.

I’m very confused. Is this the same as the Xbox 360 version? I assumed the PC port was PS2, but when I watched a few videos recently, the graph is looked very high quality, similar to XBox 360 level.

 

[fabrif94]

I played a few matches this week in FIFA 11. It’s such a special game, even after all these years. The fluidity, the smooth animations… Many of the goals scored are the kind you’d see in a real match. It really is a special game.

It is a good game, its graphics are very beautiful.

It is a shame that the possibility of creating stadiums for that game has never been achieved.

Another problem I saw was that its AI was very aggressive, when you predicted it you could score 8 goals against any team

 

[Sami 1999]

I’m very confused. Is this the same as the Xbox 360 version? I assumed the PC port was PS2, but when I watched a few videos recently, the graph is looked very high quality, similar to XBox 360 level.

It's a hybrid. It's the same PS2 engine but now modified to make full use of programmable shaders. So the gameplay, commentary, audio, db, content- everything is exact same as PS2 version. However, following things were improved:

1. Player face, body and jersey 3D models. Player faces were straight up ripped from Xbox 360 version but converted to appropriate format.
2. Heavy use of normal maps, which resulted in very nice lighting and all the models had a more 3D feel because of this.
3. Improved textures.
4. 3D grass is back.


Following things were not on par with Xbox360:

1. No cloth physics, no hair physics.
2. No dynamic cloth wrinkle simulation, cloth wrinkles were static.
3. Accidentally used inverted normal maps for clothes making it look weird like the ps3 versions.
4. Gameplay: It's just the Ps2 version and doesn't feel as good as Xbox 360 versions where gameplay drastically improved.

Following things are better than Xbox360 and Ps3 versions:

1. 3D grass is actually present on all cutscenes. Thus the game actually looks superior to Xbox 360 in terms of overall visuals thanks to the highly dense looking 3D grass and also in a way a more artistic lighting on player models.
2. Since cutscenes and cutscene animations are basically straight up PS2 versions, the overall cutscene presentation looks miles better than Xbox 360 and Ps3 which had some of the worst looking cutscenes, there were barely any cutscenes on FIFA 07-10 and looked like ass.
3. 60/ 120 FPS cutscenes and replays. Looks smooth and great unlike the 30 FPS cutscenes on x360 which also had animation stutters on top of that.




FIFA 09 and 10 were basically pure hybrids. Almost something we should have gotten all the way back in 2004/05s since GPUs with programmable shaders were already a thing by then on PCs and even og xbox could handle some of it. Was held back thanks to PS2. Look at ESPN NFL 2k5 on ps2 vs og xbox, the latter looked completely different and made heavy use of normal maps and looked miles better than ps2.


FIFA 10 PC though, it was a heavy downgrade from FIFA 09 and was infested with visual bugs unfortunately.

 

[VENOM59]

What do you think of the PC version of FIFA 09? I liked the improvements in FIFA 06 and 07, but the 08, 09, and 10 games that came out afterward were really bad in my opinion. EA had focused on consoles and hadn’t improved the PC version at all. In PES on the other hand, there was no difference between console and PC versions back then. The games were way behind PES. Those were the years when I drifted far away from FIFA. I played a few matches and saw once again just how bad they really were.

 

[Sami 1999]

I absolutely hated FIFA 08 on PC because it was a downgraded mess. Not only was it old gen, the depth of field which EA finally got working on FIFA 07 pc for the first time ever no longer worked in FIFA 08 and instead the whole screen would have slight blur due to unfocus on high settings. And on top of that the football itself was not shaded. No lighting at all. Nothing. It's as flat looking as it can get. But on PS2 the ball looked just fine. On pc, some of the unlockable balls did have shading. Even the mow patterns looked incorrect.

I did like FIFA 09 just for the visuals. It looked good, really good. FIFA 10 idk what to say. Just take a look between FIFA 09 and 10:

fifa 09:


fifa 10:



Fucking hell. Not only that, the grass textures would render in low resolution if you set shader settings to max, but without setting it to max the lighting looked like complete dogshit. And only mow patterns 1, 3 and 9 would work on this game, rest of the mow patters would not work even if was set for a particular stadium [the game would instead show one of the previously mentioned three mow patterns]. Ronaldinho's Eyes were glitched out.

Only saving grace for this game was that the gameplay felt a bit nicer than 09. And you can pretty much get the lighting and grass color to look like that of 09 by modding [with no performance penalty], which makes it even more ridiculous. Why downgrade the visuals in the first place?


Suffice to say, I strictly played PES for most of the part on PC on those days, even if the gameplay was not near the levels of PES 05/06. It was just the better game for pc.