Oh man, I just played a game in the online cup, he went Spain and I went Scotland (to practice for the Euro league). For the first time since Thursday afternoon, there was zero lag. The difference in response times was phenomenal, it was mental. Just fucking out of this world, the game instantly became ten times more fun to play. What's weird is I've played guys in the UK and it lags like hell, this guy was in Spain and it was as if he was sat next to me.
I played it slow, I passed it about, so did he (he was a good player). First thing I noticed was - he played a ball to his winger and my defender automatically started running behind the winger, which would happen all the time in FIFA 08; and you can't gain control of them. Here, all I did was move the stick down and the player moved away and into a good covering position to prevent a first-time cross. Freedom, wonderful wonderful freedom.
It was so hard to make a breakthrough, and scary at the same time because you know you can leave yourself open to a counter so easily. Just before the break, his central midfielder wandered towards the wing, and as my wing-back tried to tackle him he did a lovely bit of skill to get past me. I thought straight away, "could you do that in FIFA [without a shitload of luck, because you have to press the button combination two days in advance of when you want him to do it]? Could you bollocks." At half-time it was 0-0, neither side was really brave enough to warrant the lead.
70 minutes gone and my winger makes a great run (without me telling him to - the AI is just brilliant). Little dink to him, he dinks it back into the path of my midfielder, who dinks a short cross into the box and onto the head of the striker, whose header floats into the far corner. It was a beautiful goal, and the feeling you got from countering and not giving away possession was just perfect.
Now if the game had ended there (or around there), it would have been the most realistic online game I've ever played probably - however, because it's six minute halves, it continued.
The morale pendulum system came into force, Spain lost a lot of confidence (this has far too much of an effect I think) and the guy changed to a more attacking formation. As soon as he did, every forward pass I made was to a striker with one man to beat. The game finished 4-0. But every goal was a good one.
See, this is where it beats me up, it really does. It plays a brilliant game of football, it's just one or two things that really let it down. For me, change the half length to five minutes (or even four minutes), and make the goalkeepers hold more, and it's the perfect game online in my eyes.
Such a great experience, but tarnished by such a stupid scoreline.
