- 6 October 2001
- Liverpool
The pressure of writing up a review on a 2 minute per half demo is great but I feel I am up to the challenge...
Right, I feel this post is going to get swamped by a lot more as I type so forgive me if I miss a few things as I go along.
The intro menus look shiny enough as expected and EA have this lovely mountainy background for you to stare at as the demo starts.
One thing I did notice on scrolling through the menus is that in the XBox Live section there is no BAP option. Its there when you select the Kick Off option but for it not to be on the Live section is a bit odd!
Onto the game itself now and I have played a couple of matches as one team and couple of matches as the other, yes there are only 2 teams in the demo but what did you want eh?! I also went on to play a couple of games on the BAP mode just to get an overall feel before I started typing this.
I just went to play another game then, I really should just sit here and keep on typing!
Onto the game itself now and as you start you notice thats its quicker from the off, not in a bad way at all either but just the right pace. We all said that FIFA was too slow and clunky but it seems like they have it totally spot on with this version of the game.
Passes are now controlled with a power bar above your players head that should be intrusive but it isnt, it just lets you control the ball better. You can put together some really free flowing moves and never once battle with a sluggish touch or a player not doing what he should. The players seem to have more intelligence about them too, they make the runs that real footballers would and the space really opens up if you play a telling pass or a through ball now.
As the demo match is set in the rain I felt it my duty to try out one of my favourite features, the slide tackle. I have never seen a slide challenge look or feel as good as it does in the rain! I lost count of the number of well timed slides that I put in and how realistic the challenger and challengee reacted.
Onto my BAP experiences now and in my first go at this I was Claude Makelele. I was my usual battling midfielder in this and now the myriad of stats you get after a game can either make you feel great or pretty shoddy. For example after the match you get rated on so many things and one of them is positional awareness. In this game I got a 5 as the number of times I got caught out of position was shocking. Its stat heaven and tells you how many passes you made, how many challenges you made, how far you ran and all sorts of other stats that you will never really look at but look great none-the-less.
My second game saw me change sides and take on Michael Ballack, Much better from me as I worked exactly where I should on the pitch and came out of this with a positional awareness rating of 8. Guess I am better at attacking than defending but I think those who have played with me at BAP know that anyway.
So far I have won a couple and drawn a couple, the difficulty seems about right and the 2 teams they have picked seem about level.
I think that about covers it for my initial impressions, maybe more will come the more I play
STOP POSTING!
