FIFA Soccer 09

 

The Fifa franchise has always been renowned for bettering Pro Evolution Soccer, so why is it that the predecessor of Fifa 2008 styled the game play in the ways of PES? The game play was furthered to realism with advanced AI but it was less enjoyable and more formal. Fortunately, though Fifa 2009 sticks with the furthered AI and advanced specs of 2008 while diverting the game play back to the original, enjoyable formula of 2007 with a wealth of new features.

But you still have the standard array of modes to be expected from the license such as Lounge Mode where a local party of your friends can take part in a mini-fest league. By doing so, players gain points for achieving in-game objectives such as hat-tricks but also based on game statistics, mainly by winning of course.

Tournament Mode is the same, fresh and fun mode where you can create any type of game mode you want whether it is a league or world cup tournament and shove all kinds of team variants in. While it lacks the depth of Manager Mode it’s definitely a fun mode just to create off the bat.

Manager Mode is perhaps the most time you’ll spend playing the game and that’s a testament to its depth of elements the mode portrays as you play and manage your team through several consecutive seasons. It’s addictive and compelling stuff, and though nothing majorly new has been added, it’s just as fun and time consuming as it’s always been.

Play a Pro Season Mode is back for its second appearance, where you can select any player of any team available on the Fifa roster. As in manager mode, you take your player through a series of seasons but it gets more personal by involving more popularity and transfer offers into the mix. So expanding over four seasons rather than originally one, there’s also a host of extra challenges and upgrades for your player to achieve too. However despite the mode getting even more beefed up, I thoroughly enjoyed playing as a team on the whole rather than just one lonely player.

It’s also annoying that for the reason that Fifa’s naturally a sim game, every time you start up a league or tournament, you could get an awful team winning rather than a top tier team. It’s baffling and confusing, and while it keeps the element of surprise and variation going as sims are known for, it should be a takeoff/on feature rather than a permanent implementation. 

The AI has been furthered once more, there are rarely any glitches and the opposing team will do everything in their power to catch you out, friendly AI is equally as good however less you may want to play with them. The goalkeeper is perhaps the biggest and best addition to the AI, where they'll let goals in alot less frequently but at the same it makes the matches more strategically based along with some more realistic scores regarding the firm simulation territory Fifa seems to be in now.

The difficulty however is quite contradictory; on one hand you have something accessible and challenging to master but on the other you may have to take time of getting beaten to death.  As unlike shooting games, goons get more damage and health, though it's not the same here as you'll have to adapt to the next difficulties playing style through a series of friendly matches to fully comprehend the difficulty.

The game play itself doesn’t necessarily improve over the most recent copy of this formula, but it’s the first Fifa game on the Playstation 3 with the true, traditional game play it’s known for; accessibility and enjoyment. Considering that the last showcase of this particular game play was on the last gen - Fifa 2007, it allows the latest version on the Playstation 3 to be more polished and refined. Moving, passing, shooting are all top-notch and well animated to provide a better and more pleasant experience.

As a result, players genuinely feel more interactive with the ball, not only is the game play more polished to a higher degree but the game play now follows a more rhythmic flow depending on your playing style. Whether you do quicker, many more passes or fewer but longer passes, it really ties up into some noticeable, great fundamental additions to the core game play.

Though there are some persisting problems, the game will still insist on reading your mind in spite of what you really want. In being, if your pass didn’t quite make it to the next player, the game play will just make that extra effort to successfully transmit the pass. Sometimes though, you may just want to do it as you told it so and arguably without this implementation, Fifa would go haywire but it’s still a problem which has been going on for several years now.

The games presentation doesn’t falter for a second, Fifa is just as accessible, enjoyable and presentable as it’s always been. The arena’s back resulting in some great fun in between loading screens to help pass the time; here you face off against the goalkeeper in a one on one situation.

Basic, yet most noticeable improvements include an expanded number of leagues of which more teams have been included as well as a plethora of stadiums. Weather now acts more general in regarding players around the field, where players will lift up their socks and players may shake their wet hair in the poor weather. It’s definitely minor but it’s a neat touch.

The menus are well organized and there’s plenty of options to play around with like the “create a player” feature , customizing your jukebox, manually updating transfers and a host of other similar typos.  

You can now even upload custom-made videos onto EA online. Although this can be a long process by converting different media types, it’s worth comparing and sharing different videos. You can also now set up celebrations after scoring a goal, and while these feel tacked on you can simply just leave them be either way.

It’s just a shame that considering how accessible and easy to play the game is, that defining your teams playing style through aggression, attacking and defence isn’t as easy and explained as it could’ve been. Further, it doesn’t affect your teams overall performance as dramatically even if you did play with the style as well as you could.

The visuals haven’t improved over anything vitally, but it’s all the small details which make all 2009’s visual elements impressive. Everything’s crisp, sharp and vibrant too; character models have been furthered into an impressive amount with unique haircuts and kit-styles. Even more or less stand-out players have been given their natural defined faces too.

Mannequins have improved to feel more atmospheric and life-like rather than feeling more or less alike to cardboard ridded shapes and there’s also a huge amount of cut-scene presentational features too. Substitutions scenes are a few of the well driven atmospheric contributors in playing matches too.

The track-list isn’t as huge as predecessors like Fifa 2005 which featured over 70 songs, though in many cases it’s quality not quantity. As Fifa 2009 features 42 songs which are all well copyrighted seeing as many of them were recently in the charts including Kids GMT, Sam Sparrow’s Black and Gold and Untouched. Also, taking into account that you’ll be playing 2009 a considerable amount of time, it’s great to see that the commentators now have a further expenditure of variety and vocabulary in their sayings.

The value in Fifa really comes down to how much mileage you’ll get out of the new modes. The new presentation features and track-lists are nice but don’t necessarily add much more value. Still even if you’re not an avid, solid football or even if you are, you can still sink hundreds of hours into this game as you could with any other sports game.

The simple online ranked match implementation features a little score based system similar to ranks. Where the harder the opponent you face the more experience you’ll be rewarded for a win and vice versa. There’s no unlockables but you won’t be playing Fifa for that reason alone, more or less for the enjoyment of playing a top quality football sim.

Be a Pro Mode further expands over the offline mode where you can double the teams from the original 5v5 on 08 to 10v10. It’s incredibly fun, especially when playing with friends and while it’s not as fun as playing as a whole team, it’s still really fun to be sharing the enjoyment with up to 20 players.

You can now create your own club and put your own created players in them, thereafter you can make more and cram them in or just invite friends and let them slot theirs in. It’s like reliving your old, school football team.  Further, you can compete against rival user created or original clubs by inviting them to join in your custom leagues.

Interactive leagues are also quite fun where you select your representing team and take them online into the league. All results are calculated averagely from all matches, and so by the end of it there’ll be more Manchester United fans than Stoke fans and so because of the contrasted fan base, it'll land some more realistic results. You’ll definitely feel inclined to get involved on this at some point whether you’re bored or just want to try out something entirely new.

It’s a shame that lag is so frequent in Fifa, it’ll happen in almost every game and even if it doesn’t pop up, you’re bound to have some slow-down issues of some sort. Still while dampening your day, it’s not game-breaking.

Up until quite recently, EA has now implemented a new DLC Game Mode called Ultimate Teams and although it costs £6.99, it’s worth every penny resulting in the best and innovative mode yet. Portraying the recent “Match Attack” and “Shoot Out” cards where there are 18 players on each of the 20 teams. The aim is to collect each and every card, although there’s a video game twist as you might expect; by blending the best of collecting hobbies with soccer simming.

You’ll gain virtual money throughout the mode by beating opponents, and by using these points you’ll access more and more packets leading to an addictive, hard-to-put-down sentiment. Each card within a packet represents a player, and of course you'll have your virtual folder and management side to swap in and out cards or players as it were. It's a really fun, game mode, second to Manager Mode if not, better!
  
Pros 
+ Bar-none presentation with a host of new features. 
+ Best game in the series, and highly addictive!
+ Gameplay feels more refined and polished.   
+ Gameplay also feels more fluid and interactive.   
+ Fantastic AI goalkeeping and opponents.
+ Impressive amount of detail and visual features.
+ Lots of online modes to keep you busy.
+ Standard modes are back, some expanded.
+ Track-list has alot more quality than previous years.
 
Cons   
- Online lag is very frequent, with some slow-down issues too.
- Playing-style definitions aren't very accessible and affecting.
- Presentational improvements aside, there isn't a huge amount of  new content.
-  "Reading what the player really wants" isn't always correct.
- Simulation territory can sometimes feel unrealistic.   

It’s not the really the fact that Fifa 2009 is the first true Fifa game which stays close to its roots on the Playstation 3, but the fact that Fifa 2009 is one of the few titles in recent years that improves over a last year’s title substantially. The new presentational features, better track-list and wealth of new modes are all amongst noticeable in the best portrayed sim of the sport yet. 
 
DISCLAIMER: At the time of this review, Addidas Live Season is now closed. At release, you were able to get a free season pack with each of the five, English, French, German, Spanish and Mexican costing £4.99 each, or rather you could get all five for £12.99. These leagues updated all the teams within that league on a weekly basis on player injuries, performances and even club ratings. This was a costly addition which no avid football fan would’ve wanted to miss out on.