The new collision and physics system is nice... however, the game does not recognize fouls. I hope this issue is addressed in the future. Here is an example:
This situation would have led to a one on one with the keeper. However, I get clipped as soon as I get the touch on the ball and go down. No card, no foul.
Overall I'm liking this new system a lot. It is a little difficult playing PES because of it.
I just played a game where I had Ibrahimovic with the ball in the box going towards goal. There was a defender on both sides. I hit the shoot button, and in the process I got bumped, completely whiffing on the shot as I'm falling to the ground. Then before I hit the ground the other defender bumps me too. No call for either. Wish I could get a video but it was on the PC and I wasn't signed in.
Getting bumped while shooting and missing completely has happened a couple times, but that was the worst.
Yeah, it seems like you have to get murdered to get a foul called. But, having played it more tonight, I must admit that the FIFA game is growing on me and it isn't as bad as I originally thought; just have to get the defense down pat.
Still some FIFA-like things that will drive you crazy (ie too many crosses and constant pass-to-middle goals), but if you're not a fan of PES, then this is a first-day buy if you need a soccer fix.
When it comes to sports games, it's often prevalent for two companies to offer a different product with unique positives and negatives regarding gameplay, graphics etc. I ALWAYS disregard graphics in favor of gameplay. When people tell me that PES represents 'the gameplay' side of soccer compared to Fifa, I understand that the goals are often more creative and the ai is better supposedly in pes, but to me the ball physics and player movement feels boxy and arcade-like. Fifa 12 has a great new defensive system which some claim, due to poor ai, is useless. But, with some practice I'm getting 4-6 tackles a game, which is near (little below) my average per half from 11, so that's perfect. The key is PATIENCE.
GOING BACK TO GOAL CREATIVITY, my favorite addition so far is improved volley accuracy, which has accounted for some awesome messi goals (almost exactly like his volley for goal in the supercopa off of a low short cross) and others as well.
Has anyone noticed how much harder World Class is?
What I'm most excited for is multiplayer. This will obviously be the most improved aspect of fifa because it eliminates double pressing jabronies who consistently win with practice. That's right all you 14 yr old ritalin heads, you will actually have to play defense!
Also looking forward to playing in an OS league after a fellow mlb the show league member swore it was the best online experience in sports gaming. Message me if you know of a good league with openings!
Only played a couple of games but I already think the switch to tactical defending is the way forward, anything that makes the game harder is ok in my book and this is miles ahead of the previous method of just hold down a button and win the ball everytime.
It's a much more realistic way of defending and I applaud EA for introducing it as i'm sure they will come under fire on their own forums from those who can no longer pressure abuse to the extents of previous years. I love both standing off attackers, shadowing them down the line and making a sliding tackle when the time is right, feels great when you get it right and also feels right when you mis-time it.
It will take some getting used to for sure but i'm one of those who actually enjoyed seeing the CPU hold a % of possession advantage over me, certainly beats me having 60%+ every game on 11.
Some things that irked me though, off the ball player movement felt a bit static, the referees are awful and while the new player collision system is a step in the right direction it just needs some tuning.
Overall, a positive step in the right direction from EA.
I think EA's approach for '12 has been a good one - focusing on things like making defending harder and the shooting, the two things that have always bothered me compared to PES.
I'm just not enjoying the game so far, and that's worrying. Every game of PES has left me with a smile on my face, and every game of FIFA feels frustrating to me at the moment.
Shooting as I mentioned is better, but I'm having so few shots it's embarrassing, so it's hard to say just how improved it is. I did score an absolute screamer with Gervinho though, running onto a loose ball and smashing it into the top corner from about 30 yards. Very satisfying.
The goalkeepers, the general animations and the presentation are all great, but I have to say at the minute I still prefer '09, '10 and the abomination that was PES 2008 over this.
I thought when EA said they were fixing the defending, this would also apply to the way the AI defends too. At the moment I don't see a great deal of change. They see the ball, they win it.
Human players don't seem alert and sharp, even when being sent on a run, where the computer players seem to have Red Bull injected into their veins. I also don't know what the heck they've done to the short passing, it just lacks the fluidity and pace of previous versions. Defending CPU players have also turned into NCAA 12 linebackers (ability to read and intercept any ball! ).
The computer having nearly 90% pass completion every game is a joke, and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised to see the same coming from league two teams if I were to play them. Even Barcelona would struggle to get 90% passing success in real life.
CPU clearances nearly ALWAYS go to one of their players, which is ridiculous.
Maybe I have to drop the difficulty down, because I've never been a good FIFA player, but at the moment I'm struggling to see how it's worth my pre-order, even at the expense of dropping out of the league I've signed up for. I'll keep playing though and report back with any good findings
Man, I just can't get used to the new defending. I changed the buttons around to make it a bit more comfortable, but I really think EA has swung to far.
What FIFA has now would be great, if your AI teammates played good defense as well. But they don't. They sit back, lay off and loosely contain. There's no tight marking, no defending passes, no tackles, nothing. Because of this the CPU can pass around pretty much at will. I tried even using the "High Pressure" Quick Tactic, and it really changes nothing.
I hear you. I love how defending feels for my user controlled player and I think the changes will really help in the long run, especially in head-to-head and OTP. However, the off the ball defending by my teammates feels too lax. I don't think it's far off from being a good balance, so perhaps the final build will address this. Plus, the man marking slider may help with this for offline play.
I don't put a ton of stock into demo gameplay, especially EA's super-short ones. I've seen enough to know tactical defending is a fundamental change in the way the game is played, but I have no idea if EA can find the sweet spot 'out of the box' or if the sliders will help dial it in.
Almost forgot something... Can we please keep this to FIFA impressions, please? I know the discussion is quite civil and we appreciate that, but let's do our best to stick with the topic.
For those who want to talk PES, I know a great place to do that...
CPU clearances nearly ALWAYS go to one of their players, which is ridiculous.
This has always been one of my main gripes about FIFA on this generation of consoles. I'll have the opposition goal under siege and they'll manage to hoof out a clearance that somehow finds the only one of their guys not behind the ball while the four defenders I have back simply watch. Just kills me.
I am enjoying the Demo so far, but there are a couple of things that seem off to me. I agree with everyone who says the CPU passing is way too accurate. It had become almost standard to me until I played PES and saw passes go astray. Now, I expect that from FIFA, and to not get it is frustrating.
Defending is definitely a step up from last years, and I love the patience required. For some reason, though, the way they have the buttons mapped does not work for me and I keep hitting the wrong button. I like some of the suggestions for re-mapping on here and I'll definitely have to give those a try.
Fouls seem to be called on soft collisions yet ignored on hard ones. Consistency in that area could be improved.
I'm also in the same boat as everyone else, I think. I'm always a "World Class" difficulty guy, but I've had to drop down to Pro for this demo. I guess that's a good sign.
There's a really good game to be had here, but I just keep wanting that little more that I don't think FIFA can offer to make this really good game a great game.
The main issue here is the defensive pressure on both CPU and HUM. When a ball is passed to your striker, he should be INSTANTLY pressured, physically - sometimes even double teamed. This is not the case, you see all the videos that people post, and it is so easy to pass to the players, they get open way to easily. Watch real footie, and notice how hard it is to gather a ball in the defensive third - sometimes even higher than that.
This is why it seems the game plays so fast and "fluid" for all the wrong reasons. There is no sense of pressure. EA have to get into the mind of the defender, because no matter what - the defender does not want the ball to even reach the foot of the attacker if he (the defender) has more than a 20% chance of getting near the ball.
I put the difficulty down to semi-pro so see what it was like and I have to say it was better, but the CPU defenders went from sprinting all over the place to not sprinting until I was already 5 yards in front of them.
This is a much better level for CPU passing realism, as in my Barcelona vs Milan game, I had only my second possession advantage so far, and the CPU's passing accuracy was down to 75%.
EA have never been able to get difficulty curves right and again it seems that Semi-Pro will be too easy and Pro will be too hard.
I'm still getting the game on release day but they really need to sort some things out otherwise I won't play a great deal of single player.
I think once you really adjust to how the tactical defensive scheme works, it will become much more of a fluid game. When i first played the demo i was scrambling around trying to get the ball, but i learned to be patient and really wait for the right opportunity.
On a side note..can someone tell me how the embed is supposed to work, when i copied the code and pasted it, it came up as an adobe flash icon, and wouldnt load the video when i previewed the post.
The main issue here is the defensive pressure on both CPU and HUM. When a ball is passed to your striker, he should be INSTANTLY pressured, physically - sometimes even double teamed. This is not the case, you see all the videos that people post, and it is so easy to pass to the players, they get open way to easily. Watch real footie, and notice how hard it is to gather a ball in the defensive third - sometimes even higher than that.
This is why it seems the game plays so fast and "fluid" for all the wrong reasons. There is no sense of pressure. EA have to get into the mind of the defender, because no matter what - the defender does not want the ball to even reach the foot of the attacker if he (the defender) has more than a 20% chance of getting near the ball.
I made a quick comparison video here. It should illustrate what I"m talking about. notice the stop and start in the first video, and see how the defensive pressure casues this despite having a low defensive line by Brazil. It took real creativity to somewhat break them down.
Second video is FIFA, look how much space the receiver gets, still has time to dribble without going backwards. It's too easy to pass into the lanes, the defenders don't cover well enough - and this is against Man City.
Notice the speed of the matches as well, the ball is not glued to players IRL, in FIFA it's a thread from ball to man.
It's the little things that EA needs to look at, there has to be a sense of nervousness when someone a player is dribbling, because any wrong touch could mean a mishap - that's how it is for even the professionals; same goes with the passing. It needs to stop being so mindless passing - there needs to be strategy.
Why EA can't figure this out is beyond me, it took me 2 mins to find a clip that represents the game IRL, what is hard about matching it?
I love FIFA though, I always will. I think it's the right direction, I look forward to using sliders - and I hope that saves the game for me. Till then, it's just not matching the real life counterpart.
For defending I still haven't completely figured it out. Sometimes I just manually contain a player using L2, sometimes bring a second defender over with R1, sometimes try standing tackles, and sometimes use the contain feature with X.
It seems like most times I'm just waiting for the ai to make a mistake in order to win the ball, very rarely can I go and just steal it away.
I also thought it was bad at first that the ai just contains you, giving you way more time on the ball. But it's actually better than 11 where you were instantly pressured. It's easier to hold the ball, look for open space or an open man, switch play to the other side of the field, etc. But sometimes it's too easy, like there were quite a few times where the ai let me basically walk into the box with aguero and didn't even pressure me at all.
I hear you. I love how defending feels for my user controlled player and I think the changes will really help in the long run, especially in head-to-head and OTP. However, the off the ball defending by my teammates feels too lax. I don't think it's far off from being a good balance, so perhaps the final build will address this. Plus, the man marking slider may help with this for offline play.
Yeah, it's possible the sliders may help. But since I buy FIFA mostly for online play....no help there.
It's definitely a step in the right direction, they just went too far and over compensated (surprise!). The new defending really had the opportunity to make a positive step forward, but failing to make your teammates defend is a terrible oversight.
Man, I just can't get used to the new defending. I changed the buttons around to make it a bit more comfortable, but I really think EA has swung to far.
What FIFA has now would be great, if your AI teammates played good defense as well. But they don't. They sit back, lay off and loosely contain. There's no tight marking, no defending passes, no tackles, nothing. Because of this the CPU can pass around pretty much at will. I tried even using the "High Pressure" Quick Tactic, and it really changes nothing.
I was having more luck with it last night. I did change up and move CPU player contain to the face buttons because it works much better for playing defense. However, I get why they put it on right bumper, because more than once the cpu contain turned into an errant pass when there was a fast turnover. You are holding that button a lot on defense and it can quickly turn on you. Still, its a compromise worth making because its just much easier to use with sprint.
So what I have been doing is using CPU contain to track the ball carrier while I move a second defender into position to take away the pass. Then manually switch and you will be up on the ball ready to make a play and the CPU will be in a better position to provide help. So you can get similar pressure with CPU help as you did in 11 but now it is up to user to take control and actually make the play.