FIFA Soccer 12 - Playstation 3

I have to admit that Fifa 12 takes a very promising step in the right direction. Anybody who buys yearly editions of sports games knows that the transition year-to-year is minimal, but when developers have competition they actually have to turn it up a notch. 2K destroys EA when it comes to NBA games and in this case, EA destorys Konami. Don't even bother with any football games, they're a joke and EA should be ashamed of themselves. Competition leads to better products for consumers and I hope PES is at least alive for the next few years to keep EA honest in upgrading FIFA. Let me break down the new features and the improvements for FIFA 12.Tactical Defending: Pretty solid new feature I would say. When defending, you have to hold the L2 button to "mark" the man with the ball and you now push circle to "tackle" him, or to hijack the ball. This takes precise timing and know how to use. You can't simply run around and push X, hoping the ball pops loose. Used correctly, tactical defending can interrupt passes, break up attacks, and ultimately swing things in your favor. If you mistime it or use it incorrectly, the man you're marking will run by you while you wiff.Player Impact Engine: Kind of gimmicky and kind of awesome. It's basically to add "realism" to the pitch by showing players colliding. Obviously it's a great feature to see rather than players running through each other or bouncing around. However, I find it comical sometimes the way they fall over. Running into the keeper often leads to your guy taking a face plant.Career Mode changes: They redesigned the entire layout of Career mode. Rather than having a calendar option to see your fixtures, it's placed horizontally above the main career screen. also, there is now multiple news feeds updating you on players' transactions, fixtures, transfer news, etc. not necessary but it's nice to have. Another new feature is player happiness. Players will tell you whether they want to be played and if they're not being played enough they'll want to hand in a transfer request. I like it because in reality players are pretty moody and demanding anyways. The one thing that takes away from this is, using Barcelona I started Messi basically every game for the entire month and at the end I wanted to rest him. He immediately responds, "I see that I'm on the bench, but I want to play because I'm in good form". So I suppose that turns into a judgment call, whether to keep an in-form player on the pitch or rest him and risk that extra boost in rating. Player happiness is coupled with "Form" which tells you how well they're playing at the moment. Player rating boosts or deductions are dictated by the "form" rating. I think at the beginning of every new month, the first four days are "media days" where players will tell you their happiness or unhappiness.Youth Academy: A feature I was pretty excited about. It's like FIFA 10 where you send scouts around the globe to pick up talent. This year you get to hire up to three scouts of various "experience" and "judgment", these ratings dependent on how much it costs to hire them. Sending them to talent rich countries like Spain, Brazil, and etc. gives you a great shot at landing future stars. Essentially, the each scout will hand pick a couple of players aged 14-16 and give you a range for potential player rating in the future. This range is large at first, sometimes like 50-91. You are given three options when evaluating players. Keep scouting them, reject them or to sign them. The more weeks you scout them the more info is unlocked about all of their stats and lowers the range of their potential player rating. The longer you wait means another team can sign the player away (Arsene might hijack your youth players!Upon signing players to your youth academy (no limit to how many players you can have), your academy quickly builds their stats and you can sign them to the senior squad.Transfer day deadline: Basically the last day of the transfer window. Great potential here, you have 10 hours to wheel-and-deal before the window closes. It seems simple but you can negotiate for players you weren't previously after and quickly sign them in that last 10 hours. Wasn't even trying to sign players until the deadline and was able to submit an offer, get rejected, submit a better offer, get accepted, negotiate a deal with the player and sign him at the deadline.Game play itself: I can't really comment on the game play since I haven't played it as much as needed yet. It definitely feels different from Fifa 11 which was pretty stiff, not as much as PES, but needed work. I like the whole "Precision Dribbling" feature, lets you dribble with the likes of Xavi and Iniesta. Haven't entire figured out how to perfect it, but the feature is there.In all, this was a pretty solid upgrade from the year before. I never expect massive overhauls of game play and features from one year to the next but the additions EA added this time around were good. Now if only EA could buy the rights to UEFA and get all the domestic cups' rights.....

Fifa 12 has excelled in leaps and bounds from Fifa 11. This is the game with the most authentic gameplay that literarily puts you in the shoes of the footballers. The one area that the game has improved on is the overall gameplay. There is no longer the hustling and jostling in the penalty box as in Fifa 11 where seems like all players were attaracted to the ball on your feet like a magnet making the game more like a rugby match. The movement, twists and turns of the players are fluid and with the proper use of the left axis you can leave defenders biting dust. The overall player AI has improved vastly and the goal keepers seem to be better as well. (Atleast mine was as Peter Cech made lots of stunning saves).The player impact technology makes the game a whole lot of fun with collisions resulting in different results every time.Next comes the hard part. This year EA has introduced something named Tactical Defending. This was to ensure that the game is as close to real life football as possible. Moving away from the legacy defending (which you can turn ON in the game if you wish), the defensive work is no longer about going to the feet of the player and pressing the X button to make a tackle and get the ball. It usually resulted in a lot of breaks in the fluid gameplay. You need to be careful this time with defending. With Tactical defending, you will need to jockey around the player with the ball waiting for the perfect moment to make a tackle. If you don't tackle at the right moment the player will outfox you leaving your defender biting dust. Only after jockeying around (That is the term EA has used for using the defender to tactically cover the ball preventing the player from making a move), you will make a tackle at the right moment when you think you can win over the ball. The sliding tackles look more realistic. A good tackle will result in excellent defensive work while more often than not, a bad tackle will let you have a straight red card. The tactical defending will take some time to master so its recommended that you practice a lot and don't give up. (Being an intermediate player I have had a lot of trouble and seems like every time the opposition attacked me, they just ripped open my defense. Hmmmmmm........I need to practice more).The visuals havent changed a lot so people may not notice much difference in the graphics from Fifa 11. But EA has added a lot of new player animations.Last but not the least: Andy Gray is no longer in the commentary team. Its Martin Tyler and Allan Smith this time.Pros:1) Fluid and more authentic gameplay2) EA Sports Football Club (Makes your every achievement count as experience points which would go as a support to the actual real world club you support. There are leagues to determine which is the top club every week and who gets relegated. Pretty Cool.)3) Improved AI.4) Tactical defending ensures that players are equally engrossed when involved in defensive battles since a mistake can cost them the match.Cons:1) No improvement in overall graphics.2) Tactical defending takes some time to master. I have already seen few forums with people complaining about it and switching back to legacy defending. However, legacy defending cannot be used in Online modes. So my advice is to practice and master this new aspect.As a last word .........See you in Fifa 12......I am Intellix

My buddies and I started playing UFC together, which was a ton of fun but only allowed two people to play at a time. We then switched to NHL hockey - more fun since four of us could play at the same time but none of us were real hockey fans. Someone mentioned soccer, so I picked up a copy of FIFA 12. Now game night has swollen to five guys and all we do is play FIFA! Tons of fun. Lots of ways to make the game accessible for beginners but still challenging for more advanced players - like me. Game mechanics are smooth and exciting. Controls are simple but allow for many fancy moves. Game play is solid. The only negative is that my neighbors in the apartment below have come to dread game night since we end up getting awful rowdy. You've never seen such excitement from five middle aged guys playing to a nil-nil tie.You can play on the same team or against each other. Be warned, though. We often end up playing 2 vs. 1, and the solo player has a distinct advantage over the team of 2 since the solo player ends up controlling the player with the ball every time. But there's something very sweet about hooking up for a nicely played through ball for a goal with a partner.Should you get FIFA 13 over 12? I don't play online at all, and I hear the main improvements in 13 lies in the online aspects of the game. 12 suits my needs.One more thing - you can play up to 14 people in local coop - !!!! I keep hoping to get a solid four versus four - I wouldn't have enough chairs for everybody otherwise.