Why do I buy these games? Really? I don’t follow football, I don’t like particularly like football and the only time I get interested in football is when the world cup is on and even then I’m usually supporting either Japan or Mexico. So why did I get FIFA 11? Well around the time FIFA 09 came out my friends kept telling me to get the game, after about a week of nagging me I finally gave in and bought it at a reasonable price, so having played FIFA 09 and FIFA 10 I think I can give a fair opinion on this year’s instalment of the series.
First let’s get the new stuff out of the way, this year the Be a Pro mode and Manager Mode have been rolled up into one with a new mode called Career Mode, when you start a new career you can choose to be a player with the opportunity of becoming a manager, be a straight up manager or a player manager. This makes it a hell of a lot easier for you as a player as you don’t have to worry about carrying your stats over as a pro between game modes. As a player who has finished a season I can say that so far it’s been a pleasant experience. While it’s not as exciting as I’d hope it to be you get a nice sense of progression with your pro, you won’t get picked for a lot matches which has you watching simulated games ala Football Manager but when the manager gives you a shot it gives you a real push to give it your all hoping to make the regular 11 squad.
One new addition that they’ve added this year is Be a Goalkeeper, because goalkeepers aren’t pros right? This works fine for the most part, the game does feel like it’s playing itself with all the assists on but once you’ve got the controls nailed and some stat bonuses to your pro you’ll probably end up turning them off. Adding a pro to the mix makes for some very interesting moments in Pro Clubs, I’m not going to say they are positive or negative experiences but experiences nonetheless. Let’s hope for a Be a Referee mode next year.
Aside from that though a lot of the additional features in FIFA 11 are more under the hood tweaks and balances, such as the personality plus system which are essentially perks, these range from Long Throws to Injury Prone. All of these personality traits effect character animations, so while my friend’s quick and agile pro has a lengthy stride my brute strength pro seemed to run in a more hunched over marching fashion, it’s a bit weird but it adds new life to the pitch. Like I say though unless you spent countless amounts of hours on FIFA 10 you probably won’t be able to tell the difference with a lot of this stuff straight away. There are plenty of new game mechanics for FIFA fans to sink their teeth into; I had to have someone explain it to me at first being a FIFA novice but you’ll notice significant improvements over dribbling, passing and fighting for the ball all of which make the game more challenging, for me at least anyway.
Just when I thought the FIFA games couldn’t look any better, FIFA 11 came along and told me otherwise, perhaps some assets were taking from the World Cup game, I can’t say as I didn’t play it but man, FIFA 11 looks great. Characters have a more naturalistic and lifelike motion to them, the animation is superb aside from a few celebrations oddities that you should be able to overlook and the overall cleaner presentation of the game makes for a very welcoming experience from the get-go. I couldn’t possibly imagine how FIFA 12 is going to top the graphical fidelity of 11... just thinking about it makes my brain hurt. You can’t complain about the authentic sound design either, although I prefer listening to my own music/podcasts when playing FIFA 11’s career mode for the purpose of the review I did decide to crank up the volume. Andy Grey and Martin Tyler are back to provide quite frankly offensive commentary when you don’t want to hear it the most, in all seriousness they do provide a good job and there are next to no repeats on a per match basis, the soundtrack, while not for me, is perfectly serviceable for a FIFA game, I couldn’t possibly name any tracks from the soundtrack but I’m sure if you keep up to date with chart music you’ll find something in there that you’ll recognise. If you do happen to take advantage of the creation centre featured in this year’s FIFA you can set your own chants and music, too bad I play the game on mute.
Unfortunately the EA servers have been acting up again, during all of my Pro Clubs games I had with my friends we encountered severe lag to the point where we had to play another game mode or just another game altogether, it’s incredibly disappointing but if it’s anything like last year a patch will be forthcoming ready to fix the issues. One on one matches work perfectly fine from what I’ve tested, same can be said with other online modes, but for someone unknown reason the Pro Clubs mode, the mode that I was most looking forward to playing, are simply too unstable at the moment.
What more could you ask for? A fantastically structured career mode offering different types of play modes for people, unmatched local play both competitively and cooperatively, a sleuth of online game modes and a persistent player system. Well I could ask for a patch but aside from that if you like football, socialising and perhaps the two together then I couldn’t recommend this year’s FIFA anymore.