Thursday, May 05, 2005
I realise I am not exactly a FIFA Soccer friend, but with the agonising lack of any Winning Eleven I just had to get my fix and pick it up. And while it's not bad... it's not good, either. It'd be more than passable if not for sheer sloppiness. The graphics are muddy, animation suspect, control loose, and the loading is atrocious. I'm used to waiting 20+ seconds before games in EA Sports titles -- that's a given, and I'm fine with it. What's unacceptable are the lagtimes within games and menus. I'm not kidding when I say it took me five minutes to transfer Fernando Morientes to Liverpool. You press the button to change leagues, then you have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to load the league. Then you press it again to scroll to the next league. You can't just hit the button four times in a row and wait for it to catch up; you have to wait for it to load every league in your path between "ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP" and "SPANISH PRIMERA LIGA". Oh, then you have to wait while you switch between teams in the league; from ZARAGOZA up to REAL MADRID and then from ARSENAL down to LIVERPOOL. Even that's not as bad as the in-game lag -- kick the ball out of the field (be it out of play or in the goal) and it freezes for another 3-5 seconds to load the reaction animation that FIFA has always been so damned proud of.
Still, there are some positives. I really like the mid-season mode, that's a clever addition. But my favourite are the Challenges. I've loved the Challenges (or Scenarios) ever since they made an appearance in the SNES International Superstar Soccer/Perfect Eleven games. You're put in a historical situation where a team has come back (or in FIFA's Rout case thrashed another team) and you have to emulate their performance in a limited amount of time. So for instance you could replay France's last-minute comeback against England at Euro 2004 by scoring two goals in the last ten minutes. It's a great idea, but like the rest of FIFA it's pretty flawed. Still, I appreciate the idea and the effort so instead of just bitching I'll offer some creative criticism and send some ideas out for the next game:
- CONTEXT: Part of the drama in Challenge Mode are the stories behind the comebacks. Since there seems to be an effort from EA to eschew just doing the standard ones everyone knows in order to get a fairly broad range of great comebacks from the Premiership to the MLS, it'd be great to have a short blurb (you can display it during the load screen!) explaining the story of the match. Even something as short as: "Arsenal completed a historic unbeaten season last year, but now they're 3-1 down to a determined Middlesbrough side at home with only 35 minutes to play. Can the Gunners fire back and keep their incredible streak going?" That gives you some idea of the story and flavour, who you are, what the situation is, and why you have to haul yourself back into this game.
- FAMOUS SCENARIOS: Of course, the flipside is to just include more famous comebacks that people remember. It's pretty shocking to see some of the most famous ones of them all missing from that list. Indeed arguably the most famous one of them all -- Manchester United's European Cup victory over Bayern Munich in 1999 where both goals came in the last minute -- is missing entirely. Ditto Deportivo's famous comeback from 3-0 down to PSG at home to win 4-3 30 minutes later in the same competition.
- ATMOSPHERE: This is a really simple one. Again, there's high drama in most of these comebacks. So why not throw in a couple of extra voice samples for the commentators to reflect it? If I score a winner in one of those challenges in the last minute, I want to hear Motson scream something like "AND THEY'VE DONE IT! UNBELIEVABLE!" rather than his usual quiet announcement of a goal. It's really only a matter of adding in two soundbites, or even more if you want to really set it up ("they're running out of time here Ally, think they can come back?" etc), and it adds SO much.
- HISTORICAL ACCURACY: This one involves a lot more work, and with tight PSP launch deadlines I fully understand and appreciate why this didn't happen, but on the other hand in a dream world this would be ideal. When I loaded up the Arsenal - Chelsea scenario, while it clearly marked it as a tie from last year... the teams were from this year. This is especially obvious with Chelsea, which overhauled its team in the summer. I'd like to play the scenarios with the right teams and players; indeed, I'd like to play it with the exact set of players that were really on the pitch at the moment you take over the game. It adds a hell of a lot (especially since FIFA readily admits some of the challenge matches took place back in the 1990s) to play as the exact players, especially since in many cases matches have turned after say key players have left or been sent off. For instance, in that hypothetical Man U - Bayern challenge, Bayern's lynchpin and inspiration Lothar Matthaus was taken off over ten minutes from the end, disrupting them defensively, while United had key players in Scholes and captain Roy Keane missing through suspension. If you were to pick it up from 10 minutes left to play, with those three players out (and unable to come in!) it'd make a HUGE impact on the game and alters the challenge dramatically.
I really hope they incorporate some of these ideas into the next version. As it is, including Challenges at all is a very promising start, so I hope they can build on it.
Posted at 6:33 AM
