FIFA 12

You would have to imagine that by now the suits over at EA Sports are laughing all the way to the bank. Year after year the masses line up in droves to pick up the latest offering in the FIFA franchise - a football series which, to my aging mind, feels like it’s been banging on since the dawn of time. Granted, there have been dark times too, those grim years when the once genre-defining footie title was left picking up the scraps from the table of Pro Evolution Soccer’s glory days. But ever since the FIFA team got their groove back - lets call it since FIFA 08, give or take a year - it’s been EA Sport’s franchise which has been perched safely on the top of the premier league. Now, with EA Sports once again asking gamers to shell out for an annual update, it's time to step onto the pitch and see if enough has changed to warrant yet another purchase.

Those eager to cry out “It’s more of the same, just with shinier bells and whistles!” should sit quietly and hear me out. I’ll admit it, we’ve grown accustomed to incremental annual updates from anything with an EA Sports logo slapped across the front of the box, so your skepticism isn’t unfounded. But there are fundamental differences here - differences far beyond just a new coat of paint for the stadium and a fresh layer of roll-on lawn on the pitch. EA Sports has been making bold claims about changing the way you play FIFA for this latest installment, and after a couple of matches it becomes clear that this wasn’t just marketing nonsense.

In fact, the differences to the way the game plays are evident within moments on the pitch. Series veterans will instantly sense a change in tempo here - the on-field action feels slightly but noticeably slower than last years edition. It’s far from sluggish, but this subtle change in pace gives rise to a more deliberate, meticulous style of play. A lot of that comes down to what is probably the most obvious change this year: the new focus on “tactical defending”. In FIFA 12, defending is a far more demanding task, a task which requires patience and weighted consideration of your every move. Those daredevil sliding tackles which put a brutal stop to so many attacking motions in your FIFA past are all but a distant memory. Pull that same style here, and your little men will be sliding around like some kind of comedy Football on Ice fiasco. Instead, defending now comes down to containing your opponent, not assaulting him. It’s a more hands-on approach than before, requiring judgement on your part of when to get stuck in and when to hold off, making for a more flowing, more intelligent game of give and take in your half of the field.

This new approach to the defensive game is matched by a vastly improved sense of physicality and player interaction on the pitch - players react to one another in a far more real way than we’ve seen before. This new Player Impact Engine was another key marketing concept building up to the release of FIFA 12, and it’s a feature which has been very successfully implemented. We’ve already seen developments in past FIFA releases which focused on physicality, where player interactions were settled by a number of variables based on speed, strength and so on, but this year they have taken it to a new level.

Most notably, each player now reacts to impact and collisions with opponents and teammates in a far more natural way, with actual character model physics taking the place of a set of canned animations. Sure, this does mean that occasionally you’ll see limbs flailing in unnatural ways, but that's a rarity; most of the time this new system means that when players connect, the effects are dynamic. Clip the ankle of a charging forward and he may stumble, losing control of the ball just long enough for you to slip in and save the day; run head-long into a stocky defender, and if the laws of physics so demand it, don’t be surprised to see your player tipped face first into the grass. Where his teammate, flying in on support, trips over his outstretched leg and lands inelegantly on top of him. As you can imagine, this all means that the game of soccer that you now see on your screen is more like watching the real thing than ever before. And probably more importantly, it feels more like playing the real thing too.

The new precision dribbling element is another more subtle but still notable difference to the action between the goal posts this year. With the touch of a button, you can slow things down and focus on your fancy footwork, giving you even more delicate ball control - it’s a system which can open up all kinds of new attack opportunities in the right hands, but I’ll admit that I didn’t have the finesse required to make it worth the trouble. There have been marked improvements to the standard dribbling and passing play too, making it both more challenging and more rewarding to weave a fluid motion between defenders on-route to that game-clinching last minute goal. Crucially, while you do have more control over your players than before, you rarely feel overwhelmed by button input combinations, so gameplay feels as fluid and intuitive as ever. And even if it does all get a bit much for you, the customizable AI difficulty means that you can tweak your opponents skill level to balance the level of challenge to suit your needs.

A new FIFA would never be allowed out onto the pitch without the obligatory visual upgrade, and this year’s version offers pretty much what we would expect. Player models are brilliantly detailed, from their facial expressions to the fabric textures of their kits to the smallest personal details. FIFA 11 looked stunning in motion and standing still, and that tradition has carried into this edition too. Once again the stadia are lovingly recreated and offer an inspiring sense of atmosphere when the crowds are in full voice, and coupled with two commentary teams you can be sure that FIFA 12 creates a completely enthralling recreation of the beautiful game. You can always rely on EA Sports to deliver the kind of presentation that puts others to shame, and so it is with this one - it’s all so impeccably put together, from menu screens to the broadcast-style pre-match presentations.

Changes and additions to the game off the field are less revolutionary than what goes on on that hallowed grass, but as always there are a variety of game modes to try out. The absorbing career options will have you building your budding soccer pro from a benchwarmer to a Ronaldo-esque superstar, or if you prefer to witness the game from the sidelines there is an improved management mode too - now with more realistic transfer market activity, player scouting and more variables determining player development. Those raised on a stat-heavy diet of Football Manager won’t have their hunger satisfied, but it’s a far more in-depth management element than we’ve seen in a FIFA title before. Your standard tournaments and leagues are all present and accounted for too, and with all of the official teams, logos, player names, stadiums and everything else that reminds you just how much money EA must have poured into these licenses over the years. Money well spent, if you ask me, because this is unquestionably the most authentic football title on the market.

Ultimately all of these game modes - including a host of online options from quick ranked matches to dynamic leagues and tournaments, as well as the clever scenario set-up which gives players topical challenges based on happenings in the football world - serve the same purpose: to provide context for the actual experience of playing a sublime game of virtual soccer. FIFA 12, with its astoundingly polished exterior, feature-packed gameplay options and robust online offerings, would be nothing without the game of football which is at the heart of it all. We thought that EA Sports would have a hard task to improve on FIFA 11, but this latest iteration easily outshines its predecessor, making last year’s brilliant effort seem instantly outdated. By crafting a game of football that not only looks amazing but feels more like the real thing than ever before, EA Sports has scored yet another sizzling goal right in the top corner.

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