I ordered it and it is not here yet, but been playing the demo. What are people's thoughts on it so far? I am pretty dang impressed just from what little I've played of the demo. To me the biggest change this year has to be that the AI is way, way more aggressive. This combined with slower-paced, more realistic movement serves to make me really feel like I am fighting to even get near the opponent's goal. In previous years I felt like I could get to any spot on the field almost at will... no longer. I feel like I now need to squeeze off shots with inches to spare more often, instead of getting 15 good shots per game easily and getting around defenders at will with my wingers. I also like that tackling seems a bit easier. I favored the change from the ludicrously-easy one-button defense in previous years, because it had been too easy by far... but it had swung too far the other way. Not that I couldn't *defend*, I would still shut out my opponent with reasonably often, but I did it just by shutting down passing lanes and forcing bad shots. Never ever by piling up a lot of tackles. Not sure how I feel about the tweak the reviews have said they made to transfers in Career Mode, which is mostly what I play... apparently now you cannot even see opposing teams' player ratings anymore, you instead need to spend a bunch of time scouting all their ratings. In theory sounds kind of cool... in reality, I already spent forever seeking out players to buy in Career Mode, even when I *did* know all their ratings. I can easily see this feature becoming a frustrating time-suck. I can also picture myself just getting around it by going to roster management outside of career mode and just searching for players that way, writing them down, then searching for them again in career mode.
Im getting it today after work and starting my career mode. Going to take a League 2 team in England and build them up through a youth system!
I always do that! So fun. For a few years I did it with Shrewsbury. Since they got promoted, last year I did it with Bradford City. Now if they would just get player loans and player salary demands to work like they should, it would be an even better experience than it already is. Too bad reviews never seem to mention if they've fixed those issues or not.
It's okay. I'm thinking I'm gonna get fifa every other year. The change isn't enough between editions. It's slower paced and has cleaner animations, but that's about it. I like the years a big innovation is made. Ie. defense, be a pro, etc.
I've started doing that with my other sports games, Madden and NHL. Not buying either this year, will wait for next year. And I stopped buying NBA 2k because I haven't liked how the controls and animations loosened up since 2009. Will probably pick up again in 2015 along with Madden & NHL. But Fifa? Gotta get it every year. I spend so much time with it that even small updates mean a lot. For me the far more aggressive (and just generally more effective) AI justifies the upgrade on its own. It just... FEELS more sim because that. Everything else is just gravy.
This year I decided to take Portsmouth as my team. Thought it's a pretty good story to come in and try to turn them around. They Were in the premier leage and then got relegated all the way down to league 2 within 4 years. On top of that they went through financial administration because the ownership couldn't afford anything anymore. Now they just completed the sell of the club to a new set of owners so it's a fresh start. It's a good story if I could build them back up
Agree on madden but the adding of the read option this year and better running feel has made this my favorite madden ever
The game arrived for me last night. Played 8 or so full matches with my favorite club, Inter Milan, to try to figure out what formation I want to use most of the time this year. I think this will be the first time in 5 years I use something besides 4-2-3-1. I do actually like the 3-1-4-2 Inter is using. So now I'm trying to decide which League 2 team to take. It'll be either Chesterfield, because they have the best roster (Darikwa FTW), or Portsmouth like you, because they have triple the wage budget of anyone else, which would make putting together a team from scratch a lot easier. Either way, I expect it to be a blast like it always is.
Hmm. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the game compared to last year. This is the first time in a very long time where I'm not sure whether I can say this year's edition is just "better." Rather, it's different. First, the menus are an unqualified "worse." They pretty much did a Windows8-wannabe thing, with lots of big graphics-intensive tiles everywhere. Would make more sense if it was a touchscreen interface. And beyond just making it more confusing to get around in general, the menus are unbelievably laggy. I keep thinking maybe EA will wake up next year and focus on making the menus snappy and responsive, as this problem has existed for years. But no, it just keeps getting worse. Swear to god, in a lot of situations there is a full 3 or 4 seconds of input delay. It's absurd. I can only hope that the menus run better on next-gen systems. As far as what's "different"... it looks like they went the extreme route in trying to resolve the issue that it was too easy to beat defenders 1-on-1 and then do a finesse shot across goal. First, they seem to have massively reduced the impact of the speed / acceleration ratings. On the one hand yay, because in every previous year all you really needed was a team full of fast guys and you were set. On the other hand, it seems a little overdone. If I shake a guy with a really fast winger and burst past him, he's going to catch up with me after a couple seconds, even if he's way slower than me by rating. It seems like it's completely impossible to run by anyone anymore. Also, there is basically always a double-team from the AI when you run near to the endline. That again plays into the "no more easy beating the defense 1-on-1 on the wing for an easy score." In fact, now that I think on it, ratings in general seem to matter a bit less. In previous years, when I started up a Career Mode with League 2 team, I could really tell the difference when I played a team in my league, compared to playing a Premier League team in a cup match. This year? Well, I played Liverpool last night in the Capitol One Cup (with Portsmouth). And... oddly enough, playing Liverpool didn't seem much different from playing a League 2 team. I beat them 1-0 in overtime on the first try (on Pro difficulty... I don't feel like I can handle Legendary yet in this game). So yeah, that's a bit weird. Ratings should matter, after all. I do want Liverpool to be more of a challenge than a League 2 no-hoper. Also, if you play it every year you'd notice that they keep making massive adjustments to the effectiveness of headers. Sometimes they are worthless, other times they are overpowered. This year, they are insanely overpowered. Last year I probably scored, oh... 15-20% of my goals off headers. This year so far it's more like 60%. Your players don't even need good header ratings either. Even your 5'7" midfielder who can't jump and has 45 heading accuracy can pound a brutal header past the goalie. Ball physics are also way way looser. I guess they wanted to give the feeling that the ball could always get away from you, that the ball wasn't always going to stay glued to your feet. This change I definitely approve of... after all, not everyone is Messi. Overall it's just a considerably more "sim" type of game, with a much slower pace, largely due to how much harder it is to keep control of the ball and how much more considered your approach needs to be, since beating defenders 1-on-1 is so much more difficult and you can't exploit speed easily. So yeah... it's just different. I do applaud that they made it more sim, but some part of me misses the "arcade-perfect" feel of the older games.
I'm really interested by this since I've seen a lot of the same complaints from people. I play on XBOX so I've had a different experience so far. First the laggy menus is a PS3 only issue right now, but they have confirmed they are going to patch it. As for the beating guys 1 v 1 I've found some success in moving slow and methodical with the ball, rarely pressing spring except for the final burst to get around. I find that my speed players can creat separation and maintain it as well on break aways. And I also haven't noticed anything with the headers that a lot of people have brought up. I'm converting probably roughly the same percentage as last year. As I said, I'm not sure if this is all a matter of difference of consoles like the menus are. I'm the game will be much better though with a few more patches and it will play better than 13 across the board for the most part.
I have the EA Season ticket so I played it on early release and then got the game on release day. There are some things that I like about it compared to last years. They have finally made touch, dribbling and pace correct. No longer can you dribble easily with CB down the midfield and pass it around. Even a pass back to a Goalie will bounce off a bit more which is much more realistic. Basically the way dribbling is and changing directions with players is very much dependent on how good the player is dribbling. You can't just hold down turbo go from direction to direction and have the ball glued to your feet. You have to really think about the physics of it all when you are playing which I love. I think they dumbed down the pace as well. Last year it was too easy to just pick a pace heavy team and go down the wings and you could nothing about it. This year it has definitely been improved. The one thing that I do notice is that headers are a bit overpowered. It's a bit easier to cross and get a header in. I know they mentioned that they would put a little bit more emphasis on target men in the game but I think people are already taking advantage of it. Overall I love the game and I think they made some good steps in the right direction. I love playing people that actually build up an attack rather than running back and forth trying to counter and lob balls over the top.
Also, here are some sliders to give a shot to see if it improves player movement and speed differences at all. I use these, but I'm not sure if they really change much. It's worth a shot I suppose. Gamespeed - slow Sprint - 62 Acceleration - 48 Shot speed - 51 Pass speed - 58 Just leave everything else the same, or on whatever settings you want. It might help, it might not. But it's worth a try.
Man i seem to be raging everytime me and my buddy play this game. It is so fun and rewarding when you score, but everything else that takes place feels unbelievably frustrating. -terrible foul calls -predictible corners -the pole/iron is a ball magnet
be prepared for a lot of changes. Especially for defense. Long shots are a key, unless your a very good skills guy. Oh and goalies are set to super sayian 7
:grin: I actually had a moment last night where I hit one bar, it rolled all the way across the goal line to the other bar... and it clearly hit the bar at a 45 degree angle (inside the goal). Actual physics dictate it was a guaranteed goal. But the game decided it should bounce off an invisible wall and back out. It's a really huge change. It does feel way more sim, with no more superhuman acceleration. I really enjoy it. I feel like 13 will end up being the last Fifa game that still felt a bit arcadey.
Haha... no seriously, stuff like that is rare enough. Something like that maybe happens once every 10 games for me, and when it does I don't get mad about it, I just laugh. Trust me, if I didn't like it, I wouldn't have put in 100+ hours in career mode. I'm half a season away from the Premier League with Portsmouth. Been a fun ride.
