Thursday, August 12, 2010

FIFA 10

So I've written more then enough about this game and so let it be written here as a quick and final review as this is a run on sentence and FIFA 11 comes out soon.

STORY: 2
Sports game; it's going to get a low score. But you know what? It's the first year I got into the single create a player thing. It was fun and you really feel like you are building skills all role playing like. It's a slow climb, but not a grind. My stories were/are written in 32 team tournaments where league two English teams are taking on the MLS.

OBJECTIVES: 3
Most solid of all sports games I've played. Scoring a goal is still a hands up moment. I don't feel like my objectives are laid waste like Madden. In the final minutes of a game, Madden will steal your girlfriend and take her to the French Riviera if it so chooses. I didn't experience that here. To put this in perspective I give Dr J v Larry Bird on the Amiga a 5. Yup, I'm whipping that out.

IN GAME DESIGN: 4
Impressive. Menus are clean (maybe a bit too many). Easy to navigate. And on the PS3? START BUTTON MEANS; START. On the XBOX 360 "press start" means hit any button. I go way back with the start button. If you say start button, you better mean it. Presentation design changes a bit with bigger games with different score and time and field views. It's subtle, but effective. Opening game load screens are the best I've ever experienced with a player v keeper thing. Excellent. The player creation is slick and very well done. Easy to navigate and looks good. Menus on the right in bubbles the tree out to sub cats. Standard, but good.

IN GAME ARTWORK: 3
Needs work. Games in play look good, but get in close and things fall apart. Low shoulders on every player are not a deal breaker, but the dudes at EA need to look at a human body. A real one. Clothing is also an issue. Things seem parashooty. Not a word but whatever.

MUSIC: 4
Euro junk says American I. But I love it. It fits and doesn't take away from the experience. I like the EA puts in the latest from bands. It's a tightrope, but here it works.

AUDIO: 5
Extremely effective. Minor chants and whatnot. Whistles from fans can get annoying when you are a one star team playing the Brazil national team. Demanding damn fans. But I think the audio is top shelf coming thru my stereo in 5.1.

GAMEPLAY: 5
Yes a 5. It's one of the funnest things out there. Play it, love it.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT: 4
Goes hand in hand with Gameplay. It stinks to loose, feels great to win. It's balanced and fun.

LONGEVITY: 5
This game is glued into my PS3. Fun for many hours. So much to do and so many teams and so many options. The shear number of types of tournaments keeps me coming back. Also the "Live Season" is pretty impressive. Tracking your results verse what actually happened is surprisingly interesting. It is a well integrated system with the web. It works and is impressive. EA could be doing more here I think if they had reasonable competition, but as it is... groundbreaking.

PACKAGE DESIGN AND PACKAGE ART: 3
Meh. They didn't embarrass themselves.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: 5
This one is out of 10. Just another yearly release. Impressive, but I'll be seeing this one on thrift store shelves in 10 years with all the other sports games.

XFACTOR: 10
Oh. It's a ten. Play it. Love it.

So, in conclusion it gets a 74% from me. Kinda blah right? NO! History has been made here. It's my highest rated sports game I've every played. Deservedly so. Better then Dr J v Larry Bird. It's that good as far as sports games go.

The End.

The new Madden release is here now, and just like every other year I'll probably pick it up. It's like a sports game tax. I'll enjoy it for a bit but then FIFA 11 comes out late this month. Will it kill Madden before the NFL season even starts? A true test for this die hard NFL fan.

3 comments:

Bleeno said...

"Menus on the right in bubbles the tree out to sub cats. " - quite a sentence..

Bleeno said...

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http://daytum.com/

Larry W Johnson II said...

my favorite sentence. digging into the site now, good stuff