Tag Archives: Football

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Pro Evolution Soccer 6

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Ok, I’ll fess up – Until Pro Evolution Soccer 6 I hadn’t really played any of Konami’s soccer games. Sure, I had seen them in action, and had a kick around with a mate, but never really explored it at any great length. FIFA was my soccer game of choice, mainly because it was pretty, had players and locations I could identify, and was easy to pick up and play. But FIFA has its faults and I was always left unsatisfied, hoping that the next game would improve on the fact that the game always seemed like a poor simulation of the Beautiful Game.

Case in point – Apart from FIFA 2006 (for original Xbox) I’ve pretty much sold or traded my past copies of FIFA because I can’t see myself playing them beyond a few months. But there must be something about the number 6, as I won’t be trading my copy of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 any time soon, well at least until PES 7 comes out. Because when I play this game, I feel as I am really playing a game of soccer. It’s like every gripe I’ve ever had about any soccer game has been addressed and fixed. There are still some flaws though, which is of course to be expected, but call me a convert.

What strikes me most about this game is how it seems like a real soccer game. My major annoyance with other soccer games is you can punt the ball forward, but there never seems anyone to be in place. Even with complex team and individual placement organisation appearing in the very latest games, I always felt my team wasn’t up to the task of getting in position when plays were made. I used to think it could be because I tend to pick lower ranked teams (go Villa!), but even when picking Brazil or Arsenal team AI seemed to be lacking.

In PES, players actually take runs to get into position, they run on the ball, and the game never seems to lag behind the play of the ball. I can’t pinpoint for sure if it’s the fact that passes to teammates are tighter, or if their on field positioning is better, or even if the controls are more precise, but I’ve found myself much more able to do exactly what I want my team to do. I never felt I was wrestling with the player as if they were determined to do their own thing, like bolt down the pitch, even though the ball was behind him.

Players seem to respond quickly and more realistically to what’s happening around them. FIFA introduced the trick stick, but players in PES 6 automatically turn the ball away from an opposing player, or tap in through their legs to another teammate, and it’s all so smooth and natural, it’s beautiful. It’s the fact that it all seems so easy and seamless that makes it a truly better game. And, unlike so often in other soccer games, I never felt a mistake was anything but my fault… well, most of the time. If I shot the ball and it went wide, it was generally because I wasn’t in a good position, or was being pressured by the opposition so lost my cool, or held the button too long to shoot the ball. Frees and Cards given felt like the result of me tackling from behind, or slide tackling when an opponent was off the ball, not some arbitrary decision on the game’s behalf. If the opposition got through my defence, it was because of a mistake I made somewhere, either in having my defence too far forward, or by not concentrating on the play.

The main thrust of the PES 6 is the long and involved Master league, in which you select a team and work your way up through the various league divisions. This is quite in depth, and the ability to refine your team’s playing ability is quite daunting. From being able to choose not only formations, but variations within formations – so you might have a 4-4-3 formation but choose to drop the main striker back a little to provide more midfield support – to being able to determine individual runs, to determining forms of attack and defence, the serious soccer gamer can tweak to their hearts delight. And this does have an impact on how the game is played. A change in formation can be the difference between a win and a draw.

Because EA owns the rights to most of the teams with an exclusive deal with FIFA, many team and player names have to be substituted for others, which is a shame. Long time PES players may be used to this, but for someone new to the series it can be a little off-putting. However, given that PES has a lot more leagues and teams than FIFA 07’s pitiful line up, fans should be a lot more happier and be able to find their team here. There are 4 licensed leagues; Eredivisie, Spain La Liga, France Ligue 1 and Italy Serie A, plus 11 licensed international teams, including Australia, plus a further 15 licensed teams including Arsenal, Celtic and Juventus. One interesting omission is the ability to change team and player names. In the past everything was editable, so even though Aston Villa is called West Midlands Village, you used to be able to edit the team names, player names, and the kits to a much better approximation of the real team. This is absent from the Xbox360 version for some unfathomable reason.

PES 6 looks great too. Sure, it’s not truly next-gen as the game engine is the same one used in the past, but the player models look great, and their likeness is even better than FIFA, which to me is pretty strange given EA’s advanced technology in this area. The animations are smooth and quite varied, and the stadiums feel exciting. Having a ref on field jumping away from the ball as well as lines men who follow the play and signal with flags adds even more authenticity. Unfortunately I found other areas of presentation to be less than ideal. The icons are confusing and small, menus require far too many button presses, and the whole feel is positively archaic compared to other soccer games.

Audio wise the game is good, with the usual crowd cheers and players calling for the ball, but the commentary of Peter Brackley and Sir Trevor Brooking can be a little repetitive, and they lack the enthusiasm of other soccer game commentators. It is funny how they use fake player names though. The music on the menus sounds like something you’d hear in an old soccer review show from the 90s – it’s kind of European techno-ish, but it too sounds outdated.

Online the game plays OK. The set up and connection is fine, but the game suffers from terrible lag, especially when playing people from other countries. The rules and penalties for pausing and disconnecting are a welcome addition, although as in many online games there are a few people who use exploits and ruin the fun for everyone. And if you disconnect because of the bad lag, you get a negative mark against your name, but if it’s unplayable then that seems a little unfair too.

Conclusion:
PES 6 is one of the finest soccer games I have played. Everything when playing a match feels fantastic. Scoring goals takes hard work, and when you do you feel as though you really have earned it. You feel in total control over what happens, and although sometimes luck plays a part, it feels more like the luck you find in a real life soccer match, rather than a fault or glitch of the game. The presentation lets the game down however, and lack of ability to edit team names and kits is a feature sorely missed.

Pros:
Excellent simulation of the beautiful game
Long and deep Master League
Scoring goals takes work and patient, but the pay off feels great
Excellent range of teams and leagues to choose from compared to other xbox360 soccer games

Cons
Steep learning curve could put off players of other sports games.
Poor presentation in menus
Lack of team editing a real shame, given the lack of real life teams available
Very laggy when playing online.

88/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

FIFA 07

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Xbox 360 owners felt pretty ripped off by EA after the universally loathed Road to World Cup was offered as a launch title. Why they could have just slapped an Xbox360 sticker on FIFA 2006 is beyond me, as that was a fantastic game and easily the best in the series in a long while.

2006 FIFA World Cup improved the series greatly, providing a solid title that bode well for the future releases of EA’s franchise. Although it used the same FIFA engine as the xbox version, it featured brilliant presentation, a whole heap of options, and a gameplay system that somewhat refined the way FIFA has played in the past, a little for the better and a little for the worst.

Enter FIFA 07. EA has actually listened to gamers for once, redesigned the engine from the ground up for the Xbox 360. Here we have in actual fact a new game for our money, and this can only mean good things, right? Unfortunately a lot of what was looking promising in the old engine has been trashed, and I found the more I played the more I longed for the old version as I discover things that at first thought were cool, but suddenly become very annoying.

Like the physics on the ball. Finally the ball is completely untethered from the players, and has its own identity, which used to be a common complaint about FIFA. It bounces freely, and is deflected off various body parts in a natural and realistic manner. If you hit the ball with the edge of your player’s foot, it will shoot off at an odd angle. Spin and velocity can influence its direction. I have seen it spin under the cross bar and into the goal. However, at the same time you never feel as though you have control over the ball. It can receive a glancing blow from another player and scurry out of dribble range, bounce off the back of players’ head.

Combined with the AI, this gets quite frustrating. Many times you lift the ball in a pass to a player, and they’ll be running forward and the ball will hit them in the back of the head. When on a run forward, players never seem to turn around fast enough. It’s like players are on tracks, and won’t deviate from their runs, so if a ball bounces funny because of a deflection or interception, it takes too for the game to catch up. This sense of being somewhat behind the play appears to infect the whole game. In fact, because it’s so noticeable the commentary actually apologises for it!

“Commentary isn’t an exact science” quips Clive Tydsley quite often as the players scrap over the ball because they’re moving this way and that in response to your joystick movements and the ball bouncing of body parts. At first I thought this was funny and clever commentary, but after the 10th time in a match I realised it must have been included because this flaw!

Speaking of 10th time, I know soccer is a sport known for seemingly soft tackles and frees, but when you get your 10th foul and you’ve never hit the button to slide-tackle, it becomes incredibly frustrating. Players will push and jostle each other when running for the ball, and pressing the A button makes your player attack the ball with vigour, but if you tackle from any position than slightly in front of the other player, you’re issued a foul. Now, given your player is running on a track and will often run past the play because the response is slow, you player will be nearly always the player from behind the ball, so you’ll nearly always cause a foul when you tackle.

Some may argue that this is realistic to the game of soccer, but for a computer game it just doesn’t feel natural. You get worse at tackling and give away more frees the more you play. If it was a realistic play device it would work in such a way that the more you tackled the better you become. You’d figure out better strategies and a better way to play. I’ve played many, many games and am still not better at it. I’m better at corners and frees and passing and scoring, but this is a fault in the mechanics of the game.

The presentation of the game is superb though. The interactive loading screen with a keeper and your favourite player is great fun, and the option screens are very slickly designed. The ability to change not only team but an individual’s play style and level them up with skills is a very welcome change, allowing those who like the simulation side of soccer to tweak to their hearts content. You can also look at the stats a player has for an individual game, essentially checking their performance on the fly; their tackles, their main areas of play, where and when they commit fouls. And it has a greater impact on the field than the simulation in FIFA 06. Changing your formation or pinpoint the space a player should run when in attack can have a greater impact on the game.
Where the presentation fails is in sound. Whenever there’s a substitution, the sound stops completely. Sometimes the channels clash,

[NOTE: The rest is missing. I think the original file has become corrupted]

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

FIFA 2006

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EA get a fair bit of flack from their policy of releasing new revisions of their franchise games every 12 months or so and charging full price for seemingly small changes. Sometimes this is warranted, and other times it is not. The problem with the FIFA series is that football is such a well-loved sport, and EA has tried to buy the sport through exclusive licensing deals, that people often slag EA off before giving the games a really good chance. I couldn’t say I’m a football fanatic, but I do enjoy the sport, did play in my youth, and I have played all the FIFA series of games on Xbox, and it’s my opinion that FIFA 2006 is the best to date.

One of the primary causes of concern amongst football fans about FIFA was the scorelines. People on forums constantly whinged about how in “real football” there are no 4-4 draws, or 6-3 wins, and said that the FIFA game should reflect more realistic scores. I’m not going to enter a debate about how boring a nil all draw can be to watch, but for me this arcade score line made the game extremely fun. I come from a background of playing games like Sensible Soccer and Microprose’s International Soccer, which were lots of fun, had crazy scorelines and realism wasn’t the entire point. I’m of the opinion if you want “realism” in a soccer game, go play a game like Championship Manager – they’re made for geeks in glasses who obsess over numbers and statistics.

However, FIFA 2006 has indeed addressed this complaint, and it’s quite tough going to score at all in FIFA. This is both a blessing and a curse. For someone used to scoring high in matches, it can seriously put a dent in your ego to win by only a goal or two, and to have more draws than wins. However, at the same time that makes it one of the most intense FIFA games to date. Every strike has to be on target, every loose ball has to be won, and every time the opposition gets close to your goal square the anxiety levels rise.

Part of this is the result of smarter AI. It’s a subtle change over the previous release, but after prolonged play it becomes more apparent. The AI is tougher, sticks to the player, and plays much more aggressively. They’ll play advantage, but they’ll also play towards the sidelines when in defence when you’re in a threatening position. Speaking of playing advantage, I was shocked the first time the commentator said, “the Ref has given advantage” after a bad tackle. The ball was held up in play, the whistle blew and I was awarded a free kick. This could be in other games, but this was the first time I noticed it, and the first time it was an accurate reflection of how the play-on rule works.

Another reason the game seems tighter are the physics of the ball are a lot more realistic than previous FIFA titles. The theme song of this years release is Jamiroquai’s “feels just like it should”, and sums up the ball physics perfectly. It actually moves like a ball on a pitch, rather than a sprite in a game. When it rains the ball becomes slippery and heavier. When a kick is reflected off the gaol post it’s reflected in a real direction. And in addition, this year the player stats do actually seem to mean something. Fast players will be able to outrun slower players, tougher players will be able to force players off the ball with their body, and the strong kickers will be able to kick the ball more accurately.

However, there are some major problems with the game, holding it back from being a truly great football game. When the ball is kicked into midfield, the game suffers a quite noticeable framerate drop. It seems that having so many players in the midfield cause the game to stutter and slow down, which is really unfortunate. When there doesn’t seem to be much going on in the terms of onscreen action, especially compared to a shooter or racing game for example, it really does seem like an inexplicable problem. And it is enough to make a player have second thoughts about playing it. You do become accustomed to it, but I was ready to stop playing and give a dismissive review the first few times I played.

Another issue is the Team Management section. Even though I’m not a great fan of team management games, finding the statistic crunching to be rather dull, I am prepared to admit they usually do impact on a game. FIFA 2006 has attempted to bring in some form of team management, but it fails because it doesn’t seem to have too much an impact on your team, but enough to simply annoy you. This year, instead of gaining points for winning and spending it on certain coaches, you earn money from home ground ticket sales and sponsors. You then use the money to improve your coaching field, improve your grounds and pay your players.

However, choose the wrong sponsor and you could find yourself losing money every match, especially if you’re not getting wins every game. This makes it hard to improve your coaching line up, which in turn means your players don’t play as well, and their team and individual morale drops. This in turn affects team chemistry, that unquantifiable quality that means certain teams play better together, which is sadly given a score that you have to try to improve on. When your team is not playing well, crowd attendance will be down, meaning you lose more money, and sacking players doesn’t help team moral much either.

On top of that, you get wildcards, as per the Sims, where a scenario presents itself, such as “Management has heard rumours of dissention in your team” and you have to answer appropriately from a choice of three. Sometimes answering the question appropriately doesn’t seem to give a satisfactory result. It does all seem rather light, and there’s no option to turn it off in the main Manager mode. It only mildly impacts on your teams’ on-field performance, and makes transfers and recovery of players more difficult than perhaps it should be. EA should go all out with this mode and give a rich and deep transfer and management market, and give players the option to simply turn it off.

For those who like playing with mates, FIFA2006 has you well covered. Not only is there Xbox Live functionality with the ability to play in online leagues and track your wins and losses, but there’s also FIFA Lounge, which allows you to create a local league of mates on your xbox and rank you against each other. Lounge allows you to play a round-robin knockout game, or a full tournament, and also allows you to get “Cheap Shots” like issue Yellow Cards at the start of a match to really piss your mates off. Xbox Live games were fairly free of lag, but I had fairly regular server disconnections from the EA severs. Admittedly I didn’t do any of the set up things suggested when I first signed in, like opening ports and so forth, but then again I shouldn’t have to when most other games work fine. And that information should be in the handbook, not on a screen that can be quickly skipped.

Graphics problems mentioned above aside, the game does look quite impressive, with players looking much like their real life counterparts. The stadiums look great, and the shadowing on the pitch is very impressive. The crowd looks a little like 2D cardboard cutouts though, although the crowd roars and stadium ambience is excellent. When you’ve got the ball and the crowd are chanting out the teams name, it really does strive you on to excellence. As with any sports game the commentary can get a little repetitive, but this year the dropping of Ally McCoist and John Motson inclusion of Clive Tydsley and Andy Gray mean that there’s less inane chatter and much more action orientated discussion, which is very much welcome. The music that plays on the menu pages is quite a good selection of world beats, being mostly free of crap rap and rnb.

Closing:
Playing FIFA 2006 was a really good experience after I got over the initial disappointment of the framerate drop when the ball enters midfield. The game is a real challenge and a real improvement over last years’ release. The AI is especially tough, but never so much so that it becomes frustrating, and unlike previous FIFA games I never felt that the AI scored against me by using cheap shots or cheating. Likewise, online play is equally challenging, but again I never felt that a better player overwhelmed me. The Team Management section just doesn’t seem robust enough to me, which indicates that it will be seen as wasteful by the hardcore football fans, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Pros:
Overall improvement in realism from player representations to scorelines
Excellent and challenging AI
Great Ball Physics
The aftertouch plays are still a great inclusion
FIFA Lounge is fun – especially the ‘cheap shots’

Cons:
Heinous framerate drops in midfield
Team Management not robust enough
Bland stadium crowd animations
Frequent disconnection from EA Servers

82/100