A very good football game, but plagued with glitches both on and off the pitch.

User Rating: 7.5 | 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa X360
The gameplay is much the same as FIFA 10, though the certain goal scenarios are practically non-existant now. The new penalty mode is a very good addition meaning that both scoring and saving penalties is down mostly to the skill of the shooter/goalkeeper as opposed to luck. Captain your country also means you can play as an individual player throughout the qualifiers. The problem here is that you lack manager control. This manager, despite the performances of players will always pick the same 1st team, never changing it. He will also choose his captain at first randomly until you become the 'top' player in the squad. The other slightly ridiculous notion is that if you loose this top spot you will never captain the country again. Also in CYC crossing is a no no because you loose match rating because another player simply isnt good enough to reach the ball, or because in the unlikely event they do get a head to it they will not score meaning no gain in match rating. This means playing as a winger is impossible.

The problems with this game, whilst not game changing, are frustrating. Multiple problems with the look of players have been common such as all black hair suddenly turning ginger, and Rio Ferdinand becoming white. Another problem is the fact that when you quit a tournament and return to the home screen, occasionally some players have disappeared (replaced by no. 100 'unidentified unidentified' with attributes of -1020900394) The only way to reset this is to reset the squads, deleting all your formation and first xi changes (since this glitch goes across all squad changes).

The fact that manger control is also limited in the way that you cant simply change a squads mentality, the 'quick tactics' appear to have no effect and you cant even change squad numbers (despite being impossible in the world cup to have a player with a number greater that 23) without going to the player edit screen (also filled with glitches). On the pitch the commentators will often say the wrong player name followed by john terry limping off the pitch with the words frank lampard underneath until i open the team management and find i have to replace Aaron Lennon.

I think this time EA have concentrated too much on replicating 'authentics' and not enough on actually finishing their game. Deja Vu anyone?