To Play Online Or Not To Play Online....
Yes that is my biggest question with this game, and sadly enough both of them are not the right answer. This has to do with, which one will bring my irretation level up the highest and fastest.
First thing first, FIFA12 is a mayor improvement on his predecesssor FIFA11, no discussion about that. The gameplay is better and player movement is a near delight. Just the passing can be quite irretating, precission passing or the simplest pass can end up in no-mansland or to a player who it wasn't ment for or it's trying to pass it to player standing on the other side of the field (????). This has nothing to do, in what direction you piont or how long you hold down the pass button, this just happens (too often).
Another thing EA should look at is the total free movement of a player or the AI of the players in your team. If the ball is going out and is gonna be your throw-in or goal kick. They should give you the option of letting the ball go. Instead one of your men taking a sprint, if his life depended on it, to try to keep the ball in (and they wont run that fast if you are trying to attack). You can even select that player, but it wont make any difference because you wont have any control of his action. The same with passing a ball, when the ball is passed to a team mate, he just stands there, there is no or hardly no control of that payer. Even when that little magical triangle is showing above his head.
I think that the AI is the biggest let down, the AI is good and it is only good on the the opposing team. The AI of my team I found dreadfull. Most runs they make lead to nothing, and the thing what they favour most is standing offside. Not that they are being tricked by the offside trap, noooo. They just like standing there (maybe because the view is beter there). There is no or nearly no reaction when a ball comes near them. If the Goalie parries a ball away, they don't even react, it looks like EA forgot that football is a team sport. But this also has to do with AI of the team you are playing against. The opposing teams AI is just to good, there positioning is every managers wet dream. I think that Fergie and Guardiola should throw away there play-book and buy there squad a copy of FIFA12. The defence is so good that, it looks like they are clairvoyance. Most passes and long balls are intercepted It's making the L1 button(letting a player go deep or for a high trueball) obsolete, the same counts for the the R3 stick, that was used to quickly tick the ball pass a player and then go for a sprint. With tackling and taking the ball, they just need to rub of you and they have the ball or they do just enough that you can't take your shot/pass or make you stumble so that an other player can take it of you (not that is a bad thing, but the same should work for you), while you have to struggle and button bash the new tackle button (red O button) to try to get it of him. If that doesn't work there is still the option to send an other player towards him with the akwardly well placed R1 button (instead of the red O button). I say akwardly because I'm also trying to run by holding down the R2 button. But this doesn't always helps, because the player your trying to tackle, also has this clairvoyance gift as his defending team mate, and can forsee most sliding tackle, standing tackle and every other attempt you throw at him.
-For Example-
The attacker has the ball and is dribbling towards your penalty area, you try to defend him with a player, Tackle! Miss! Try with a different player, Walk towards him and try to move him of the ball. Stumble! He walks away freely. Staying near the player (by holding the X-button) and calling a second defender. Nothing happens!, He shaloms true me and my extra defender. Try to tackle him with my last man! Got the ball! Ball bounces of you on to your called defender right in het path of the player who try to get the ball off. He's free! And Scores!
-End Example-
You can also see in advance when that you are not gonna win a game or that they are gonna score. They all become slightly faster, agile, quicker reaction, the ball always falls in there favour or when you do get the ball of them it bounces over the line, and the worst of them all your team becomes slughish.
I also found it near impossible to score with a header, I just can't muscle away or move around the defender. The same counts for every goalie who has the best game of the season playing against you. At the end of most games the Goalie of the opposing team gets man of the match and when I draw or lose it will be 15 shots or so on goal from me and 3 for them, and normally I lose with a score of 3-2. This all wouldn't be so bad if my team would be slightly more active, make themself more available and make some decent runs.
I don't mind losing, but I shouldn't by playing a game and get the feeling of being cheated or that the whole thing looks like BS....
So after a while of agitation, I disided to go online for some one on one football. To my surprise there was a whole lot of different options for me. Head to head was a new one, where you play in a "league" and gain pionts by playing and defeating other gamers online. I found out playing online that it brings the game to his full potencial. This is because of human error and it opens up the game. After a enjoyable online game I notiched there was also a cup option what is only open for a peroid of time. What a delightfull discovery I had made, so I went on my journey towards the final of this cup. But of course my pleasure was quickly ended by the EA server what only has a connection span of 5 min. So I lost 3 semi-finals and one final (against one of my arch team-supporter. AAAAAAAHHH!!!!) by forfeit. Not by my choice if I may add. This was a new disturbing feeling I was getting. I found out that the server is that bad, if I start the game and it automatically logs in, before I got to the main screen I already had lost my connection.
Now..., I got all the badness out of the way. Lets talk about something positief now!
Graphics are better, I like the new collision engine, it makes it look a lot more realistic and it makes the game sometimes unpredicteble. The commentators are a BIG improvement, they are on cue on what happens and they have a decent talk about things, about your team or one of your players, they even talk about what happend in games gone past. There use different commentaters for cup and league matches.
I was really happy to see that they brought back the youth academy and they improved it aswell (thank you for that EA). The new thing about is, that you use your scout now to find talented youth (starting from the age of 14) and you put them in your youth academy. Now and again you will get a message from that scout. To let you know who your new talent is progressing. What also new is in Career Mode is, that you can give praise, motivate your team/player or unnerve the oncoming team/player/coach. But shamefully enough this gets kinda boring, because everything gets repeated and so far I haven't find a function for it.
What I also realy liked was the transfer period, not that it was new. But now you had bigger teams trying to buy your best players and keep coming back with beter offers if you refuse them. There is one new thing with this, and that is the last transfer day where they count down the hours for some last radical buy/sell.
Another new option I found was that I (and you ofcourse) can adjust the game customisations (found in the game settings), here I could adjust nearly everything. From Sprint Speed (User and CPU) to the Positioning of your defence. Great I thought, because the reaction of the game was quit slow for me. So I "tweeked" my speed a bit (not to much, otherwise it feels like cheating) and left the CPU the same. It worked fine, I even found that my team was a bit to fast with everything. So I was planning to adjust the speed again and bring it down a bit. But this was forgotten because I got lost in the transfer periode trying to buy players and making a few bob. This didn't matter really, because my next game was like it was all turned back to default for some reason. But it wasn't, it feels like that the game is programmed that you aren't aloud to win some games. And it does this by changing the ingame physics, what I found the most enoying aspect of this game.....
It's supposed to be ME playing the game, and not the game playing me!
(I'm talking from my experience, I'm playing on legendary level in the 1 npower league (at the moment), it could be a total different game, if like playing with Barcelona on a lower level)