FIFA 12 can be your worst nightmare when everything goes wrong, or you could love it when you get a nice convincing win.
The FIFA 12 passing system with power can be so unforgiving.
If you slightly overpower your pass to a teammate about 10 metres away, then about 70 percent of the time the pass will rocket towards the player that is 30 metres away who might be marked tightly by an opposing defender.
The new impact engine produces exciting, and realistic tackle outcomes, although you might find that your player amusingly does a 360 back flip or trips over a team mate in spectacular fashion.
When you make every pass with perfect precision, you start to realize you are having fun. And when you make a perfect tackle to win the ball back, you will also find you are having fun. So when everything goes right for you, when you make a brilliant passing play to finish with a goal, you start to see FIFA 12's qualities come to life all in one defensive or offensive play.
So I will give you a FIFA 12 top tip, you must always value possession of the ball. I repeat, ALWAYS value your possession and make sure you make the right passes because if you don't then the game will punish you.
It is very evident that EA Sports has tried to capture the vulnerability of your team when you are leading, especially in the dying stages of the game. If you are only winning by one goal or you are drawing by the 80th minute of the game, your opponents will step it up to a whole new level, and it happens so quick. It is sometimes quite unfair of the quality of your opponents as soon as it reaches the 80th-90th minute mark. The only way to counter this is to pass the ball around between your defenders and wait for half of the opposing team to charge at you, then form a counter attack, so their defense is left discombobulated because they were too busy applying pressure on you.
Tactical defending is a new feature in FIFA 12. It allows you to make more accurate and timely tackles, although it is a lot harder to play with when you first play with it, it definitely takes a lot of getting used to.
If you find that you hate tactical defending, you can always swap to the old style defending called Legacy Defending within Wireless Controller Settings.
Unfortunately there are hardly any new features to the manager mode besides story lines which accurately mimics real life press stories.
EA Sports have no included interview sessions, where you can unnerve the opposing manager or praise/ motivate your players. Although you will find after playing half a season, if you praise or motivate your player or team, the headlines will be the same for several players.
Unfortunately free kicks are very hard unless you are taking a free kick with a top class free kick taker.
FIFA 12 can punish you harshly more making errors withing your passing and defending so you must make every action decisive and accurate.
Unfortunately FIFA 12 has little new features to the manager mode which is a let down because everyone were hopeful of more features in career mode. There appeared to be less and less features since FIFA 09. This impacted my final rating on this game.