I could not wait much longer and decided to give this season ticket thing a go for my PS3, even though I already have my game pre-ordered through Origin. I just wanted to see how the game has changed from the demo. Here are my impressions.
Well, I think overall the game has improved slightly. There are less weird collisions due to the Impact Engine, but also the Impact Engine itself is less noticeable. I've played FIFA 11 on PS3 and I now, in the full version of FIFA 12 on PS3, the way collisions are handled are almost the same. So basically they pretty much decided to polish it up for FIFA 13, I suppose, while leaving some bits and pieces of it in FIFA 12.
The dribbling has improved and the "precision dribbling" now "kicks in" sooner than in the demo. It's implemented better, I think. Just feels right, compared to the demo.
Tactical defending is about the same as in the demo, maybe it's a little bit easier now, since we've all adjusted to it, or maybe EA did some tweaking, but it just seems pretty easy to take the ball away. However, I've not been playing against highly ranked teams like Barca or Real, so that might still prove to be a great challenge. Overall, I think tactical defending is a change for the better.
Career mode this year is actually playable and highly enjoyable. Most of all I love the new transfer system as it seems like they've really spent lots of time working on it. It's basically now a game within a game to sign a player you want. I've had to work real hard to convince Podolski to join my club (Fc Zenit). I've had to pay $34.5 million instead of his market value of $24.5 mil to convince FC Köln to let him go, and I also had to up his contract by about 50,000 a week. Then I speent weeks ironing out the contract for Bosingwa. Chelsea was surprisingly eager to let him go for about $11.2 mil (market value $9.4 mil, i think), but I had to double his contract from 100k a week to 200k a week. Every time I'd send him an offer, he wanted more money. I guess he really didn't want to go to Russia, but I needed a quality RB in case something happened to Anykov. In general, the transfers in the game are fairly realistic. I just saw Sneijder move to Real from Inter for like $67 mil, i think. He was on the verge of changing clubs this year, so it's a realistic transfer. Oh yeah, I also wanted to get Forlan, offered tons of money, but Inter said he's not interested cause he just changed clubs and that was that.
One other cool thing about the Career Mode is the news. You get all the rumors around your league, and also lots of other news. Like analysis which team will finish in which spot. Who's looking to sign which player. Then you also get the news of your players status and so on. Basically makes it more fun to play.
The game speed, to me, seems a bit too quick, but I guess it's about the same as in the demo. I think if you change it to slow it might be better, but I just didnt bother with that yet as I want to play the same speed as online.
The addition of the favorite club feature, where everything you do goes to the total of your clubs XP points, is cool. You basically have another league and it drives you to play more and more FIFA. Win more and more games. Etc... I like it a lot, although my club is currently in 7th place there Other players gotta step it up!
Now, coming to the bad and the ugly part. Head-to-Head Seasons, and (probably) the rest of online modes. One word I have to describe it. LAG. Massive, massive lag. I've never seen this stuttering and freezing in FIFA 11. Sometimes it would get bad and freeze up, but never like this. It makes the game almost unplayable for me online. And the worst thing is, since now you select your club and all the settings before you even know your opponent, is you cannot see the ping. Basically the game select your opponent itself and it doesnt matter how bad the connection between you two is, it just starts the game. In FIFA 11 at least you saw that connection was bad and could quit the game before it even started. Not anymore. So because of this major stuttering I've lost all 3 games I've played. It basically made all of those things I've enjoyed about FIFA go to a garbage dump. Very frustrating. I hope this is something PS3 specific and it'll be better on PC. Otherwise it ruins the game essentially.
Oh yeah, one last point. I seriously pity all the people playing on the consoles. This game looks horrible compared to PC (if you've got a good one that is) and not only that, but the menus are sluggish, the load times are long, and the framerate drops during replays constantly. After I've played FIFA on PC, I WILL NOT go back to FIFA on consoles (after this weekend, that is).
Ok, that's it for now. Overall a great game, but the online part of it, on the PS3 at least, is questionable, for now. I hope we'll get better experience.
Precision dribbling is "activated" in two ways: 1) you press the LB button, which is usually used to stop a player quickly or do a quick turn, while standing still; 2) it's activated by the game itself, if you're in control of a great dribbler like Messi and you're in close proximity to a defender. This lets you zig-zag past opponents with just your left stick and very helpful to try to dribble past multiple defenders. Of course the better the player the easier it is to pull it off.
P.S. Unrelated thing I forgot to mention. Overall rating DOES NOT change, when the player plays out of position. I've put strikers as CB and their rating remained 80-85 or so. EA said they fixed it. Looks like they didnt, but I think it doesnt matter anyway. Just makes it harder for you.
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