Fifa 12 - Head to Head Season Review

The mode in FIFA 12 that has captured the most of my play-time has been online ‘Head-to-Head Seasons’. Reminiscent of 2010 FIFA World Cup in that it offers a ladder of sorts in “divisions” it adds in a fantastic new way of matchmaking which creates the most fair of pairings possible. Despite the struggles with my record all of the games have been thoroughly enjoyable – making it something I want to come back to as often as possible even when anticipating a loss. For anything online related, which carries with it the prospect of frustrating opponents or performance issues, that is about as much as you can ask for.

As the biggest selling sports game in the world, and now in sports gaming history, one of the primary benefits of that is the large user base. No matter what team is chosen or whatever your skill level there will always be a pool of potential opponents online. That is important for how the matchmaking in Online Seasons works. Choose a team (I have played solely with the Sounders) and FIFA 12 will pit you against someone else in your division – which theoretically should be approximate skill level – using a team with a similar star rating. On release day this didn’t work exactly right (one time I was matched up against Team USA) but since tweaks have been made to prevent mismatches from happening. Now I end up playing against mid-level squads or on a few occasions Sounders vs Sounders affairs – can’t get any more balanced than that! Despite my record most of the matches have been competitive – though I’m surprised that I’ve yet to draw even once.

Other benefits include players with high DNF being pitted against others with high DNF – which would reduce the chance of facing opponents who quit often – and the removal of a game (there are initially 10) in their season after a quit. That punishment could be enough to dissuade someone from quitting as the opportunity to earn enough points to gain promotion is then damaged. I’ve yet to face anyone who has quit – though I also haven’t held an insurmountable lead over an opponent so I don’t know if that would be the case if I had. I’ve also been impressed with the commentary which will cite the team’s current circumstances – at the beginning of a match it may be stated that my team is coming off two straight losses, or need a win in order to keep hopes of promotion alive…things along those lines. That adds to the feeling of each match having relevance beyond just my personal record.

The only real gripe I have are opponents who steal away goal kicks – maybe I’m missing something but trying to pass it is way too dangerous so now I just always kick deep. The questionable physics interactions can also elicit some frustration but that isn’t online specific. Otherwise this is about as much fun as I’ve had online this generation win or lose. The feeling of exhilaration that comes with scoring (or occasionally) winning in FIFA 12 online is unmatched. I’ve yet to encounter any lag and considering the server load and worldwide base of players it’s remarkable – but that is a trait FIFA has displayed for years now even in 11 on 11 Team Play.

There’s a lot more for me to dive into with FIFA 12 but I’m having trouble dragging myself away from Online Seasons because the matches have been so purely enjoyable. The concept is excellent and delivers motivation to improve and succeed while increasing the likelihood of an evenly matched opponent better than any other sports title has to date.

Fifa 12 Tips - Head to Head season

If you have been playing FIFA 12 online for a while, you may not aware of an exploit which can be found in Head to Head Seasons mode where EA themselves admits.

The exploit basically works when you controlling the team’s goalkeeper, leaving the skilled AI to contain the outfield players.

It will be unfair because you’re just playing the goalkeeper while making the other 10 players doing the job for you.

On the latest episode of FIFA 12 podcast, senior community manager Romily Broad has revealed that they will be fixing this issue along with others.

Putting a spotlight on the goalkeeper exploit, he said; “People seem to be exploiting this, if they’re not very good at defending they can use this to get an unfair advantage.”

Despite the advantage, he is confident that the more experienced FIFA 12 players won’t have trouble dealing with this.

“People who are very good at the game won’t have a problem. They’ll just be able to pass it around your defenders and you’ll find yourself one-on-one with their top strikers every time.

“But that’s something we’ve got under review. If we think the vast majority of people hate it we’ll do something about it.

“I can’t tell you any more than that. I can’t tell you when that might happen, but we’re reviewing all the feedback from people. We’re looking especially, even harder, at the game telemetry. If you go to our forums and hear everyone saying the same thing, that’s great, but you can’t just rely on that because the people who haven’t got a problem with it aren’t talking. So we need to figure out what they’re doing as well.

“We’re looking at all of that stuff and we’re going to make a call on that. But just so you know, if you’ve got a problem with that, we’re looking at it. It’s a very serious thing we’re looking at.”

FIFA 12 available on PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Wii, PS2, 3DS, PSP, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Fifa 12 Patch for Xbox and PS3

Hi Guys,

There’s going to be an update for FIFA 12 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the next three weeks according to EA senior community manager Romily Broad (excellently daft name).

And before that, EA are going to sort out the problems concerning the FIFA Ultimate Team. There’s been problems accessing it because of the spike in players, thanks to it being included on the disc for the first time.

The awkward new tackling mode is not going anywhere though, sadly.

Broad says:

“The first patch for the console is going to be coming out within days, like maybe 14 or 21 of them. Two or three weeks from now the first patch will happen and that’s going to make big corrections to some of the things that are bothering people the most.”

“We’re going to be doing this constantly, with our thumbs in the middle of the community trying to get people to tell us what they think, and then we’ll be acting on it for the rest of the season.”

“That’s a commitment we’re definitely making. It would be nice if people came and talked to us about the things that are bothering them, because we are going to be listening.”

So there. Go and bother them with your complaints instead of whining on social networking sites.

David Rutter Interview with Xbox World

FIFA 12 hits Europe and North America next week, and we're all rather excited.

Ahead of release Xbox World sat down with FIFA producer David Rutter to break down the changes and improvements that have been made this year's edition one of the most promising in recent years.


Let's talk PES first. There was a time when Konami's game was so far ahead of FIFA in terms of quality, it looked unlikely you'd ever catch up. But you did, and now it's them playing catch-up. How did you manage it?

We decided to rewrite our gameplay engine when we moved over to the 360 and rather than just taking what was our old generation game and porting it across, we instead rewrote the whole thing from scratch. It was based around a principal of not being scripted, or pre-determined, but about creating a game where there was a near-limitless variety of outcomes based on what you were doing.

And at that point, you go from what's an arcadey experience to very much a simulation. We created a game where, depending on where the ball's coming from, how it's spinning, how your foot connects with that ball, the outcome of that kick is different nearly every single time. And at that point you are suddenly creating a very deep, rich and rewarding gameplay experience.

We always keep an eye (on PES), but we've dedicated our lives to making the best football game on Earth. There's no danger of complacency.

What if the next generation of gaming freed you from all restrictions?

I think if there was absolutely no restraint on anything at all I would like a system where, rather than us having to generate player heads with our capture tool, we would re-utilise the APB for our fans to be able to generate amazing characters, and then to take some kind of very cool stadia engineering tool and let them make their own stadia and be able to light it in real time in a really nice way. Animation-wise I think we are pretty good, I think gameplay-wise we are excellent, but ultimately our next frontier for challenge is going to be environmental and physical likeness.

What's the most important football game of all time?

For me it was the first N64 Konami one, International Superstar Soccer, because the dribbling on that was something else. I remember getting the analogue stick and just thinking, "Holy moly!" Sensi was good, but I didn't like it as much as Kick Off... I can't believe I'm saying that because I know the people that made Sensible Soccer, but I prefer Kick Off.

What do you think of as the number one problem with making FIFA titles?

One of the things I find most difficult to deal with is the exploiting and the cheating. People have a number of different ways to hack save games to boost their stats. It's not something that's unique to FIFA, pretty much any online team game you play has a similar problem. Would someone in a Quake match quit in a duel? Absolutely. What happens at that point? You grin and go, "haha, I beat him so bad he quit!" Quite the opposite happens in FIFA, which is, "why won't you punish that person for backing out?"

For the vast majority of situations we can spot when people are doing that and we award the points and the win. It is almost a cottage industry: trying to find in what order to switch the plug off and pull the router cable and rest your wireless action point so you can fool EA into thinking something odd is going on. It's unbelievable.

Do you ever worry that you'll run out of ways to improve the game?

We're lucky that we make a game based around a very rich and dynamic sport, so every time I watch a match on TV, or go and watch the Vancouver Whitecaps play, there's something that will inspire you to go back to the office and say, "Hey! We need to do this!". We have a ton of stuff we still want to get to, especially in Career mode. I've been making football videogames for 15 years, and I've never had any lack of inspiration, or a stalling point, as to how they can be improved.

Interview with Game play Producer Santiago Jaramillo - Part 3

GE: There seems to have been quite a reworking of the Career Mode in FIFA 12. How do you feel about this new Career Mode compared to FIFA 11, and how do you think the fans will react?

SJ: That’s my game basically, playing Career Mode. That’s where I’ve played FIFA my whole life and that’s where I feel I get the most joy out of playing FIFA, so I’m a big big fan of the improvements that have been made this year. I think the fans are going to love Career Mode. I think it is by far the best Career Mode that we’ve ever had. To give you a little bit of a background, FIFA 11 was the first year of the new engine for Career Mode so it was a tough year in that everything had to be rewritten from scratch. It was a lot of work, a lot of bug fixing, but we knew it was the right thing to do because it was going to give us some good features last year that we didn’t have before but more than that, it was going to open the door to do really cool things in the future. FIFA 12 is really the first year that we’ve been able to pack the game with much more polished fundamentals and also with bigger features. So just to point a few of them out, as a manager something that you’ve never really had to do much before was to do a lot of managing the players, not only on the pitch but off the pitch. You will have to now be conscious of if your players are happy at your club, if you’re paying them enough money, if they’re playing in the right position, if they’re playing enough because these players will then send you emails saying “I want you to play me more” or “I don’t like that you bought these other guys so now I want to leave.” All that kind of stuff that you see in the news every day is going to be part of Career Mode. For example, just the other day I got one of my star players, I bought another player who was really highly rated in his same position, ask to be transferred so I transfer listed him, and then the news broke out in the world of Career Mode that this player had been transfer listed and a lot of big teams were going to go after him, and right away I got emails from other teams wanting to buy this player and a bidding war started, so all those sagas that you see in real life that a manager has to deal with week in/week out are going to be part of Career Mode. So it adds a lot of depth to the mode and it’s so much more fun what you do every time you’re outside of gameplay and before you go to the next match. There’s a lot to do now as a manager. We also have much more realistic broadcast style coverage of really special days. The most important one is the transfer deadline day which what happens is you get the summer transfer and winter transfer season, and as you know a lot of activity happens. Players go for much more than they are probably worth because teams are desperate to get this or that other player to fill a hole that is in their team. All that extra activity and that sense of emotion and coverage is something that we have in our game. So when you get to that day in the calendar, the Hub changes to be this transfer deadline day type of Hub with a clock that is counting down hour by hour and this advances through the whole day. It’s much more realistic and allows you do to last minute changes to your squad in the way that real teams do at that time of the season. Also, players will now have much more realistic player goals and form value so depending on how well they are playing they will start to grow. Older players’ attributes, because of their age, will start to go down. It’s just a much more realistic, much more compelling experience overall with Career Mode.

GE: The music selection in FIFA games has always been a big part of the games ‘atmosphere’ so to speak. How do you go about picking what bands/artists/songs will appear in the game? 

SJ: It’s funny because I actually got that question the other day. I’m not really involved in that much. All I can tell you is what we always want to do is represent, because we know that soccer is the world sport, as many territories as possible. We tend to go with more Indie type of bands that are just up and coming. Really it’s our audio director who is more involved with that and someone from EA in California who go back and forth between that list of bands and then eventually the contracts get signed and those are the bands who’s song gets put in the game, but I don’t really know all the details. GE: It seems that a lot of developers are implementing some type of motion control and/or 3D into their games these days. Do you have any present or future plans to bring Move/Kinect controls or 3D to the FIFA franchise? SJ: Obviously we haven’t discarded any of them. In terms of 3D, I can’t really say what the direction is at this moment or how pressing that priority is. I’m sure that once there is a big install base of 3D TV’s… than our game will do its best to adapt to that sort of experience, but at the moment there’s not that many 3D TV’s out there. I think HD TV’s is still the main way that people are playing video games like FIFA right now so we’re focusing on continuing to improve and use our capacity to improve that experience at the moment. In terms of motion control, basically FIFA 13 is going to be the year we are going to invest in different ways of integrating those types of technologies into our game. What those ways are is the current brain storming that is going on.

GE: If you could say anything to the new players to the game to convince them to buy FIFA 12 over another football (soccer) game, what would it be? 

SJ: *laughs* It’s difficult to say one thing because I feel like it’s so many things that could be used to convince someone who is playing PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) right now. I think the main thing is FIFA has taken such huge quality strides in gameplay which was really where many years ago Konami had the upper hand on the old generation consoles. I think people who are still playing Konami (PES) are those who have this romantic idea that it was better then and it’s way better now so they continue to play Konami (PES) so it has this type of cult following, but I think for anyone who really gives it a try, tries FIFA in the past 3 or 4 years, the gap of quality is becoming more and more evident that I truly think FIFA 12 is going to blow it (PES) out of the water even more. Obviously people might think that I’m very biased saying that but you look at Metacritic our score just keeps going up. Konami is going to start giving up the market share as our market share keeps going up. So for those who have the objectivity to try both games, I think there are very few who still decide to stick with Konami. I’m really happy about that. I think our game is reaching a level of excellence that it really is a trail blazer when it comes to sport simulation. That is why we are winning certain awards and why our market share continues to grow is because we make such a great game. I’d like to take this time to thank Santiago for taking time out to conduct this interview as well as thanking fellow Gaming Examiner Editor Tony for actually conducting this interview over the phone as the time difference prevented me from doing it myself.

Watch Fifa 12 Exclusive Trailer Click Here

Interview with Game play Producer Santiago Jaramillo - Part 2

GE: Just out of curiosity, do you see this engine being used in any other EA Sports titles? 

SJ: The Player Impact Engine is FIFA’s version of a more rudimentary, more basic technology that was created here in this studio and that we share across NHL, FIFA and I think Madden is using it now as well. I guess the way it works is, they’re not using the Player Impact Engine perse, we just created this base technology that then has to be tuned, adjusted and implemented with different/more logic to it for a couple of years so that it would work with what a soccer game is like because, as you can imagine, the type of impact that you get in a hockey game is much more different than what you would get in a soccer game. In soccer your legs get affected much more, you don’t get shoulder to shoulder hits as much, and if you do they’re more of a fight rather than just a huge check the way it is in hockey. All those big differences made this base technology have to go into different routes. The Player Impact Engine is just FIFA’s version of that. So in a way we are already sharing certain components of it. It’s just a matter of the other games working with that base technology and growing it so it adapts to them.

GE: Tactical Defending seems like a much needed change to the whole defensive mechanics of the game. Along with Precision Dribbling, how much of a challenge are you expecting these changes to present to seasoned FIFA players?

 SJ: [Tactical defending] is definitely a welcome change I think by everybody because defending was simply just not rewarding enough for a game. Everything was so automatic except for the slide tackles. You only had to hold down the pressing button and a defender would just go sprinting a beeline towards the ball possessor and would tackle him automatically if he finds the coverage for the tackle. That made the game, first of all, not rewarding when you got the ball because everything seemed so automated and you only had to hold down a button without really thinking about much. So when you got the ball, you didn’t feel that sense of reward that you get with other parts of the game, say when you score or goal, or when you make a really good pass, that kind of stuff. The other aspect of it is that it’s not realistic. In real life a defender doesn’t go full steam ahead at a ball possessor just sprinting because the ball possessor can just quickly make a move to the side and leave the defender gasping without the ball. You can’t just run straight at a ball possessor. You have to jockey him, you have to see what his movement is like, it’s much more composed and much more of an art than our game has had in the past. We wanted to not only make defending more fun but also more authentic and that is what Tactical Defending does. In terms of how much of a learning curve it’s going to be seasoned FIFA users, I think the physical fear that people have, if they have one, when they hear about the feature is that is it going to be difficult because now they don’t have that pressing functionality, that automated functionality so they think, oh now I have to time my tackles and there’s an extra button for the standing tackle, it sounds complicated. When you think about it, the mechanic of it is just as simple as the previous one; it’s still just pressing one button to tackle. It’s just that now the precision components of it is on a different button or you can do it manually and it’s much more composed. It’s not so aggressive as it was before. So I think, in terms of mechanics, it’s not going to be that hard to learn. What’s going to be more difficult is to unlearn that almost like a reflex of any time you lose the ball you start holding the A/X button. I think that is the main thing that people are going to have to get over, to not do that automatically because it’s going to put you in the wrong position. It’s going to make you do a tackle when there is no reason to do a tackle. Once that is unlearned, I think you are going to start enjoying defending so much more, and you’re also going to be able to become good at it. It’s something that people want, something to master. Last year, or any FIFA before that, there wasn’t much to master in terms of defending, and this year there’s a lot so that’s going to be really fun. To take it one step further, one of the things we wanted to do with Tactical Defending as well, was to make, say when you play online in game modes where you’re locked to a player, in years past once everyone was choosing their positions, everyone was rushing to pick a midfielder or a forward, no one wants to be a defender because it’s not fun to defend, but now with Tactical Defending that is going to change. Clubs around the world are actually going to be looking for people who are really good defenders because now there is a real skill to it, and to those defenders, they’re actually going to feel rewarded and have fun while defending so it’s going to make the online experience much more engaging.

GE: Personally I am very excited to try out the EA SPORTS Football Club feature in FIFA 12. I’m especially keen for the Support Your Club feature that essential pits fans against fans. Where did the inspiration for this come from, and what has the reaction been like to this new feature from the fans so far?

SJ: It’s been very positive. The inspiration for the whole feature was that we have this amazing following, FIFA and the sport of soccer has such a big big following around the world that we felt we needed to harvest that in a way and bring those people together. So what EA Sports Football club does is to really allow everyone to connect and compete against not just their friends, but also people who support different clubs around the world and you bring the FIFA community together into this arena where everyone is kind of playing for certain bragging rights or certain trophies and certain leagues and all that. Our producers here that worked in this online aspect of it, they came up with this feature. It’s kind of inspired as well by something we had in the Euro game several years ago where basically different people support a specific nation back then, and then you have competitions weekly or something like that, I can’t remember exactly. This year it is much more compelling. You support a club and no matter what team you play with, everything you do in FIFA will go towards that club. Week in/week out we’re going to have tournaments, we’re going to have weekly challenges based on real life events and as you complete those challenges you get experience points and those points add towards the overall standings [of your club], and then you’ll see which club has the most hardcore fans, the best gamers and the most dedicated FIFA players out there. That’s going to be really exciting to see.

Interview with Game play Producer Santiago Jaramillo - Part 3 Click Here

Interview with Game play Producer Santiago Jaramillo - Part 1

Here is an interview by Gaming Examiner with the Game play Producer of Fifa 12 Santiago Jaramillo 

Gaming Examiner: As the highest selling sports game in the world, FIFA always has such huge expectations heaped upon it. How have you approached FIFA 12 to take it above and beyond the amazing FIFA 11?

 Santiago Jaramillo: Well I think… the expectations that are on our game every year are so big because there’s such a hardcore following of the game that is supposed to represent the world’s most popular sport. Given the level of quality we’ve achieved, particularly since FIFA 09, we have continued to just take more and more market share, and higher and higher quality ratings, and as you pointed out, FIFA 11 is kind of like the pinnacle of this. So as a producer and as a development team we went into it as a challenge. That’s really what the job is about here, is how can we continue to progress and to innovate the game so that those who already like it, and are already playing it, want to buy the next one. So you can’t give them something entirely different because than it is probably going to be something that they don’t like. But how do you make it different in a way that it’s consistent with what they’ve liked and what their expectations are going to be, and really that it where the magic happens and that’s the art of making video games. It’s knowing what big leaps to take in certain areas of the game, what fundamentals to focus on and then just try to polish certain areas because they are basically what users want and they just want it a little bit more polished. It’s knowing that what the expectations are and seeing how much our capacity is going to be for the year and prioritise accordingly and then make the game. FIFA 12 is probably the biggest leap that we’ve taken from one year to the next. FIFA 11 left it at such a good quality level, not just in gameplay but in other areas of the game as well, we’ve managed to spend more time bigger, more impactful, more revolutionary type of features like the Player Impact Engine, Precession Dribbling, Tactical Defending and those sorts of really big features that are really going to revolutionaries the game in a way that we feel is consistent with the expectations of what people want.

 GE: FIFA 12 has picked up multiple awards at both E3 2011 and Gamescom 2011. What type of effect has this had on the development team leading up to the games September release?

 SJ: It’s a great morale booster. Making the game is such hard work, especially in these summer months, when we’re finalising the game and just fixing bugs and polishing and working really long hours and working weekends. I think for the development team, playing the game all the time, and just being so involved with the product itself, you maybe lose track of maybe how much people love it once it’s shipped. How much joy you bring to people’s life once FIFA ships. I think when we hear about all these awards and what our consumers and our fans are saying about our game then it gives us a little bit of a boost that at this very tough time, to make this one last push, and finish the game properly, polish it properly, fix all the bugs and get it out of the gate in time. So it’s great to hear that because basically it shows that a whole years’ worth of sweat and hard work is actually paying off in the way that we want it to pay off, which is in the satisfaction of our fans.

GE: Arguably the most stand-out and anticipated feature of FIFA 12 is the Player Impact Engine. How was it working with this new physics engine and how do you think it’s going to change the way the game is played? 

 SJ: This engine has been in the works actually for a couple of years. So we started it at the beginning of FIFA 11, in parallel as we were making FIFA 11 but we knew it wasn’t going to be ready, so we basically took 2 years in development. What it does is it replaces our old collision system that could only process the physical interaction of a player against another player in just one frame. We would have to then give you the result based on just one particular frame of interaction which probably is not going to be the most accurate representation of what would happen if there’s a collision because more and more contact and more and more collisions are going to continue to happen in the frames after that. That was one problem. The second biggest problem was that we would give you say a stumble animation or a fall animation which would be part of the animation that we had created. We didn’t have a way to modify those animations to represent something more accurate. Those are the things the Impact Engine allows us to do. [We can] add an incredible level of variety in terms of how players react to collisions, and also be able to process the information more accurately, to give you more authentic results. So it’s been 2 years in development and it’s been a lot of work with just polishing and polishing. Creating new animations that fit scenarios that we didn’t even have in the game before. The way it changes the game is very fundamental because, as you can imagine, the way players interact against each other happens countless times in one match. So the fact that we now have this much more powerful, much more accurate and sophisticated engine at the base of it all, that it really allows us to bring to life other types of features that you might not necessarily think of them as physics or collisions. Just say like the way you shield the ball or just say you’re sprinting with the ball and you get hit by a tackle on your trailing leg, but you can still manage to continue. These are things that we weren’t able to do before, but now we can have much more accurate results that it really changes the way that the game plays in other areas, such I was saying, dribbling, shielding, jostling, all those things to give you more accurate and more varied results even in those areas.


Interview with Game play Producer Santiago Jaramillo - Part 2 Click Here

Fifa 12 Gamescom Q&A with David Rutter

Hi Guys,

This is a Q&A interview with David Rutter, hope he has answered all your questions.

Fifa 12 Interview with Santiago Jaramillo, Gameplay Producer (Gaming Illustrated)

Hi Guys,


This is an interview with Santiago Jaramillo, by Gaming Illustrated

GI: A lot of people also want to hear about improvements to the career mode, which looks like has gotten some interesting content added where activities away from the pitch matter in the course of a career. Could you clue us into some new features on this mode as well?

Jaramillo: This year Career Mode will initiate transactions and scenarios to test your resolve as a manager. For example, there will be bigger decisions to make and more dynamic challenges. Evaluation Logic has been improved to reflect a player’s true value, and we added a new scouting feature to better identify players. Career Mode is now driven by the same drama, storylines and emotion of the real world. If it happens in real life, it can happen in our game. Managing team chemistry is vital to your success, players react like they do in real life to playing time, form, injuries, league position, and player morale impacts the game on the pitch. Storylines are created through Career Mode and then dynamically fed into the game. Plus, we have expanded Transfer Deadline Day to bring more emotion, urgency and drama to the mode.Career Mode is a feature that our core fans love, and we know the best way to build an experience they want is to listen. We’ve also done many testing sessions with fans to give us feedback on this year’s Career Mode. The community suggested features that we have integrated into the game, including, Email System, Loans, and Extended Transfer Deadline, and we have improved fundamental elements of the mode, such as player growth and team budgets.

GI: The next major piece is the new “precision dribbling” feature that takes the dribbling 360 experience to a whole new level, according to reports. Just how granular is this new dribbling experience and how will it affect on-the-pitch play?

Jaramillo: We’ve made changes to the way we think about attacking in FIFA with the addition of our new feature called Precision Dribbling. Essentially, we have added the ability for a player to keep close control of the ball in traffic, and we’ve also added the ability for the player to dribble while shielding. These two changes should allow you to buy yourself some more time on the ball to make decisions, or wait for your teammates to join the attack. The main thing that we wanted to accomplish with this feature, though, is to make that area just at the top of the penalty area more accessible. If you think of teams like Barcelona, they live and breathe in that area just outside of the D, probing, taking players on, playing 1-2’s and waiting for an opportunity for that defence to open up so they can play a pass in and take a crack at goal. In FIFA 11, if you got into that interesting real estate, you immediately had 2 heat seeking missiles coming at you, armed with automated tackling, and a limited ability to navigate the traffic or successfully shield. This meant that you usually had to immediately press pass and get out of that area. Now, with Precision Dribbling those tight areas of the pitch can be utilized to create chances, and find new interesting ways to break down the opposition.