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I’ve got my FIFA 09 and I’ve been playing it over the weekend. There is so much in FIFA 09 that it is not fair to review the game after just a couple of days of playing. But you don’t need to play for too long to understand the game play improvements and features. So I’ll review the game play aspects of FIFA 09 in this post. See, I haven’t played much of Be A Pro seasons, Manager Mode or even the online games. All I’ve done is to play the offline exhibition games and quick custom tournaments.

The most striking thing in game play is the pace of the game. It is noticeably faster than FIFA 08 and almost the same pace as Euro 2008. I can assure you this much that it is no way pacier than the actual pace of the premiership or la liga. Serie A? Yes, it is pacier than the Serie A. See there are three settings for pace – slow, normal and fast. What I refer to here is the ‘slow’ pace setting only. Some gamers like slow pace because that allows them to take time to think to weave attacks. Same with me. All of us should learn to play the quicker game, think on the fly and play more intuitively. As get used to the pace, it doesn’t feel fast at all.

The quicker game play would have been terrible if it was not coupled with the high player response rate. Luckily for us, deliberately by EA, the players response it very quick which complements the quicker game play. The gap between the button press and the player performing as per your instructions is very very less. There is still some lag at rare scenarios but that’s ok because that’s the price you need to pay for realism. In FIFA 08, there was considerable lag in player response which made you accustom to a certain timing when it comes to button press. If you want to shoot from 15 yards, you gotta hit the shoot button when you’re at 18-20 yards itself. I’m kind of so used to this timing that I used this in FIFA 09 as well, unintentionally. The result: the player shoots from 18 yards with the power and direction that suits for 15 yards.

If you want to enjoy FIFA 09, you should unlearn your FIFA 08 wisdom and play FIFA 09 to its merit. Make a list of all the do’s and don’t's of FIFA 08 and ensure to forget them and start afresh. Then how should you play FIFA 09? Just play like you would play football on the pitch. Just play it like real football. The players can do a lot of things, individually and collectively. It’s only your ability to tap the full potential that would make the difference. In FIFA 08, I had this problem of the players on the pitch playing with a different mentality than mine. While I’m in a hurry, they would display no sense of urgency, because of the inherent lack of quality and capabilities. Now in FIFA 09, when I want them to play like their life is depended on it, they really do. They get tired, they get upset, they give their best, they’re more human than ever. That’s what I like best about FIFA 09.

The next key thing you’d see is the new animations. There are hundreds of new animations that the players perform that didn’t in FIFA 08. Thanks to the new set of animations, the players’ off the ball capabilities have improved tremendously. Defending is now a pleasure. Our defender can do some harmless shirt-pulling, constant jockeying, some body checking – all this without or before resorting to the hard tackle. So before you go for that risky hard tackle, you have multiple options to unsettle the ball carrier as much as possible, which is a great thing.

The jumping and heading animations are all fantastic. Now it’s all about timing the jump and the header. Sometimes, you’d see an attacker and defender go up for a seemingly 50-50 high ball only for both of them to miss the ball because they mistimed their jump. The ball would fall a few yards away as a possible loose ball. Amazing animation, that one. The desperate dives, the last gasp defensive headers, the sliding shots, the in-the-air collapses – they are all here, making the game look as close to the real thing as possible.

The best new feature award should go to ‘custom tactics’. FIFA has introduced this very serious and complicated feature with some gusto. You can now determine the playing style of your team. Custom tactics define how the rest of the AI players in your team play in the match. You can now determine if your players should prepare for fast set up or slow set up, prepare for short passes or long passes, prepare for lots of shots or less shots, prepare for lots of crosses or less crosses etc. The key is the word ‘prepare’ because they can only prepare and be in positions, only you make the pass or shot. You can also play narrow or wide. You can ask your players in the final third to be organised or play in free form. You can also set how your chances need to be created – from shots from anywhere or from crosses or from passes.

When I was playing Inter vs Milan at the beautiful San Siro at dusk, me and mate (playing co-op for Inter) thought that it’s all getting too congested in the centre (middle vertical third). It was getting difficult to pass or to keep possession as the Milanese defenders were closing down on us vigorously. All that we had to do was to go to the custom tactics and increase the playing width slider from 35 to 75. The difference was bloody obvious. When you’re leading with 10 minutes to go, and if you want to hold your lead at any cost, you can set custom tactic set up to slow set up with short passes.

The other time, we found that our back four is pushing up too far up front. Reduced the pressure slider from 65 to 10 and the aggressiveness from 60 to 15. The defence started doing what I want them to do. The custom tactics works like a charm. The more you understand and exploit this, the better you’ll be at this game.

The AI is just superb. Interestingly, the AI plays like human beings now. They make mistakes, they make hard tackles, they make fouls, they get yellow cards and they even get sent off. I simply love this aspect. It gives you a chance against the AI. It makes you look for these things and exploit the AI like you would do to a human opponent. The intelligence of your fellow AI players is already controlled and improved by the custom tactics settings. The intelligence of the AI opponent is top class. There are no cheap AI tricks or cheats as far as I’ve seen so far. AI simply plays like one hell of a human opponent.

There were some ‘bugs’ reported by the gamers since the game was released. Luckily for me, I didn’t find them or they didn’t spoil my fun one bit. Firstly, people were complaining throughballs are the one heavenly way to score and there is now way you can stop if a perfect throughpass is played. I don’t think so. I was defending the throughballs very well indeed. It all starts with your positioning – vertical and horizontal – of your defenders, and then how soon they close the gaps, how well you can jockey, nudge, body check and finally tackle, if need be. Or you can even advance the keeper. If the striker still scores, forget it. You can’t win every single time.

Then people thought that the ball hits the bar/post too often. That happened to me initially before I learnt to shoot properly. If you haven’t figured out the shooting you’re bound to go off target. But why should it hit the bar? It is surely unrealistic to see the ball hit the ball half a dozen times in every match. Well, if you hit off target – you could either hit the bar or the ball can fly over the bar. If it flies over the bar, the game should start all over again from a goal kick. EA must have thought that pulling those just above the bar shots to hit the bar would also keep the ball in play and also adds to the excitement and a possible rebound goal. Makes gaming sense. However, since I’ve started to improve, I don’t hit the bar, I only find the keeper

Some were unhappy that crossing is no longer a weapon. I must agree that crossing in FIFA 08 was very easy. Whereas in FIFA 09, crossing is as good as the receiver of the cross. The header/volley by the receiver of the cross depends on the timing of the button press. If you time it perfectly, the header might go in and the cross becomes a good one. I’m perfectly happy with the way crosses work in FIFA 09. We can at least get rid of the ‘cut back kings’. The tweaking of crossing alone has cut down on the cheap (low cross by Ronaldinho and cut back by Henry) goals.

Finally, my take on how FIFA 09 has treated Chelsea FC in the game. What hits you first is that the Chelsea kit is all wrong. Chelsea blue is not the same as the blue used by EA for the jersey. And the club logo on the chest is smaller than it should be. The gap between the adidas logo and the sponsor name ‘samsung’ should be much wider. Even the neck cut is not proper.

Now you might ask me why I bother about these things when the game is so good. Correct, I don’t bother. I never bothered when PES5 had only West London FC with a plain blue kit. But it is EA who pride that they have the licenses and hence ‘if it’s in the game, it’s in the game’. When I saw that the FC Inter’s jersey is horribly wrong, I thought Chelsea’s could have been worse. One big plus is all third kits are readily available. You don’t need to unlock the kits with the crazy challenges like score three 30 yard goals with the centre back and all that.

EA have re-created the Stamford Bridge superbly. It gives you real feeling of being in the Bridge with the stadium model, the wave of fans wearing blue, the chants and everything. When you’re playing Be A Pro, you’ll get a very nice view of the stadium from the player’s angle. One gripe is that during the day matches, the pitch at Stamford Bridge still does not look nice. So purposefully, every single time in exhibition mode, I change the condition from ‘day’ to ‘overcast’ where it looks very fine indeed.

In terms of how the players are rated, I think most of the ratings are fair. I’m not comparing our ratings with that of players from other top teams. I’m just seeing the ratings vis-a-vis the real life player capabilities. Cech 88, Bosingwa 81, Carvalho 85, Terry 88, Ashley Cole 82. I wonder how Ashley Cole is just 82? That’s a mistake. Based on last two seasons’ performance, Ashley Cole the left back is a better player than John Terry the centre back. Joe Cole 83, Essien 86, Lampard 84. Now again, Lampard can’t just be 84! He is the most consistent player in the premier league over the last 5 seasons! Anelka is rated 83 for which he must call EA personally and thank them. Kalou is 79 and I might just agree. Mikel is only 81 while I would put him at 84 or something. Ballack is 86 and Deco is 85. Deco should have been better. Drogba is 87. Malouda is 83 and thankfully Alex is 82. And you Franco-lovers, he is just 71 but he might add about 10 more points for the next FIFA version.

What I see in FIFA 09 is that the game is lot more open, random and beautiful. You can recreate almost any moment from your Super Sunday. If you need a goal, you need to work for it. It’s lovely to see that you can employ various styles of football in FIFA 09. I even tried long passes to target man and it works superbly well. You can sprint through the wings, you cut through the centre, you can play slow build up short passing game, you can play fast build up mixed passing game, you can try out long balls, you can simply do anything you want. It’s like a piece of clay, it’s up to you to do what you want with it. I’m thoroughly enjoying the game, the best football video game ever. As one reviewer put it, the only negative is that you don’t find enough time to play this beautiful game.