Hope you enjoy this lads, taken from Fodder007s blog! (EA Forums member!)
Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the demo build of Fifa 11 and have a chat with EA Community Manager Phil Wride about some of the new features. The demo will be available for everyone to download and play on the Xbox 360 and PS3 on the 15th September 2010.
Game Speed
One of the most discussed topics on the EA forums in the past few weeks has been the game speed. In my 6+ hours of game time with Fifa 11 I didn't touch the game speed once and the reason for not doing so was because the default setting just felt right. I played a variety of matches both against the AI (on legendary), against assisted human players and against manual human players, at no time did I feel that the speed was too fast or that I had too little time on the ball. Having the option to reduce the speed further with the 'slow' setting is something I look forward to trying out properly when the demo is released but my current thoughts is that I will just stick with normal.
Ball Physics
I didn't get the impression that player speeds themselves had been altered for Fifa 11 but rather it was the ball physics and the acceleration of players that made all the difference. The ball physics have had a major overhaul and every time you kick the ball it looks good and it feels good. The ball is noticeably heavier than Fifa 10 and takes slightly longer to reach it's target. As a player that uses a variety of passes in my game I felt that my game looked far more realistic than Fifa 10 ever did. The changes in player acceleration allow you more time on the ball, I don't recall one occasion where I was closed down too quickly or where the opponent charged through my player and stole the ball.
Ball physics also have a major impact on shooting, let me give you two examples. In Fifa 10 I was able to hit the target consistently from the 25-35 yard range and scored some really good goals but with Fifa 11 I really had to adjust my power just to make the ball reach the goal, there was so much more dip that I could no longer hit the top corner with the ball still rising as I could before and it was a joy to watch the ball rise and fall in such a surprisingly realistic way. For those that like to see the ball hit the net from range then worry not, I managed to hit the sweetest of strikes from about 25 yards that had me shouting out to Phil that he had to come and see it. The second example was a goal I scored against Phil (I'm hoping to upload the video soon) where the ball took a couple of bounces between leaving my strikers boot and finding the bottom corner, the way the ball bounced along the grass is something I hadn't seen before in Fifa.
Manual controls and Pro-passing
The first few games I decided to make the game as difficult as possible by straight away switching everything to manual controls and putting the AI on legendary difficulty. I know my manual followers would love to know what I thought of manual controls in Fifa 11 and let me say that you won't be disappointed; the controls themselves feel almost exactly the same as Fifa 10 but you do have to take in to account the differences in ball physics and you can feel 'pro-passing' taking effect when you try something overly ambitious. I never felt that the game had deliberately added error to any of my passes and I was able to play sublime passes down the wings and cross-field. When a pass went astray I knew that I should have taken a touch first; pro-passing is subtle but noticeable and it doesn't take long for you to adjust your game slightly to take account of it. Talking of long balls, it is now possible to drive long balls by holding down R1 when powering up the pass, when executed well this felt brilliant and allowed me to switch the play much quicker than I could in Fifa 10.
Unfortunately I still have some minor complaints with manual controls and I have fed this back to EA in the hope that they can be dealt with in time for the full release or in a patch shortly after release. One of these complaints was that when you play the ball out to your winger the forward most player always checks back to collect the ball instead of the player behind the ball running on to it, it breaks down attacks and particularly fast counter attacks where your players are rushing forwards.
AI positioning
That leads me nicely on to player positioning. The computer controlled players on my team in Fifa 10 always felt too static with the default tactics and so I had to create a custom tactic that made them move around better and make runs in to space. I only used the default tactics when playing Fifa 11 and I don't think I once complained about my team not making space for me to give them the ball or being poorly positioned. The fact that I didn't complain about this in the entire 6+ hours shows that the AI positioning is much improved over Fifa 10, this applies when you don't have the ball as well as when you do. I'm looking forward to trying out custom tactics when the demo is released to see if I can improve my team even further and make them play just how I would like them to, I feel that it really will be possible to do that in Fifa 11.
Real AI
One thing that I noticed almost instantly when playing against the AI was that it felt far more like I was playing against a human opponent, it felt less predictable and showed some of the traits that human players use e.g. hold up play and skill moves. There was one particular moment that left me amazed and that was when the AI striker moved between my two centrebacks on a goal kick to block the short pass; a move that is highly frustrating when playing online 1v1 and is unrealistic. It is only when you understand why the AI was doing this that the AI advances in Fifa 11 really become apparent; I had a discussion with Phil about 'real AI' which is where the game analyses the performance of the human player and learns from it. So if a human moves between the two centrebacks on a goal kick the AI learns that behavior and does it as well, if a human uses a particular skill move when trapped near the corner flag, the AI will learn that and use it against you. So the human player traits I was seeing in the AI have come from the matches that the development team have played against the AI (I would love to know who taught it to block that short goal kick though grrr!). What I'm not clear about at this time is whether or not the AI will continue to learn from a player's behavior when we have the full game in our hands or if the learning process is only something that is taking place during the development process.
Personality+
Personality+ is one of the landmark features that has been introduced to the Fifa series for Fifa 11. Personality+ should make each player feel differently in the game so if you're using a fast player with high dribbling ability it should be very noticeable that you are controlling that player on the pitch. With the exception of someone like Messi (dribbling) or Drogba (strength) I wasn't really feeling the difference between players and I suspect this is because the only teams available were 5* teams full of star players. I would love the opportunity to play as someone like Yeovil against Barcelona and I think that is where massive differences will be apparent. I have to tell you about Messi though, when you have control of him on the pitch you really do know about it because of his close control and ability to turn quickly. With Fifa 10 it is generally only possible to beat a player by using skill moves but with a good dribbler on Fifa 11 it is possible to take players on using dribbling alone. It was great to play and great to watch.
Graphics
One of the key things I noticed was that when someone else was playing the game it looked more like the real football you see on the tele, human players are forced to adjust their game because they can no longer ping-pong and have more time on the ball to choose what to do with it. You feel less like you are watching a game of Fifa and more like you are watching a game of football. The graphics throughout looked great, though I have to say they looked far better on the smaller 20 inch or so monitors than they did on the large 40 inch tvs; not sure why this is but hoping there's a good technical reason for it so it still looks good on my 40 inch tv at home. There are a whole host of new player and goalkeeper animations, passing, tackling, taking the ball out of the air, they all looked amazing and add to the immersion factor. The presentation of the game is superb; I'm not the type of person to really care if every player has their real face, hair, socks or whatever so I'm looking more at the general presentation and feel of the game and I was impressed.
Be A Goalkeeper
If you haven't yet read my blog about Be A Goalkeeper then you can find it here. Although I didn't have the chance to try a BAGK match in the demo I did have the chance to save a few shots in the arena before the start of a match. It's not easy, not easy at all! I couldn't help but think that the movement of the keeper was a bit lethargic and even if I chose to dive towards the ball he didn't dive until the ball was already whistling past him. I wouldn't read too much in to that at this stage though because firstly I was trying it out in the arena and not a real match and secondly because I was only using the most basic of controls (left and right sticks) when really the keeper has lots of movement options available to him. I very much look forward to trying it out in the full game.
Summary
That concludes my preview of Fifa 11 and I hope it's been worth a read. There are some minor issues that need to be ironed out and I have fed these back to EA but I thoroughly enjoyed getting my hands on the game and honestly can not wait to put Fifa 10 up on the shelf to collect dust! There are many subtle refinements and advances in gameplay and graphics for Fifa 11 and these give a more realistic, cohesive and immersive gaming experience than Fifa 10 or any game before it. I did get the chance to record some gameplay footage and am hoping to edit it shortly and post it up here (though I'm currently struggling with file types and software, unfortunately I'm not a video editing wizard!).
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