FIFA 12 PREVIEW PART 3

Greetings, football fans and welcome to the penultimate edition of our FIFA 12 preview!

Like most FIFA players, I have always held a belief that the defending in the series always left something to be desired. Especially with the old “Defensive Press” system which only seemed to pull players badly out of position, resulting in gaping holes for your opponents to exploit. This time round, instead of focusing mainly on retrieving the ball at all costs, there is much more emphasis on disrupting the flow of the attack, containing the spaces and pressurising the attackers into giving the ball away.

Defenders will now shadow the attackers movements instead of blindly snapping at their heels. The control of the defenders is now much more manual, rewarding players who take time to master the destructive art of the game just as much as punishing those who only focus solely on goal-scoring. FIFA 12’s new “Tactical Defending”, however, aims to change this approach by placing equal importance on the positioning of your defenders, intercepting passes and tackling. EA want Tactical Defending to “bring the skill of real world defending in to FIFA” and to make 1v1 situations “feel like individual battles”. The previously minimal human input to this aspect of FIFA is gone. You are in control of all aspects of stopping your team from conceding those annoying goals.

Auto-tackling has been removed as well, replaced by a system where tackles are initiated by a button press. Mis-time the press and the tackle is unsuccessful, opening up the oppotunity for a conceded foul or worse, a potentially fatal breakaway by the attacker. The distance at which you Contain can be adjusted with the left stick, allowing you to close down your opponent or drop off deeper, meaning you can be precisely just as annoying or forgiving to the attacker as you want to be. Multiple players can be called over, but unlike the “Defensive Press” of old, the reinforcements aim to also contain instead of bulldoze the ball off the ball-carrier.

Defending: No longer the under-appreciated art form.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been additions to help attackers, though. Remember how players used to be rooted to the spot while fending off a pesky defender? “Precision Dribbling” now allows for movement around the pitch while still using a combination of their upper body strength to shield the ball and the closer-than-ever control that allows for smaller, more frequent touches of the ball to keep the ball close and tight to the feet.

Players are also less prone to being completely oblivious to their immediate surroundings. Frequently in previous FIFAs, players would lose the ball exceedingly easily at the touchline areas. But in FIFA 12, they seem to have a clearer understanding of where they are and would switch to a closer control style to stop the ball from running out of play unnecessarily.

Though not part of the much-vaunted “holy trinity”, the addition of Pro Player Intelligence does wonders to up the realism factor. Say you are a winger at the byline. You see a player like Nikola Zigic or maybe Didier Drogba in the box. What would you do? Cross for them to attack the ball in the air, no? But what if it was tiny Leo Messi in there? A cut-back across the face of goal for him to attack from deep would undoubtedly be the better option. And that’s exactly what is promised by the Pro Player Intelligence. The AI plays like how a player should in various scenarios.

In my brief playthrough, I’ve seen instances of wingers holding up play till support arrives after breaking through on the wings instead what they would have previously done, which is very likely to cut inside and try and beat the whole defence. Such obviously bad choices are
reduced greatly, though, as with any real world footballer, some daft play choices do still exist.

Players will also make better use of their own strengths. Creative players with great vision and footballing nous such as Xabi Alonso will seek out the less obvious options, pinging long, searching passes to players in space, whereas another less blessed player in his situation, for example, the tenacious, but admittedly very technically limited Jon Obi Mikel, would be more likely to play it safe with a short pass.

In our final edition of the preview next week, we will look into the improvements and additions to the current gamemodes and also some new gameplay modes included in FIFA 12. So till then, goodnight and happy gaming.