Greetings, football fans! Firstly, must apologize for my tardiness in updating the blog. End-of-year exams are around the corner and it’s been absolute hell! But I digress, you guys deserve better. Hence this mega-update post! Leading up to yesterday’s official launch of FIFA 12, several events had been organized in the past week centered around […]
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EA SPORTS PS3 Under-14 Futsal Tournament 29th October @ The Cage
Greetings, football fans!
Those among you who are parents of teenagers may be wondering how to wean your precious offspring from the irresistibly addictive “finger exercise” that is FIFA 12 and get them off the couch to do some “real” exercise. (Why would you even do such a thing, you evil, evil people?! Unless you want to get them out of the house so you can play some FIFA 12 that they’ll undoubtedly be hogging after their exams, then that’s justifiable… And brilliantly sneaky…*applause*). Or maybe you are a teenager, unshackled from the deathly grip of exam fever, looking to blow off some excess energy or just something fun to do with a bunch of your mates on a lazy Saturday…
Whatever your reasons are, I am sure you’ll be glad to learn that EA Singapore, together with Sony Playstation 3 and organizers ESPZEN, is providing our young “virtual footballers” a stage to parade their very own real-world dazzling footballing skills at the EA SPORTS PS3 Under-14 Futsal Tournament. Held at The Cage, located at 38 Jalan Benaan Kapal, just a short walk away from the new Stadium MRT station, this 29th October 2011 event promises a great day of fun, clean physical exertion for all participants. What better way than a good workout to expend all that pent-up examination stress?!
All you have to do is form teams of 8 and register over at this site. Oh, also just make sure all the players are aged 14 and below, yeah? But hurry, cause places are limited! Registration per team is only $30! That’s only $3.75 per player! To further sweeten the deal, each player receives a free sponsored jersey that’s theirs to keep! You can’t even buy a cup of Koi Bubble Tea with $3.75, let alone a jersey! Oh, and there’s fantastic prizes to be won too! The top 2 teams will be receiving medals and trophy while the overall champs also walk away with a copy of EA Sport’s newly-released FIFA 12 for their choice of either the Sony PS3, XBOX 360 or PC for each player on the team! (Terms and conditions apply)
So parents, what are you waiting for?! Hold off on buying that extra bowl of laksa/wanton mee/ba kut teh/whatever, pass that $3.75 to your kids, get them to psycho 7 other friends to form a team (This shouldn’t be much of a problem unless your kids are socially inept, like me. I have no friends… Sorry, digressing…) and get them to register now! Then kick back, relax and enjoy the peace and quiet of a teenager-free day on 29th October, safe in the knowledge that they are out having some healthy exercise… (Come on parents, admit it, you were thinking that, weren’t you? Be honest, I won’t judge… much…) As for the teenagers, you guys never really needed much reason to hang out with your friends and have fun, so why not, especially when there’s chance to win something while you’re at it, right? Win-win situation…
Hope to see all our budding future Lions/Lionesses on the 29th of October at The Cage! Remember to bring along your scoring boots, guys and gals! To find out more about The Cage and directions on how to get there, please surf on over to their official webpage located here. For further details and the rules and regulations of the event , click here.
Till then, happy gaming!
FIFA 12 DEMO OUT NOW FOR PC, XBOX 360 AND PS3!
Greetings, football fans!
The title really says it all, doesn’t it?! What are you waiting for then?!
Head over to XBOX Live Marketplace or the PSN Store to grab it for your respective consoles. For PC gamers, head over to http://bit.ly/fifa12_pcdemo! Get downloading and have a feel of the game for yourselves!
Well, sorry to post and run but hey, my FIFA 12 demo is waiting to be played…
Till next time, happy demo-ing!
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.
FIFA 12 PREVIEW PART 2
Greetings football fans and welcome to the second part of my preview.
After our last look at the main interface changes of FIFA 12, we now move on to the game engine changes. As all hardcore gamers can attest to, while it is important for a game to look nice, the primary concern is that it must play well.
To that end, David Rutter, lead producer of FIFA 12 over at EA Canada, has boldly promised “a revolutionary year for FIFA … especially in the gameplay department.” And indeed, true to his claim, FIFA 12 does sport several unique features over its predecessors. But are the self-proclaimed “holy trinity” worthy of deification or merely false gods? Let us examine them individually in greater detail, starting with the most-hyped of the trio, the fancy, new Impact Engine.
After a long development phase lasting several years, the Impact Engine has finally been included for the first time in this year’s game. Touted to enhance collision variety, accuracy, and momentum preservation, this is, Rutter claims, the biggest single technological breakthrough since the series made the transition to the current generation of consoles.
From what I could see during my short time with the game, the way the players seem to physically joust and clatter into one another just seems that little bit more realistic. Gone are the obviously canned collision animations of yesterday.The game seemed fluid and dynamic, in keeping with the claim that the collision physics produce differing results each time depending on the way the players are moving at the time and the physical forces involved in the challenges. A definite leap in the right direction for a game obsessed with translating the utmost realism from stadium to screen
Have you guys ever experienced those awkward-looking collisions in the previous editions of FIFA where the players seem to “clip” through one another after a tackle or aerial challenge? Well, thankfully, that is all now a thing of the past. The players seem to be more solid, physical entities, bouncing off torsos and other assorted outstretched limbs and body parts realistically instead of melding into some form of strange Dr Moreau-esque monstrosity at each coming-together.
Also, the Impact Engine also apparently directly affects injuries sustained by players during a match, but I was not able to cause an injury and not for the lack of trying, might I add. Sliding tackle after sliding tackle flew in in my pursuit of that elusive injury, though in hindsight, perhaps I should have tried it specifically on someone fragile like a Jonathan Woodgate or even better, Owen Hargreaves. These guys could have injured themselves from a particularly violent sneeze, let alone a scything tackle from behind. But I digress.
FIFA 12 PREVIEW PART 1
Greetings, football fans!
Just like buying the new season’s kit of your favourite football team, buying a new copy of FIFA is an annual affair for most, if not all, football fans. In the past few years especially, followers of the FIFA series has been handsomely rewarded. Despite the initial slow progress and critical bashing in its early years, the series has grown from strength to strength, culminating in the ephiphany that was FIFA 10. While FIFA 11 was “evolutionary, rather than revolutionary”, it was critically acclaimed and managed to cement the position of FIFA as the “king of football sims”, a title forcefully wrested away from Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, also known as Winning Eleven in our part of the woods.
All hail the new king!
As previously mentioned, a couple of days ago on the 10th of August 2011, the good folks over at EA Singapore invited me over to their swanky office at Fusionopolis to catch a sneak peek of an Alpha build of their upcoming game, which promises to be “revolutionary”. Over the next week, I will be sharing my insight and opinions of some of the new features on show in FIFA 12. Unfortunately, photography wasn’t allowed, so instead I will try to make my descriptions as graphic as humanly possible. (And enlist a little help from readily-available photos already online.)
Stepping into the EA Singapore office, I was ushered by a very friendly staff member to a private booth and was then left to my own devices. The build I was handed was for the Playstation 3 and had the words “Work in Progress” splashed across the background, reminding me that whatever I am experiencing may be subject to change before the game releases, though I was assured most of the basics were solidly in place already.
Clearly, FIFA 12 wastes no time in trying to carve out its own unique identity. From the off, avid FIFA followers will notice that the menu system of old has been completely replaced. Taking a look around the frontend menu, I notice that the navigation is now much improved with the traditional vertical, left-aligned menu now replaced by a set of slick-looking blades across the bottom of the screen, with sub-menu options popping up when these are clicked. The new menu style takes up less screen real estate and looks somewhat more professional. A small, some might say frivolous, interface change but personally, I kind of like it.
I like the minimalist look. Do you?
Most of the teams and leagues featured in FIFA 11 make a return in FIFA 12 with the added bonus of a couple new international teams such as Côte d’Ivoire/Ivory Coast. Same goes for the stadia, mostly intact with a few interesting additions, including one which resembles Johannesburg’s Soccer City, site of 2010’s FIFA World Cup finals.
As expected, the sexist-comment-slinging, male chauvanist Andy Gray’s no longer part of the commentary team. A nice addition to FIFA 12 is the ability to choose your preferred commentary team between the pairing of Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend or the pairing of Martin Tyler and Alan Smith, though frankly, I like them all. The more than 10,000 lines of speech recorded is massive and will go a long way in avoiding that dreaded feeling of stale, recycled commentary.
Sexist? No FIFA 12 for you!
Next up in Part 2 of this preview, we will take a look at the much-lauded gameplay improvements in FIFA 12 , including the highly-aniticipated “holy trinity”.
Till then,
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