Fifa 11 Demo Thoughts

Having been very impressed with the Pro Evolution Soccer 11 demo, I downloaded the Fifa equivalent, I wasn't so impressed.

My initial thoughts of Fifa 11 is that the game hasn't moved on from the World Cup "upgrade" that was released in the summer.  Some will say that its not a bad thing, however having played a PEs title that has really progressed in terms of the way you pass and move with your team, I expected more.

Fifa has always been an "arcade" style game, meaning that its very easy to get into and once you have, there isn't a great deal extra to learn.  Of course there are the "tricks" to master, but you can get by very easily without them and they aren't very difficult to perform.



I don't think that mastering Fifa 11 would take you long at all, especially if you owned last years game, or the World Cup offering.  From the demo, it really did feel like the same game.  The passing is straight forward and now feels way behind in terms of realism when compared to the new PES system.

Having played the World Cup game, I felt that the shooting element of the game didn't feel quite right, but it’s hard to explain.  I guess its that when you shoot, you just don't feel as though your player "hit it", the heading in the game suffers from this to.

One thing that I noticed that had been improved from Fifa 10 (but was also present in World Cup 2010) is that you don't have to use tricks to get past players - I found this very unnecessary in Fifa 10 and glad it was removed.

The excellent penalty kick system from World Cup 2010 has been implemented into Fifa 11 which makes the spot kicks a real event and requires some skill (or a decent penalty taker) to beat the keeper, which seems far away from beating the keeper in open play.

I played a few games on the demo, in a variety of difficulties and won them all, comfortably.  One thing I noticed was that there does appear to be a few "sure fire" methods of scoring in this build of the game, that were also present in the World Cup game - which seriously reduces the longevity of a sports game.

I don't want to sound overly negative about the game, if your a fan of FIFA then I imagine you will enjoy the game, but don't expect anything other than the World Cup game with a huge abundance of licensed teams, leagues and slick presentation.

Unless Konami have sorted out the online capabilities for PES, then FIFA will have the online play in their favour and lets face it online play should be less repetitive than against the AI, so some of my gripes with the game aren't as relevant there.

My main thought having played the Fifa 11 demo though is if EA's goal was to create a pick up and play game to appeal to the masses then they have achieved it and done so very well and I'm sure copies of the game will outsell PES 11 by a fair distance.

However, for those who want a challenging, technically advanced and realistic football game, then Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 is the title that you should purchase.