FIFA 11 Game Review
Review by IGN 8/10 (Great)
FIFA 10 was a crowning achievement for EA Sports’ soccer series when it launched last year. It took massive steps forward in both gameplay and feature set design, and while FIFA 11 doesn’t quite pack the same mammoth punch of its predecessor, there’s little doubt that this year’s entry builds modestly on the series’ rock-solid foundation.
FIFA has always been about delivering the most realistic depiction of the sport of soccer. FIFA 10 brought us 360-degree dribbling for the first time, which was a huge improvement over the traditional eight directions. We also got Virtual Pro, a feature that allowed you to create a player, put him on a team, and then watch him progress as you used him in any of the game’s modes. Bringing the physicality of soccer to the forefront on-screen is another longstanding tradition for the series and one that FIFA 11 takes to the next level with something called Personality Plus.
Personality Plus doesn’t just mean that players are going to display authentic emotions on the field. It’s more that players that you know and love will look, run, shoot, dribble and react to physical interactions authentically. The best part? Personality Plus actually works for the big name guys of the sport. Some of the lesser-known players don’t get the same treatment, and I’d love to be able to develop or assign traits to my created player, but for now Personality Plus impresses. If you’re a mainstream soccer fan who only tunes in for the World Cup every few years, the benefits of Personality Plus might be lost on your lacking knowledge of the prominent soccer stars of the world.
Review by eurogamer 8/10
Last year, we thought it was all over. FIFA 10 was excellent and its advantage over rival Pro Evolution Soccer seemed greater than ever. Developer EA Canada still had a lot of work to do – Manager Mode was broken in places, keepers could be idiots and there was a clockwork precision to passing and moving that grated over time – but with a year of development and all the momentum, a sudden turnaround in fortunes looked about as likely as a Northampton win at Anfield in the Carling Cup.
Big changes this year have come in response to fan feedback, and the result is a game where your mileage will vary almost second to second. Spend a few minutes mucking around with a player in Arena mode – the interactive load screen where you’re one-on-one with a goalkeeper – and you realise that no two shots are the same. Successful passing sequences used to be about movement, timing and very little else, but now they are also beholden to a player’s inherent skill, the speed they’re moving at, whether they’re off-balance and all sorts of other quiet stats.
Review by guardian 8/10
Over the years, the rivalry between the two leading football games, EA Sports’ Fifa and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, has become every bit as intense as that between any pairing of local teams in the real-life Football League – that is, positively tribal in nature. Last year’s Fifa 10 saw EA Sports’ franchise, after years in the doldrums, roar back to form, although it wasn’t perfect. And this year, Pro Evolution Soccer will have to do something truly special to regain its crown: the new Fifa is the best in living memory.
As ever with a yearly update, there are a few odd structural alterations, new features and tweaks, but the most important improvement to Fifa 11 could not be more fundamental: its underlying passing engine has been rewritten, providing much more accuracy and eliminating the “ping-pong passing” which, unrealistically, would let you play one-touch sequences that would make Cesc Fabregas green with envy. This, of course, will expose your talent and passing vision (or lack of it); PES fans would argue, with some justification, that this brings Fifa to where their beloved game has been for some time. But it’s a welcome improvement, especially given that AI-controlled player movement has been vastly improved, too.
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