The turd in the FIFA09 punchbowl
Good news this morning. I received confirmation from GAME that my FIFA09 pre-order has dispatched. I should receive it tomorrow—Thursday—morning. I’m pretty excited. But now it seems there’s a downside,as there always seems to be with these accursed ‘next-gen’ football games.
News is emerging from people who already have FIFA09. It turns out that FIFA09’s Manager Mode is substantially identical to FIFA08’s Manager Mode. EA have apparently spent the past year working entirely on the game’s core gameplay and its online infrastructure. OMGZ! FIFA09 will feature 10-vs-10 online play! Perhaps you’ve heard…
That’s all well and good. The gameplay tweaks are, of course, a no-brainer. Some changes had to be made to FIFA08’s good-but-flawed gameplay. From what I’ve seen in the demo, FIFA09 could—I stress could—be the most perfect simulation of football yet committed to a game disc. And a sturdy and engrossing online game is a wonderful thing to have. Those gamers who have come to prefer online play to offline, single-player play, are entitled to feel a warm glow of anticipation right now.
But I’m not an online gamer and I doubt I ever will be. Yes, I have got season 2009 earmarked as the year I finally play online a bit more than I usually do. What this means in practice is that instead of playing several online matches in one random session one night every couple of months or so, I’ll play a regular couple of games per week. Maybe.
For me, a football game is still 99% about its offline play. That means I pretty much only play the league simulation: Master League in PES, and lately Manager Mode in FIFA.
FIFA08’s Manager Mode was a joke in so many ways. At times you had to play it through half-closed eyes, lest you allow yourself to notice the cracks in the ceiling and the walls, and the spreading patches of dryrot on the floors…
The problems with FIFA08’s Manager Mode were legion. The transfer market was absolutely laughable. Players were too cheap and far too willing to come to your club, whoever and wherever you were. Playing as Dagenham & Redbridge in the Coca Cola League 1, I was able to sign Schweinsteiger and Drenthe. When I signed Michael Owen for my Coventry City team, in game-season 2011 or so, he held a press conference in which he stated his lifelong support of the club… Yes. Ouch indeed. It all made PES’s much-maligned Master League look like Football Manager.
There were no night matches. Every match in every competition at every time of year was played in blinding daylight. There were no playoffs in the lower English leagues. If you finished 3rd you were promoted automatically, and without any notification of the fact. You had to wait until the start of the next season to see what league you were in (yes, really!). Cup finals were played at ordinary league grounds, despite the game featuring a gorgeously-rendered New Wembley.
I could go on. The mode was riddled with immersion-wrecking flaws. Fortunately, FIFA08’s gameplay sustained it to a great extent and I played a total of around 20 seasons across two separate careers.
I thought the many problems with Manager Mode would be fixed in FIFA09. I thought at the very least we would get night games without having to ‘cheat’ by exploiting a certain menu bug. I thought we would get playoffs and weather effects and a more rugged transfer market and a realistic set of AI managers for the other teams.
None of these things—apparently—has come to pass. Not even one of them. EA really has spent the whole year on the gameplay and the online modes. I’ll say again: fair enough. But would it really have broken their budget to insert the one line of code that would have enabled Manager Mode night matches? I understand that some stadia in the game do not feature night-time versions (why this should be so is a whole other kettle of worms…). EA’s rationale is that featuring night matches at some stadia and not others would be ‘inconsistent’, so they removed the option completely. Worst excuse ever. How is it more ‘consistent’ to have no night matches at all?!
But perhaps the most unforgivable oversight is the lack of any work on the simulated league infrastructure. It seems I will still be able to equip my Coventry City team with worldbeating players within the first season or two. All of which makes me regard the imminent PES2009 with a new kind of anticipation. All because Master League might provide me with something that Manager Mode cannot.
It’s quite a situation when FIFA’s fully licensed version of a league career is the unrealistic one, and PES’s Master League, with its Castolos and transfer ‘points’ and negotiation periods, is the more immersive, more involving mode. That’s quite something indeed.
So, it’s fair to say I’m pretty angry right now. Pretty bloody pissed off about things. No doubt I will recover my excitement for FIFA09. No doubt I will end up enjoying the game and making the best of Manager Mode, such as it is. (I’m thinking House Rules and that kind of thing.)
But it won’t be as good as it could and should have been. It’s things like this that set the mood for a game and affect how it is perceived in the long run. Last year with PES2008 I remember how annoyed and then angry I was about kit selection being absent from most of its game modes. It struck me as peculiarly lazy, and almost spiteful. Now I’m thinking the same thing about the lack of work on FIFA09’s Manager Mode.
Crazily, this now means that PES2009 could still outdo FIFA09. I’ll say it now: as long as PES2009 is slower than PES2008, and the core gameplay is classic PES gameplay—and it’s not so absurdly easy—I will probably find myself devoting more time to Master League than to Manager Mode.
After Konami’s debacle last year, EA had an open goal this year—and it looks like they’ve actually scuffed their shot. It remains to be seen whether they’ve scuffed the shot wide, or if it’ll just bobble over the line after all.
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Tomorrow’s a big day. I’ll get FIFA09 delivered in the morning (hopefully). I’ll be playing the PES2009 demo in the afternoon. As this is still a PES-oriented blog, and EA have annoyed me so much, I’ll devote tomorrow entirely to the PES2009 demo. I’ll post my first impressions late tomorrow afternoon.
I’ll wait until Friday before posting my first impressions of the full FIFA09 game. By then my anger about Manager Mode should have abated somewhat.
When I moved back to Kansas and started supporting the Wizards (Kansas...
I saw your evoweb posts last night and could clearly see that you were extremely cheesed off.
It’s a bummer that MM see no improvements but I have taken it slightly better than yourself as David Rutter stated that there would be improvements this year. In saying that to take away shirt numbers, no playoffs, no weather conditions (as has been reported on the forums) no night matches (except using the bug in kick off) is poor.
I will still enjoy it as the gameplay is massively improved. Don’t get me wrong this is my first year of FIFA and if the MM isn’t revamped next year, I think I may be as angry as you are just now.
I don’t care for online gaming either, it holds no interest for me.
I will receive my copy tomorrow also, just received my ShopTo despatch email.
Maybe just maybe in my MM I can get Celtic an away win in Europe
Before today I was thinking PES2009 wouldn’t even get a look in….but after reading all the forum posts about MM, im thinking just the same as you – if PES2009 features ‘classic’ gameplay then I might be tempted to pick up a copy. I guess we will know whether that is likely to happen tomorrow. Unfortunately being based in Hong Kong im going have to wait until mid October before FIFA is released, so im relying on your posts between now and then for a full lowdown
Very interesting news. I have not pre-ordered it and I am glad. I won’t be buying either of them now sadly. I may as well buy FIFA 08 for a fraction of the price.
Very interesting comments not-greg and commenteers (is this a word?). As someone who plays almost exclusively online (via PC format), Master League etc holds no appeal to me, so I’ll be most interested to know your thoughts on the gameplay rather than the peripherals.
I am currently still utilising the PES6 servers (which are still online and have a healthy number of players).
Also, I’ll be looking forward to thumping in some goals with the brute Zaki, and not even giving the clump Heskey a place on the bench.
heraldo – I don’t dare go near Evoweb or any of the forums today, because I just know I’ll end up in an embarrassing catfight with some 15-year-old about whether online or offline play ‘roolz’….
For all that I’ve well and truly thrown my toys out of the pram on MM, I can’t wait to get my teeth into FIFA09 and play full games with this all-new gameplay. And even the crappy MM will hopefully provide some extra depth.
If nothing else this FIFA09 MM fiasco shows that I shouldn’t get my hopes up about any game so much. A lesson I learned last year with PES2008, and must relearn again and again it seems.
Glad to hear about your ShopTo dispatch. We’re all in the postman’s hands now, eh?
Matt – the new angle this puts on PES2009 is a peculiar turn of events, isn’t it? Like many disillusioned PES players, I assumed that I’d soon be rebranding my blog as a FIFA09 blog, with occasional nostalgic (and savage) glances aside at PES2009. Now, we’ll just have to see. A ‘proper’ PES2009 – none of that wonder-dribbling, 7-4 scoreline garbage – will almost certainly see me playing Master League, not Manager Mode.
Not Given – sorry to hear you’re probably still cash-strapped. You’re right, FIFA08 is probably available at a bargain price now, but believe me the FIFA09 gameplay is a dream to play. It’s just a shame the league simulator mode isn’t at the same level. I think you would still enjoy it though and be amazed at what you can do on the pitch. I’ve been constantly amazed by the possibilities on offer in the demo, in a way I haven’t been truly AMAZED by a football game for a few years now. Of course this is only a demo. I’ll post my full reaction on Friday after spending 24 hours (postman willing!) with the game.
Big Al – It’s difficult to explain why most of us offline players are breaking out the black armbands and wailing and gnashing our teeth. I suppose the nearest analogy would be getting involved in a really, really great book or film or TV show, but one that goes on for weeks or months and that you can immerse yourself in at any time. Master League always did it for me, for all of its absurdities. Manager Mode in FIFA08 never quite did it thanks to the issues mentioned in the post.
As I also mentioned in the post I plan to play online more this year. Maybe I’ll be drawn into the scene. I have to say that whenever I’ve played online I’ve enjoyed it, for the most part, and have only rarely encountered abuse or bad sportsmanship. The main reason I don’t play online is my immersion in the offline mode(s). Another reason is a lack of time. I work weird hours and I have various things going on that take priority and can occupy unpredictable amounts of my non-work time. For example I could never join one of the 10-vs-10 teams currently being organised on various forums. I just know that I’d never be able to commit to being in a certain place at a certain time.
Good to hear the PES6 servers are still up and running. What an indictment of PES2008, though.