FIFA09: Semi-Manual shooting
It’s still not widely appreciated that FIFA09 offers a choice of Assisted, Semi-Manual, and full Manual control systems out on the pitch. Passing, crossing, through-balls, aerial passing, and shooting—any or all of these can be switched from the default setting (full Assisted) to any combination of Manual or Semi-Manual. You can leave the Assists on for everything and just choose full Manual passing, for example.
This can completely change the nature of FIFA09 and your emotional response to the game. It’s arguably one of FIFA09’s biggest attractions, especially in the longer term. Oddly, I don’t recall a single mention of these control options in any review of the game (and I’ve read a few). Discussion of the topic on the usual forums is also relatively muted.
It can take time to warm up to the idea of playing without the tried-and-tested, familiar Assists. At the moment I play FIFA09 with full Manual through-balls, crossing, and aerial passing, and Semi-Manual passing and shooting.
I barely glanced at these options in FIFA08. After a token game or two using Manual shooting, for example, I fled back to full Assisted and stayed there. I’ll admit that I found it too difficult and initially unrewarding. Dismaying, too: there’s nothing like blazing five yards wide in front of an open goal to send you scurrying back to the familiarity and comfort of Assisted. I bet lots of people who try Semi-Manual or Manual shooting barely last a full half on it.
But I’ve got religion about it now. My Damascene conversion happened in spite of myself, not because. I played online against a player who used a mixture of semi-manual and manual settings. I felt embarrassed about passing the ball around and playing through-balls and scoring goals using Assists. It motivated me to learn the semi-manual game at least, as a stepping-stone to full manual in the future. I’m really glad now that I did.
It’s certainly not easy. It takes time, patience, and the will to learn. I started myself off lightly, by just switching Shooting on its own to Semi-Manual. It was about five games in my case before I could see that it would work, if I persevered. It was about ten games before I started getting around 80% of my Semi-Manual shots on-target, instead of 99% miserably off-target. That was satisfying enough in itself—just hitting the target! And there’s no satisfaction like the satisfaction that comes from starting to score your first bunch of goals on Semi-Manual. (Doubtless I’ll go through the process all over again when I switch to full Manual. I can’t wait.)
I’ve been threatening to do this for a few weeks, so here’s my own individual take on the Assisted and Semi-Manual shooting systems. Each of my highly scientific and detailed diagrams assume the use of a player of average shooting ability, without the use of modifiers (finesse, pace control, etc.) that affect shooting in other ways.
Assisted Shooting
The assisted shooting scheme is pretty generous, as it should be. In fact it’s hard to miss when inside the box, particularly using the finesse button. Assisted shooting helpfully interprets a wide aim as ‘top corner of the net’.
Semi-manual shooting
That green ’wedge of accuracy’ is much, much narrower. Effectively, that’s all Semi-Manual is: a shrinkage of the ’sweet spot’. This is why you’ll be banging easy chances into the stands for several games after making the switch. Semi-Manual shooting still helps you in some of the ways Assisted does, but not much. There’s little forgiveness for aiming outside of a quite constricted area.
Semi-manual shooting from an angle
When attacking goal from out wide, the ‘wedge of accuracy’ (I’m calling it that now) rotates accordingly—and narrows even further. Obviously it narrows, since there’s a smaller amount of goal at which to aim.
None of the diagrams take into account all the factors that would actually affect shooting in a real match. These diagrams assume no defensive pressure. I think the Arena is a great place to try out different shooting schemes, especially as it shows how dramatically you can narrow or widen the aiming wedge through use of various shot modifiers. (But good luck with trying to reproduce it in a match…)
At the moment I’d say making the switch permanently has revolutionised my experience with FIFA09. And… it has completely changed what I expect from a football game. This decisively tipped the balance for me in regard to PES2009. Poor old PES2009 already looked like a museum piece; factor in FIFA09’s Semi-Manual and Manual control options, and there’s no real contest IMO.
I used to have a vastly different idea of what Semi-Manual shooting was all about. I believed that aim was determined by the amount of time you held the analogue stick in the direction you wanted to shoot. After a long and sometimes painful learning process, I now think the system is pretty much like the one sketched out above.
As ever, I stand to be corrected. I think there must be Semi-Manual (and Manual) ninjas out there who may smile at this post. If so, I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Pretty soon I want to be playing with EVERYTHING on full Manual controls. This is a whole new ball game for me and I want more of it.
not-Greg,
Back on the goals trail today,
Villa 1 Chelsea 0
B. Munich 4 Cologne 0.
Including a hattrick from Ribery (my first on the game).
Still didn’t get a great deal of enjoyment out of either. I agree with you shooting just feels totally random. Not sure why I scored when previously I missed. Can’t put my finger on it but something just isn’t right, PES on the PS2 seemed to have it spot on.
Again I’ll perservere. I watch some of the goals on the EA forum and think how on earth did they score those ? I wonder if the scorer thought the same thing ?
I’m a bit worried FIFA might not be for me…..
……….. but then most unexpectedly an upturn in fortunes.
Had an hour or so to kill so thought what the hell. Two games squeezed in -
Man. City 1 Copenhagen 1 – I went a goal behind but a spectacular equalizer by substitute Michael Johnson from a full 30 yards pulled City level. The difference here was that I used the right stick to push the ball slightly infront of me before hitting it, went like an arrow into the top right corner. Is this how to improve long range shooting ??
Hull City 3 Sheffield United 1 – Two superb goals from Nick Barmby early on settled this. The first was actually placd low and hard into the bottom corner from the edge of the box, the second a clever one two into the box which was then blasted in at the near post.
Was this a breakthrough in the semi-assisted shooting stalemate or was it just luck ?
Still playing on pro and the CPU AI is starting to get a little predictable, repeated crosses into the box are now being easily dealt with.
What next then ??? World Class ???
Paul - yes, once you start seeing the same patterns and scoring the same goals over and over, it’s time to step up to World Class IMO. Give it a good go and see how it plays out. You’ll be tempted to drop down to Professional again after several low-scoring (or just plain dull) matches, but it does catch light eventually. As with anything (PES included), you just have to get used to it.
Sadly, as your FIFA09 fortunes are on the rise, mine are on a downturn. I’ll post about it on Monday.
Do you know what I think I’ve cracked it !!!!
Have been playing (and loving) FIFA09 over the last few weeks on professional.
Culminating with Rep. Ireland beating Bulgaria 3 – 1. Scored a 30 yard volley with And Reid ( I have never had such love for a Sunderland player !!), it was that good I had to replay it about 10 times.
Thought I was getting too good so tried on Legendary and got beat 5 nil.
Thanks for all the tips from everyone on here, I feel complete…..
Paul – really great to hear your good news, but what’s with the attempt to jump from Professional to Legendary?! Why not test yourself out on World Class if you think it’s getting easy on Professional? It does get easy quite quickly on Professional, so I recommend World Class really. The only reason to try jumping straight to Legendary is the old PES habit, where you could go straight from default to Top Player/5 stars as soon as you’d mastered default. FIFA’s not PES, and I think it’s best to take incremental steps.
I think I know the kind of volley you mean – I’ve come close a few times myself but never quite nailed one. Did you upload the replay?
Uploading the replay, I didn’t unfortunately.
To be honest I was so excited that I forget about the capabilities of the PS3 ( I had been transported to the magical world of PES6 on PS2).
After the game I was worried that I had mastered the game. I hadn’t, Legendary proved that conclusively !!
No games tonight though, out for a run, tea then The Apprentice !!
Hey
Thanks for all this info. New to FIFA09 on PS3. It is completely diffferent to PS2. At first found games to easy with al this assists on. It is like your not playing yourselve.
Switched to manual shooting and like discribed often missed from five yards but managed goal a game, some how, even on pro level. I was not enjoying games at all resulting in throwing the control across room. Moved down levels to test and improve shooting skils but unless on Stupido level couldn’t do anything that looked a stricker had seen a ball before.
Not wanting to be assisted but thinking the game was a wasted of money I tried semi assisted on Semi Pro level to test and was again winning fie nill away.
However the silver linning is. Semi assisted on Pro is a game yo can win loose or draw and enjoy. With time at this level Everton will once again be champions of Europe.
I think there are plusing as minuses to assisted or non assisted though balls. Short balls are best on non assisted but longer ranging passes are harder and vis versa.
I would also like to say i’ve not been to plused with camera options and often switch in games depentant on the best was to break a team down.
Why the games instructions can’t have this sort of information in them I don’t know.
Thanks
LLCoolJonah
Jonah – thanks for your comment, and I agree with you about the big gulf between the quality of assisted and manual through-balls. For me, a manual through-ball is just like a manual pass. The assisted option plays a ‘proper’ through-ball (just not always where you want it to). I’m disappointed there’s no semi-assisted option for through-balls.
As for the camera options, after a long time chopping and changing I went for the furthest zoom possible on the default Tele view, and stuck with it. I tried the Broadcast view but having got used to playing FIFA08 in Tele view, I found I couldn’t change. Here’s hoping for a better, more customisable camera for FIFA2010 (and PES2010 while we’re about it).