Finesse is more
My return to FIFA09 has been a good one so far. It feels great to have a viable football game to play after playing PES2009 to the point of exhaustion. I will be going back to PES2009 eventually—I have unfinished business in Master League (I want an unbeaten season), and I have to at least sample the Become a Legend mode that I’ve heard so much about. But that’s a while away.
I’m playing FIFA09’s infamous Manager Mode, and I’m almost liking it. I remain totally unimpressed by EA’s miserable excuse for a career mode. But my interest in FIFA09 is being completely sustained by its core gameplay alone—on World Class difficulty. One of the factors that turned me off FIFA09 several months ago was the way you could easily win back the ball by clamping the tackle buttons+sprint. Moving up to World Class has mostly resolved that issue for me. Now when I’m defending I have to take care, jockey for position, block passing lanes, and above all avoid letting my players get dragged out of position.
Clamping will tend to distort your whole game on World Class. I’ve already lost count of the number of times that I’ve resorted to clamping when under pressure, and gifted the tricksy CPU a clean run-through on goal due to my defenders converging on the ball. The CPU simply passes to one of its team-mates, inevitably left out in the open, and away they go, clean in on goal.
I’ve resumed FIFA09 towards the end of my second season playing as Atletico Madrid. I think that I will play the rest of this season, and perhaps one more, and then start a new Coventry City career. After getting sacked during my attempt on the PS3 version, I have more unfinished business there. It should be pretty damn hard and I’m looking forward to it.
Goals have been hard to come by. There was one session mid-week where I scored just one goal in 6 matches—and that goal was a penalty. I found it so hard just to create a chance, never mind score. Refamiliarising myself with FIFA09’s gameplay, and stopping trying to play PES, helps a lot of course…
This morning I did finally start scoring. Bread and butter goals, mainly: tap-ins and rebound volleys and the like. And then, towards the end of the session, I scored this lovely finesse shot from outside the area, after working hard to create the space:
I actually went on to lose this game 3-1. FIFA09 is a harsh mistress on World Class.
When I moved back to Kansas and started supporting the Wizards (Kansas...
Great lefty curl, perfect placement. Unlucky to lose though. How much do you use the new tactical sliders? In some ways I feel it should be a plus to have them but I don’t know. I am lately having thoughts of attacking patterns, which I have to make on my own on PES. I believe it should be interesting to decide how quick, aggressive, how many numbers try to participate in attacks in a tactical preset.
Did someone say Become a Legend?!
I’m not sure what to make of the new “all games” approach to the blog. I’ve enjoyed reading about Valkyria Chronicles and the piece on Final Fantasy, but i’m missing the daily Pro Evo entry (and Fifa to a lesser extent).
My own BAL mode has taken a back seat for a while. I’m around 14 seasons in and needed a break. Master League got a decent look in, but i’ve found myself playing Call of Duty 4 and giving Star Wars a bit of air time as well.
Anyway, keep up the good work (I think)!
steph_wheeler – Thank you, it was a very nice goal to score in context, believe me, coming as it did in the midst of a goal drought. It looked (and felt) a lot better from the original angle at regular speed.
I have my custom Atletico tactics, yes, although I haven’t paid as much attention to this aspect of FIFA09 as I might have. I haven’t paid as much attention to FIFA09 itself in recent months as I might have. As things stand it looks as if I might be getting back into FIFA09 and if I do then I’ll certainly be looking more in-depth into the sliders. Have you got a copy of the game yet or still playing PES2008?
Liam – don’t worry, when I do finally get round to BaL I’ll give it proper attention! That should be before PES2010 comes out…
As for the new ‘all games’ angle on the blog, its purpose is really to give me a chance to play those other games without feeling that I should be forcing myself to play one of my football games. In a nutshell, as a general gamer I want and need to play those other games, but I was kind of forcing myself to play PES2009 there at times towards the end in order to have something to write about on the blog. That’s not a healthy state to be in so I decided to go with the option of including my other gaming in the blog in order to make sure I only ever played the football games when I really wanted to.
FIFA09 has grabbed me again and I am enjoying it, and you can rest assured that whenver I talk about that or any football game I’ve played it because I’ve genuinely wanted to and not because I have felt the need to fulfil a blog post quota. The same goes for any other games I mention. It’s very early days yet and I can always revert to football-only if necessary.
Switching it up keeps it interesting for you and the readers alike I think, at times I don’t read the blog because it became very samey, you can only say so much about one game all year! – Not a crisitism, just an opinion.
Thats a nice goal, I haven’t scored anything like that before (on purpose at least).
Paww – I fully agree, really. I do need to vary things for all our sakes—mine as much as yours.
It has been a big weakness of the PES Chronicles format that at times the posts blur into each other. I think this can also be a strength, as it provides familiarity. Readers know they can dip in and out, and pick up the ’story’ even after a long break. And, of course, roughly once per week I can push the boat out and make a special post—usually ranting about scripting or the like (!)—to provide some contrast. I think that in a way I’ve been lucky PES is no longer what it used to be, as it’s obliged me to cover other games such as FIFA, Football Manager, and now other games entirely. I think the blog would have totally stagnated if PES was still the all-year-round game that it used to be for me.
Like I say below and in a few recent posts, I will see how it all goes, but I think I should probably keep the football posts outnumbering the non-football game posts by about 2:1. There are thousands of general gaming blogs and sites around and I absolutely do not want to try to occupy their crowded space. There are still only a handful of sport video game ’story’ sites (a niche market if ever there was one!) and I won’t be moving too far from my roots here.