It’s time to get into FIFA09’s career mode in a big way. I’ve had my few getting-to-know-you weeks. I’ve also spent several days playing PES2009 just to see if things could be like they were between me and PES again (no, they can’t—not at the moment, anyway). It’s time to put my money where my mouth is. Time to walk the walk. I’m heading into Manager Mode, or as I will try to make it: Manager League Mode.

This name reflects that I will be playing with House Rules designed to make the experience as much like PES’s Master League as possible. I know—it’s absolutely crazy that the PES career mode is more realistic in many ways than its supposedly fully-licensed, official, FIFA equivalent, but there you go. Life’s not obliged to be consistent.

I’ll expand on my House Rules for Manager Mode over the coming days and weeks. They’re not that complex. There’ll be no consulting a rulebook every time I want to make a substitution. Most of my House rules will limit my coaching staff upgrades and my acquisition of new players on the transfer market. After 4 seasons in my Manager Mode career on FIFA08, I had Michael Owen, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Jesus Navas playing up front for Coventry City. I won’t let that happen this year.

I’ll be playing again as Coventry City on the PlayStation3 version of the game. Yes, the PS3—the console with the dreaded through-ball bug. It’s still not patched. Doubtless I’ll be moaning my head off incessantly about it until it is patched. I have noticed fewer issues since I switched to manual through-balls, but it’s early days.

I’ve mostly played FIFA09 so far on the Xbox360. The game is—just slightly—a better game on the 360. Better graphics, and better overall pace. Just better. Sadly, my 360 would seem to be on its last legs (after just 14 months, and relatively little use) and it’s not reliable enough for me to trust it. I have little enough time as it is. Constantly restarting after freezes and crashes is not something I can be bothered with.

I’ve been playing as Atletico Madrid in the Spanish league on the 360. I’ve just finished my first season and ended up in 4th place. The whole season was played on Professional difficulty. Early on I switched from all-Assisted controls to a mixed bag of semi-manual, manual, and assisted. This instantly made the game harder for me without having to change the difficulty level.

It turned out to be a rollercoaster of a season. Going over to semi-manual shooting in particular saw my goals dry up, and I slipped down the table. I rallied toward the end of the season and but for a few poor performances I might even have challenged for the title in the closing weeks.

What can I say about my Atletico players? I’ve loved playing with them. Forlan. Aguero. Maxi Rodriguez. And quite a few more. I think I’ve loved this season with Atletico so much because it’s been one of discovery for me. I taught myself how to shoot straight without the game helping me so much. Semi-manual shooting makes even the most straightforward goal something that you really have to work for. For example, this goal—

—is the quintessence of a bread and butter goal. But when using a manual through-ball, and semi-manual shooting, I was grinning as if I’d just netted a 40-yard screamer. The ordinary can feel that good in FIFA09. I can’t wait to see how my Coventry City career shapes up.

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.

I have neglected FIFA09 since last Thursday when I got PES2009. This is a big sacrifice for me to make, and not one I’m sure I want to keep on making. I received FIFA09 with near-orgasmic joy. It was tempered slightly in the days that followed, but after a couple of weeks I still think it’s a superb football game and—at the moment—a better football game than PES2009.

I really want to like PES2009. I want to learn to love it. I want things to be like they were. And, I’m happy to say, that is kind of happening. Sometime late Sunday night/Monday morning, I clicked with the game for the first time.

I’d LOVE to play both games all year. But I don’t think they mix very well. I don’t think I can get the best out of either game by chopping and changing between them. I end up trying FIFA09 moves in PES2009, and PES2009 moves in FIFA09.

I spent a large part of last week teaching myself FIFA09’s semi-manual shooting system. This is where you take more responsibility for aiming shots, and the game only helps you a little. I struggled, but finally got the gist of it (and that was only semi-manual; God knows what full manual will be like).

The other night, worried that my few days with PES2009 might undo all that patient work, I fired up FIFA09 for a few games. It wasn’t just FIFA09’s shooting I was worried about losing my handle on. It was the general gameplay. I didn’t want to ‘infect’ my Manager Mode career, so I settled for a couple of Exhibition games. And my worries were all justified: suddenly I couldn’t play FIFA09 properly. I was all over the place. Just a few days on PES2009 had undone me. My shooting skills had evaporated and had to be relearned over the space of a few games.

I don’t know what this means for the future. I wouldn’t be doing justice to either game by trying to play them both on the same day, or even on consecutive days. I’ll probably end up doing some kind of week on/week off system. I’ll see. It does all depend on how I continue getting along with each game, of course.

In my last Exhibition game on FIFA09 the other night I scored this beauty. Well, it was a beauty for me, for various reasons. People say you can’t (or shouldn’t) feel any real emotions when scoring goals in FIFA. People are wrong.

That’s a finesse shot using semi-manual shooting from an acute angle outside the box. The scorer was Forlan—a little wizard of a player in FIFA09 who is the star of my Manager Mode career so far. This was the most satisfying goal I’ve scored yet on FIFA09, coming as it does after a long battle to conquer the semi-manual shooting system.

You might (if you want to be picky) look at the keeper’s lethargic reaction. But FIFA09 keepers are pretty good (arguably a bit too good) and I think this represents the surprise factor of a first-time shot from that angle. I didn’t have time to upload any other camera views. It can take about a minute and a half to upload a replay, and I was playing here. The pitch-level camera view showed a good bit of height and pace on the shot, which dips wickedly to drop in the net.  No one was more surprised than me when the bugger actually went in…

Next morning I scored my first long-range beauty in PES2009. Gerrard got the ball, and I took it on a few yards. I thought I was being crowded out, but also thought I could just see a gap between the bodies through to goal. I took a speculative shot…

Again, the emotion was there—my first such emotion on PES2009, but it had finally come.

And, yes, I’m still using my mobile phone for PES clips. The picture quality is terrible, as at least a dozen YouTube commenters have been kind enough to inform me over the past year. But I understand that Konami’s November update will include something called ‘Theatre of Legends’. It sounds like an equivalent of FIFA09’s high-quality replay uploading service. I should still be playing PES2009 in November…