http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/ The home of Electronic Arts Community en Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:37:09 GMT vBulletin 60 http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/images/ea_images_main/misc/rss.jpg http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/ http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/458-custom-tactics-suggestions-realistic-gameplay-fifa-09.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:36:53 GMT In my previous post, I had talked about how some tweaking of the custom tactics for the opponent teams would make this game absolutely brilliant with... In my previous post, I had talked about how some tweaking of the custom tactics for the opponent teams would make this game absolutely brilliant with variety and randomness. Thanks for your overwhelming response for that idea. As a result of your support, now I'm going to suggest you some custom tactic set ups for various types of opponents. My basic assumption is that you would be playing for a top team or a champions league team.

Relegation battlers: Let's see how they normally play. Primarily, draw is a great result for them. They may not have matching skill or pace to weave an attack from back to front too often. They would go for route one football of hoofing it up to the target men or in the D-area in some hope. They may not be tactically sound in defending and organisation but they would make it up with spirited tackles and interceptions. They would defend in numbers while leaving very few in attack. They would cross a lot and given the opportunity, they'd rather shoot instead of wasting it with a hopeful further build up play. Build Up - Speed: 40 Passing: 85 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation - Passing: 30 Crossing: 80 Shooting: 55 Positioning: Organised. Defence - Pressure: 35 Aggression: 75 Team width: 20 Defender Line: Cover.

In build-up, they're slow and long. That means when they have the ball in their own half, they won't hurry up the attack and that they use a lot of long balls. Because they'll use long balls, their attackers would position themselves to receive the long passes, which might give you some space in the midfield. In chance creation, they pass safely, cross and shoot a lot. In defence, they won't chase you when you're in your half but will get involved as you get closer to your final third. They're also very aggressive in winning the ball from you. They wouldn't mind a crunching tackle. Defender line should be set to cover if you want a challenging game.

Mid-tablers: Must be pretty average in attack and should concentrate on defending. They might have one or two star players and the rest should be decent but may not be good enough. I'd make quicker than the relegation battlers in build up speed. I'll make it 50. The passing in build up should be 70 which means both short passes and long passes but still more of the latter. In chance creation I'd expect them to take more risks in passing so that would be 50 and I'd keep the crossing at 80 and bring down the shooting to 40 as I think they are more comfortable on the ball than the relegation battlers. In defence, I'd bring down the pressure to 30 as it would help with a quicker build up play, if the ball is won. I'd keep the aggression at 75 as I think that's the ideal setting for aggression across all teams. I can put the team width to 30 as the defenders could be a bit better and hence should be able to make up the lateral distance. Build Up - Speed: 50 Passing: 70 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation - Passing: 50 Crossing: 80 Shooting: 40 Positioning: Organised. Defence - Pressure: 30 Aggression: 75 Team width: 30 Defender Line: Cover.

Euro-aspirants: These are good teams that may not have those five star players but still can give a great challenge to the biggies. They should have some skillful players and can be pacy. I'll give them a 60 in build up play speed and passing in build up should be 55 or 60. This means they can play short passes as well as long passes. It's more situational. The riskiness of passing in chance creation must be 65, which means they'll go for the risky passes but they might have the players to back it up. Crossing should be 55 or 60 while shooting can be 50 or 60. Basically, they'll rely less on crossing and more on passing and shooting. This could be different in various leagues, so I suggest you make you appropriate customisations. In positioning in chance creation, you can make it 'free form' for certain teams which would make the game lot more interesting and random. Pressure and aggression should remain as 30 and 75 respectively while the team width can be 40 or 45, which will help them cut down our crosses. I suggest you alwasy have the defender line as 'cover' across all teams. Build Up - Speed: 60 Passing: 60 Positioning: Organised. Chance Creation - Passing: 65 Crossing: 55 Shooting: 60 Positioning: Freeform. Defence - Pressure: 30 Aggression: 75 Team width: 40. Defender Line: Cover.

For the champions league teams, especially the so-called big teams, the custom tactics set up for build up and chance creation is almost perfect already. But since the defence sliders are messed up, you might have to change that alone for them. Once again, pressure can be 30 and aggression 75. For a team like Chelsea if you set the aggression slider to 75, they might be a massive challenge to your attackers, because they have a top class defence and most of the team could tackle rather well. The team width can be 50 for teams which uses wing backs and 40 otherwise.

If you don't know already, there are only 28 slots for saving custom tactics. That's a shame. Anyway, I'm using it this way. 3 slots for my team (Chelsea), 1 for relegation battlers, 1 for mid-tablers, 1 for Euro-aspirants and 18 other slots for specific top teams which are Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City (love 'em or hate 'em, you can't ignore 'em!), Real Madrid, Barca, Sevilla, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Villareal, Inter, Milan, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina, Bayern, Lyon and Porto. Now this leaves 4 empty slots which can be used for the in-game tactical changes.

So I'll have unique tactic setups for the above mentioned top teams and the other teams in English, Spanish and Italian leagues would get one of the tactics of (a) relegation battlers (b) mid-tablers (c) euro aspirants. As long as I've the teams fixed in the premier league, la liga and serie a, I'm fine. These leagues account for 90% of my matches. This might have left some leagues untouched. That's fine. Either I don't use them or I'm fine with the occasional random match where I can run past the defence through the centre. May be, I'd be playing samba football by then that I'd not think of route ones!

P.S: The slider values are based on my own opinions and preferences. Please change it for yourself if you wish. Don't need to bash me but certainly we can have a matured discussion on what the sliders should be. But I have tested the above values and they work for me superbly. ]]> bluchampblogger http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/458-custom-tactics-suggestions-realistic-gameplay-fifa-09.html http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/457-guide-realistic-football-experience-offline-fifa-09.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:36:01 GMT I love this game. As I get better I realise that very often the scoring happens to be from a throughball that results in on one-on-one situation,... I love this game. As I get better I realise that very often the scoring happens to be from a throughball that results in on one-on-one situation, which you can finish with a finesse shot. Nowadays, it is happening too very often. This is what people complain as 'route one football' of FIFA 09. This is not a bug or a glitch. I'll explain you why this happens and I'll also suggest you a solution which would make your game lot more tactical and lateral. If you haven't experienced this one-on-one thingy, you are not spoilt yet.

See this game plays so beautifully that you can almost score a goal anyway you want. You can build up to the goal to your heart's content. When there is an easy way out, you can exploit it. You don't want to exploit that because you want realism and simulation as much as possible. When you're playing a league or a cup competition, when you badly need a goal, you'd get it cheaply but wouldn't really enjoy it. Am I right? This "throughball + one on one" happens to be one such quick way of scoring. I don't want route one football and I don't need a readymade way of scoring a goal.

Lot of people have written and said that this game rewards only route one football and does not reward or even facilitate patient build up football with lateral movement. That's primarily because of the number of one-on-ones that people have seen so far in the game. When you keep zipping throughballs to the centre one-on-ones, it's not fun. You are unchallenged. You have one quick way to get out of jail. It subconsciously restricts your creative thinking in building the game up and does not encourage you to play enterprising football. So why does this happen? I'll break the suspense upfront. It's all because of the custom tactics set up of your opponent teams.

I was playing against Real Madrid the other night. Throughball right through the centre, one-on-one to Drogba, goal! I was thinking how this could happen. It can't be that I'm too good at this game. I ruled that out. In reality, they would have floored Drogba instead of watching sprint through 30 yards. The defenders didn't even make a decent attempt to stop Drogba.So I went about investigating further. If you see the custom tactics set up of Real Madrid, you'll understand.

Go to the defence numbers in custom tactics for Real Madrid. Pressure is 65. Aggression is 35. Team width is 65. What does this mean? The 65 for pressure means that the Real Madrid players would start pressurising you quite high on the pitch. When they pressurise, with the kind of responsiveness in FIFA 09, you can quickly exploit the gap created by the pressure with a quick throughpass and boom. But why don't their defenders jockey, tackle and give Drogba a hard time? Because the aggression is set at 35. This means they won't really pounce on you. They would try to contain you but won't tackle you hard. At least they must be blocking Drogba in numbers right? No they won't because the team width is set at 65. That shows that the defence will not narrow down at the back. They would in fact be quite wide and spread, and in case of a quick attack, their full backs will not be able to come to rescue. Goodness me, they also have the defender line as offside trap - good movement or bad movement, they're in it together, the back four.

So now, what settings for Real Madrid here would have challenged Drogba? Pressure is not quite effective without aggression. And I don't want the defender to be activated so high on the pitch. I'd put the pressure in the region of 30-35. Aggression should be between 70 and 80. This way, you won't have it easy. It would be a massive challenge to get through. AI will tackle you, would even foul you and might double the pressure by asking one more defender to help stop you. Your route one football would be effectively over here. The more your 'striker runs' are intercepted by the opposition defence, you'll start thinking of how else to play, build up and score.

So what have I done here. For certain top teams, I have gone and edited the custom tactics set up so that they don't play like absolute idiots. And then I have created certain standard set ups. For instance, relegation battlers. They all mostly play very similarly. So I have personally edited their custom tactics to reflect their deep defending, hard tackling, long balling etc. But I did not want to do this for all of them individually. I started with Stoke City. Edited the custom tactics for them. And then for the similar teams, I just pointed their custom tactics to this saved custom tactics of Stoke City. So simple.

As per the original set up, Stoke had a fast build up play. The players are not as fast as Chelsea players. So when they play fast build up and lose the possession high up on the pitch, they won't even tackle because of the original defence set up in custom tactics and they can't even catch up a monster like Didier Drogba. If they lose the ball in my half, it could be a matter of two or three passes, before you see another one of those Didier Drogba goals. Not anymore. Now they will tackle me, challenge me, double up on me and even crowd in the centre. Lovely isn't it? That's no guarantee for Stoke City that they won't concede, it only improves their defence. Remember, we're not trying to boost any statistics here. If that Stoke defender is rated only 55 in tackling, when you set the their team aggression to 75 or 80, this 55-rated defender would do as much as possible in the framework of his own capabilities.

Apart from the unique tactics I'd like to customise and keep for the champions league teams, I would create more such generalised customised custom tactics for groups like relegation battlers, mid-tablers, euro-aspirants etc. My special concern would be on editing the defence set ups. I'm already half way through this. I love my games now. AI gives me a tough fight through the centre forcing me to come up with new ideas to break it up. With the gameplay of FIFA 09 at my disposal, I love this challenge!

Finally, if you're fine with the game as it is, no worries. Don't tweak anything. Just enjoy your game. Also if you're finding the game already difficult enough, good for you. Keep trying. But just keep checking if your goals are from everywhere and if your goals are produced from varied types of attacks. The moment you realise that all that you do is one-on-ones, use this little tutorial. But remember, one-on-ones are not bad. They are in real football so they must be in FIFA 09 as well. I'm just saying that the proportion should also stay true.

If you think that you're unable to control the game as much as you'd like to, set the passing in chance creation in custom tactics to somewhere around 30 which means safe passing. If you do this alongwith 30 or 40 for passing in build up, there will always be players around you to pass the ball and you can slowly build up and play your game. Having made these tweaks, I'm enjoying this game so much. The quality of my football has really improved and I'm truly enjoying the way I play. Now I have multiple options in mind, I'm trying out new things. Heck, I've strarted to use crossing as a weapon and even putting corners to good use! Let's use the game to its fullest potential!

P.S: (a) I'm referring only to the offline games. (b) I play in 'professional' difficulty. (c) I use 'assisted' for pass, cross and through. 'semi' for shots and 'manual' for lob pass. ]]> bluchampblogger http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/457-guide-realistic-football-experience-offline-fifa-09.html http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/456-how-play-fifa-09-wisdom-experience.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:34:55 GMT Guys! You might have read my long game play review of FIFA 09... Guys! You might have read my long game play review of FIFA 09. Thanks for your nice feedback there. Now, I'm gonna share my experiences of some aspects of FIFA 09, which could be helpful to you. Once again, a long post!

'I love this game' is not the same as 'I'm good at this game'. I'm a decent football gamer. I'm not a great player but I'm pretty good. I play just for fun and relaxation and I don't play for ranks or points. I don't want to master this game for two reasons - one is the fun factor will be gone and the other is I don't take this seriously. This is just a game which works as a stress-reliever for me. Still, I can't really enjoy and relax if I happen to lose 10 matches in a row. That's how FIFA 09 started for me.

I chose to play at 'professional' difficulty because that was my standard difficulty level in FIFA 08. As always I played for Chelsea. I tried to use the real life formation that Scolari uses. So I put in a 4-1-4-1 with Drogba as striker and Essien as defensive midfielder and Lampard, Deco, Ballack and Joe Cole finding a place. The game is a bit pacy but I kinda liked that pace. having got adjusted to that pace I still found myself struggling to create or finish decent chances. I wish I could watch the complete replay of the match that I lost because I wanted to see where I went wrong.

After losing a few more matches, I didn't need my match videos. I could see the problem areas one by one. As the game is fast, I tend to go forward and forward, which is not required. I could control the pace of the game by my actions. Don't have run with the ball everytime you have the ball, just pass it back, let the players do their movements and runs, see the space and slowly knock the ball up. At any stage if you feel you're forced to make a risky pass, just don't do that, pass it back or make the easiest pass, keep the possession. From the half way line to goal, it takes only two or three passes. So, don't hurry them. If you're worried about the ticking clock, play 10-minute-halves instead of 5-minute halves.

Have you felt that something is wrong somewhere but you can't put a finger on what it is? If yes, get your tactics right. There are some key questions that you need to answer before you start the game. Do you want to play short passes only or short/long passes? Do you want to play narrow or wide? How do you want your chances to be created? How high should your defenders be? The answers to these questions will depend on your personal preference and your team's capabilities. You would adjust the custom tactic sliders based on the answers to these questions.

It is very important to get your tactic right up front because a 10 minute match could be half over before you could realise something is wrong. In FIFA 09, I have this habit of having my defenders stay deep because of the throughball threats. While I was playing Stoke City, at half time I realised that it was a waste because Stoke weren't that threatening with their through passes and my defenders can always catch up if something goes wrong. So I pushed up my defenders which added a new dimension to my attacks and the result - two second half goals. Don't jump into the game blindly, spend some useful time on the tactics.

Against better teams, I struggled a lot in the final third. Everytime Drogba was fed with a decisive ball, the made a meal of it. Drogba had the skill and pace but still I couldn't have him run with the ball even for a few yards. The defenders were all over Drogba, every single time. Then I realised that it is a problem of my formation. I was playing 4-1-4-1. What happened was one of these 4 midfielders would play the ball to Drogba, who on his own had to run towards the two or three defenders ahead of him. It wasn't going to work, not even in real life. I just imagined what Drogba would have done in those cases. He would trap and hold the ball until reinforcements came in. That's what I had to do too. Now, as Drogba I started holding the ball and played it back to one of the four surging midfielders.

Then I thought it makes sense to have a partner for Drogba so that I can keep the ball in the final third for more time. That's when I switched to 4-4-2 diamond. I brought in Anelka for Joe Cole. Since then it was a completely new ball game. I haven't started using the flanks so much because I'm still learning to cross. When I had decided that I'm not going to create chances using crosses, there is no point in my formation having two wide men. When I changed from 4-1-4-1 to 4-4-2, I felt like I'm playing with two extra men because I had all men in the zone where I play.

If you haven't noticed by now, the players are subject to realistic fatigue in this game. they do slow down in the last half hour of the game. They do
become tired but keep an eye on the opponents - they could also be tired or injured. All players around the 30-years mark, do get slowed down in the second half. In Chelsea, Deco and Ballack definitely lose some pace as the game goes on. Their game is not built on pace but if you bring in some
fresh legs it makes a huge difference. I brought on Kalou and Malouda for them and anyone could see that those were the subbed in players. They were zipping around with energy and to have such active subs also kind of wakes you up and brings some belief for you. It did for me.

People have told this a million times - finesse shot is your friend. Very true. when you play a finesse shot, the player does not rush the shot. He stops a bit and take a well aimed shot. In xbox360, finesse shot is the right shoulder button (or simply the right button, not trigger). I find it more comfortable to have it in the left button becaue in order to play the finesse shot I need to take my finger off the left trigger, which is for sprint. That's logical, isn't it? Take your foot off the gas when you want to apply brakes!

The thing with finesse shot is that, I was so conscious that I should play a finesse shot, I used to forget the fact that I need to apply appropriate shot power. So whenever you get into shooting positions, two things should come to your mind - your finger on finesse button and correct shot power. It's ok if you apply less shot power but avoid giving more power. Shots on target improves confidence and also could result in rebounds. Shots off target are of no use at all. So less it better. Shooting here in FIFA 09 is more life like. The chance will be gone in a second. When it's there you should grab it. If you don't take your chances well enough, you would get beat.

The teams are built with realistic strengths and weaknesses. You can surely see a difference between Man Utd and Everton, Aston Villa and Sunderland, West Ham and West Brom. This is quite different to FIFA 08 where pretty much any team would play like Barcelona. I remember that even second division teams would string 20 passes while you can only watch as they are simply unstoppable when they want a goal. In FIFA 09, the teams play truly to their strengths. If you're playing as Chelsea, you should be able to beat about 16 teams in the premier league while the other four can be anyone's game. Don't then say the game is easy, say the game is true.

So finally, where have all these left me? I'm not winning matches 10-0 on legendary. But I'm winning matches 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 and drawing some
matches 0-0, 1-1 and sometimes losing to big teams. But I'm creating chances, getting my shots on target and more than anything I'm enjoying my games. I'm playing the league now. I'm now 4th in the table with 27 points after 15 matches, with a goal difference of 5. Man Utd leads the table with 35 points in 16 matches. I think I'll get them sooner or later.

Don't frustrated or annoyed at video games, especially a great game like FIFA 09. Just put some thought and you can start enjoying the game. ]]> bluchampblogger http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/456-how-play-fifa-09-wisdom-experience.html http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/455-fifa-09-gameplay-review-part-2.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:34:11 GMT (RESUMES) The AI is just superb. Interestingly, the AI plays like human beings now. They make mistakes, they make hard tackles, they make fouls,... (RESUMES)

The AI is just superb. Interestingly, the AI plays like human beings now. They make mistakes, they make hard tackles, they make fouls, they get yellow cards and they even get sent off. I simply love this aspect. It gives you a chance against the AI. It makes you look for these things and exploit the AI like you would do to a human opponent. The intelligence of your fellow AI players is already controlled and improved by the custom tactics settings. The intelligence of the AI opponent is top class. There are no cheap AI tricks or cheats as far as I've seen so far. AI simply plays like one hell of a human opponent.

There were some 'bugs' reported by the gamers since the game was released. Luckily for me, I didn't find them or they didn't spoil my fun one bit. Firstly, people were complaining throughballs are the one heavenly way to score and there is now way you can stop if a perfect throughpass is played. I don't think so. I was defending the throughballs very well indeed. It all starts with your positioning - vertical and horizontal - of your defenders, and then how soon they close the gaps, how well you can jockey, nudge, body check and finally tackle, if need be. Or you can even advance the keeper. If the striker still scores, forget it. You can't win every single time.

Then people thought that the ball hits the bar/post too often. That happened to me initially before I learnt to shoot properly. If you haven't figured out the shooting you're bound to go off target. But why should it hit the bar? It is surely unrealistic to see the ball hit the ball half a dozen times in every match. Well, if you hit off target - you could either hit the bar or the ball can fly over the bar. If it flies over the bar, the game should start all over again from a goal kick. EA must have thought that pulling those just above the bar shots to hit the bar would also keep the ball in play and also adds to the excitement and a possible rebound goal. Makes gaming sense. However, since I've started to improve, I don't hit the bar, I only find the keeper :-)

Some were unhappy that crossing is no longer a weapon. I must agree that crossing in FIFA 08 was very easy. Whereas in FIFA 09, crossing is as good as the receiver of the cross. The header/volley by the receiver of the cross depends on the timing of the button press. If you time it perfectly, the header might go in and the cross becomes a good one. I'm perfectly happy with the way crosses work in FIFA 09. We can at least get rid of the 'cut back kings'. The tweaking of crossing alone has cut down on the cheap (low cross by Ronaldinho and cut back by Henry) goals.

Finally, my take on how FIFA 09 has treated Chelsea FC in the game. What hits you first is that the Chelsea kit is all wrong. Chelsea blue is not the same as the blue used by EA for the jersey. And the club logo on the chest is smaller than it should be. The gap between the adidas logo and the sponsor name 'samsung' should be much wider. Even the neck cut is not proper.

Now you might ask me why I bother about these things when the game is so good. Correct, I don't bother. I never bothered when PES5 had only West London FC with a plain blue kit. But it is EA who pride that they have the licenses and hence 'if it's in the game, it's in the game'. When I saw that the FC Inter's jersey is horribly wrong, I thought Chelsea's could have been worse. One big plus is all third kits are readily available. You don't need to unlock the kits with the crazy challenges like score three 30 yard goals with the centre back and all that.

EA have re-created the Stamford Bridge superbly. It gives you real feeling of being in the Bridge with the stadium model, the wave of fans wearing blue, the chants and everything. When you're playing Be A Pro, you'll get a very nice view of the stadium from the player's angle. One gripe is that during the day matches, the pitch at Stamford Bridge still does not look nice. So purposefully, every single time in exhibition mode, I change the condition from 'day' to 'overcast' where it looks very fine indeed.

In terms of how the players are rated, I think most of the ratings are fair. I'm not comparing our ratings with that of players from other top teams. I'm just seeing the ratings vis-a-vis the real life player capabilities. Cech 88, Bosingwa 81, Carvalho 85, Terry 88, Ashley Cole 82. I wonder how Ashley Cole is just 82? That's a mistake. Based on last two seasons' performance, Ashley Cole the left back is a better player than John Terry the centre back. Joe Cole 83, Essien 86, Lampard 84. Now again, Lampard can't just be 84! He is the most consistent player in the premier league over the last 5 seasons! Anelka is rated 83 for which he must call EA personally and thank them. Kalou is 79 and I might just agree. Mikel is only 81 while I would put him at 84 or something. Ballack is 86 and Deco is 85. Deco should have been better. Drogba is 87. Malouda is 83 and thankfully Alex is 82. And you Franco-lovers, he is just 71 but he might add about 10 more points for the next FIFA version.

What I see in FIFA 09 is that the game is lot more open, random and beautiful. You can recreate almost any moment from your Super Sunday. If you need a goal, you need to work for it. It's lovely to see that you can employ various styles of football in FIFA 09. I even tried long passes to target man and it works superbly well. You can sprint through the wings, you cut through the centre, you can play slow build up short passing game, you can play fast build up mixed passing game, you can try out long balls, you can simply do anything you want. It's like a piece of clay, it's up to you to do what you want with it. I'm thoroughly enjoying the game, the best football video game ever. As one reviewer put it, the only negative is that you don't find enough time to play this beautiful game. ]]> bluchampblogger http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/455-fifa-09-gameplay-review-part-2.html http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/454-fifa-09-gameplay-review-part-1.html Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:33:34 GMT I've got my FIFA 09 and I've been playing it over the weekend. There is so much in FIFA 09 that it is not fair to review the game after just a couple of days of playing. But you don't need to play for too long to understand the game play improvements and features. So I'll review the game play aspects of FIFA 09 in this post. See, I haven't played much of Be A Pro seasons, Manager Mode or even the online games. All I've done is to play the offline exhibition games and quick custom tournaments.

The most striking thing in game play is the pace of the game. It is noticeably faster than FIFA 08 and almost the same pace as Euro 2008. I can assure you this much that it is no way pacier than the actual pace of the premiership or la liga. Serie A? Yes, it is pacier than the Serie A. See there are three settings for pace - slow, normal and fast. What I refer to here is the 'slow' pace setting only. Some gamers like slow pace because that allows them to take time to think to weave attacks. Same with me. All of us should learn to play the quicker game, think on the fly and play more intuitively. As get used to the pace, it doesn't feel fast at all.

The quicker game play would have been terrible if it was not coupled with the high player response rate. Luckily for us, deliberately by EA, the players response it very quick which complements the quicker game play. The gap between the button press and the player performing as per your instructions is very very less. There is still some lag at rare scenarios but that's ok because that's the price you need to pay for realism. In FIFA 08, there was considerable lag in player response which made you accustom to a certain timing when it comes to button press. If you want to shoot from 15 yards, you gotta hit the shoot button when you're at 18-20 yards itself. I'm kind of so used to this timing that I used this in FIFA 09 as well, unintentionally. The result: the player shoots from 18 yards with the power and direction that suits for 15 yards.

If you want to enjoy FIFA 09, you should unlearn your FIFA 08 wisdom and play FIFA 09 to its merit. Make a list of all the do's and don't's of FIFA 08 and ensure to forget them and start afresh. Then how should you play FIFA 09? Just play like you would play football on the pitch. Just play it like real football. The players can do a lot of things, individually and collectively. It's only your ability to tap the full potential that would make the difference. In FIFA 08, I had this problem of the players on the pitch playing with a different mentality than mine. While I'm in a hurry, they would display no sense of urgency, because of the inherent lack of quality and capabilities. Now in FIFA 09, when I want them to play like their life is depended on it, they really do. They get tired, they get upset, they give their best, they're more human than ever. That's what I like best about FIFA 09.

The next key thing you'd see is the new animations. There are hundreds of new animations that the players perform that didn't in FIFA 08. Thanks to the new set of animations, the players' off the ball capabilities have improved tremendously. Defending is now a pleasure. Our defender can do some harmless shirt-pulling, constant jockeying, some body checking - all this without or before resorting to the hard tackle. So before you go for that risky hard tackle, you have multiple options to unsettle the ball carrier as much as possible, which is a great thing.

The jumping and heading animations are all fantastic. Now it's all about timing the jump and the header. Sometimes, you'd see an attacker and defender go up for a seemingly 50-50 high ball only for both of them to miss the ball because they mistimed their jump. The ball would fall a few yards away as a possible loose ball. Amazing animation, that one. The desperate dives, the last gasp defensive headers, the sliding shots, the in-the-air collapses - they are all here, making the game look as close to the real thing as possible.

The best new feature award should go to 'custom tactics'. FIFA has introduced this very serious and complicated feature with some gusto. You can now determine the playing style of your team. Custom tactics define how the rest of the AI players in your team play in the match. You can now determine if your players should prepare for fast set up or slow set up, prepare for short passes or long passes, prepare for lots of shots or less shots, prepare for lots of crosses or less crosses etc. The key is the word 'prepare' because they can only prepare and be in positions, only you make the pass or shot. You can also play narrow or wide. You can ask your players in the final third to be organised or play in free form. You can also set how your chances need to be created - from shots from anywhere or from crosses or from passes.

When I was playing Inter vs Milan at the beautiful San Siro at dusk, me and mate (playing co-op for Inter) thought that it's all getting too congested in the centre (middle vertical third). It was getting difficult to pass or to keep possession as the Milanese defenders were closing down on us vigorously. All that we had to do was to go to the custom tactics and increase the playing width slider from 35 to 75. The difference was bloody obvious. When you're leading with 10 minutes to go, and if you want to hold your lead at any cost, you can set custom tactic set up to slow set up with short passes.

The other time, we found that our back four is pushing up too far up front. Reduced the pressure slider from 65 to 10 and the aggressiveness from 60 to 15. The defence started doing what I want them to do. The custom tactics works like a charm. The more you understand and exploit this, the better you'll be at this game.

(CONTD) ]]> bluchampblogger http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/blogs/346856-bluchampblogger/454-fifa-09-gameplay-review-part-1.html