Review : Fifa 11

Fifa 11 is a football ( soccer ) game, a game that advertise with a 360 degrees ball control system, realistic passing and personality+ ( make the players react like they would in real life ). Can this game deliver all these great promises and is this the flawless game that we look for? We will see in this review.

So is this game really better than other football games ( I didn't play PES ) ? To be honest I think it is personal taste, some people prefer a lot of options and a realistic ( therefore harder ) football experience while others just want to play a game or 2 against a friend then do something else. Fifa11 does not have a lot of options in my opinion, or atleast not a lot of different game modes, especially at its release. A few months after the release EA Sports added a feature called Ultimate Team to the game. Ultimate team is all about making your own squad and take on other teams, how much fun as this sounds it can be really annoying from time to time especially because this mode had a lot of glitches in the start. Which means your opponents are running around with Messi's, Ronaldo's, Xavi's etc, while you are still playing with your nations third league players. Have fun losing 8-0. Next to Ultimate Team there are a few other game modes, like show match, which is just 1 game you can play without worrying to much about all kind of settings ( the mode you play against friends ). Then there is career mode which includes a player career, a player manager career and a manager career. All kind of fun but they become really really boring after 2 seasons. One of the things I hate the most is the fact when you play in player career and you are kind of successful ( as a player ) you HAVE to play EVERY match. Even if that means you have no energy left what so ever, there won't be any rest for you, you have to play and play. Because of all this playing you can not even perform a decent sprint or dribble like you would when you have full energy. ( -1% ) All in all the game modes are not really that fun and won't last you that long. ( -3% )

To save the day EA Sports imported some extra features, like Play as the Goalie, seems fun, is not fun. Making 4 saves while waiting the other 85 minutes just doesn't do it for me. One of the most interesting features is Virtual Pro, Virtual Pro means you can import your own face on the EA website and put it on a player, then you can play with that player in whatever team you want and see him grow throughout the season. Making a lot of goals will make him a better shooter or completing passes will make him better at that. All really fun, but there is one huge problem. Importing my face is the hardest thing I ever had to do in a video game. It all went fine at the website, it generated a nice ( realistic looking ) 3d model of my head and I was ready to import it in my game. Now here is where the problem starts, on the website it looks great, nothing wrong with it, in the game however it looked like I had a pancake face. After several ( 10+ ) tries I finally managed to get my face in that didn't look full white, way too red, or full blue ( I'm not Na'vi! ) ( -2%). Fun feature, bugged as hell. 

So is this game as realistic as the developers say it is? Yes and no, sometimes passing can be really realistic so is the shooting at goal and the players do look like how they look in real life. The problem is however, from time to time something really weird happens which can totally screw you over, for example, if you try to pass from player A to player B and player C is in between then player C doesn't even realise what is going on and just stands there, hitting the ball and maybe give away possession to the opponent. I can give your numerous examples of gameplay that is really weird and can make you lose a game. ( -6% )

The last feature I want to talk about is the online gaming. You can choose to play a 11vs11 with virtual pro's, worst idea ever. The game is full of lag, disconnects you in the middle of it and people run around like headless chickens. I tried to play a 11vs11 about 5 times now, I never managed to get to half time without disconnecting ( my internet is good enough to handle it ) ( -1% ). Then there is the 1vs1 mode, same problem, the lag. EA sports can't really do anything about this lag so we just have to live with it and hope you don't get opponents with bad internet!

Personal playtime : Lets say I got the hidden achievement! ( +50 hours on the pitch )

Final score : 87%