Game Reviews

If you are anything like us, you probably kept FIFA 10 close to your PlayStation 3 for the seasonal lulls in the video game release schedule. Whenever we faced a grueling month-long freeze in quality games, we booted up our PS3 with FIFA 10 for an online match, continued to progress our team in Manager Mode (often with great frustration), or just do a quick tournament to knock out our rival teams. Even the non-soccer fans (football everywhere else but here in the US) had plenty of reason to enjoy the game with the World Cup. Heck, you could even buy EA Sports’ 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa if you wanted to play-along as your country (although if you were England, France or Italy, you probably wanted to prove you could take your country further than the actual team could go). As such, there is little doubt that footie fanatics are anxious to see what this venerable franchise has to offer this time around with FIFA 11.

It’s fair to say there was a lot of hype surrounding this latest entry, more so than in years past, and it’s hard to say all that excitement was warranted, or even necessary. Developer EA Canada promised a more authentic soccer experience through Personality +, a system that more accurately represents real-players' attributes and movement on the pitch, even specific and notable celebrations. For the first time in the FIFA history, you can play as the goalie and compete in 11-on-11 online matches. A new passing system promised greater user-control. All of these new features or tweaks to FIFA 10 work fairly well, but there isn’t really that “wow” factor we hoped for. Sure, this is a solid game, and despite some typical FIFA-inspired visual hiccups, there’s not too much to fault in the actual gameplay or presentation. There isn’t, however, much to say about new game modes (since they are virtually absent this go), and while we get more of the same, we can’t help but lap it up regardless.