My FIFA 09 demo impressions <3

   First off, the FIFA 09 demo has been on Xbox Live and PSN for a few days.

In terms of my reaction, it seems that the series is continuing to finally

establish a solid posistioning against the Winning Eleven/PES franchise
that had held the title of King of Football for so many years.

   Personally, I've always been a closet fan of Football, definitely 

moreso than it's american counterpart. I spent ages looking for a game

that managed to recapture the thrill of sprinting up the pitch, recieving that

perfect pass, juking a defender, then passing the ball to a teammate thats

open for the one phenomenal goal, but the video game depictions of the sport

always left more to be desired. First, I should go ahead and say that I

was never really a fan of the Winning Eleven franchise and the last FIFA

game I invested any serious time with was 2001 (aside from 08). Before that...

I think my gaming experiences boiled down to Megaman Soccer and

International Online Soccer for Half Life (high recommended for anyone looking for a different experience with their first person shooters). Last year, thanks to Xbox Live, I discovered a charming title called Sensible World Of Soccer that does a fantastic job of forcing the players to invest time to actually get even remotely decent with it, but as you can see...neither EA nor Konami had released anything worth my attention.

   All of that changed in 2007. I finally decided to try out Winning Eleven for the first time in years since I played one of the PS2 versions at a friends house, so I checked out the demo, which still didn't do it for me. After seeing how EA revitalized the stagnant NBA and NFL genres in 2003 and 2004 with their trick stick ideas, I was always wondering how long it would be until a company used for Football. Finally, after all those years of waiting, my dream came true! EA

released FIFA 08, which had a massive graphical overhaul and started allowing players to use the right analog to perform various skills on the pitch, but it took some serious investment of time to learn them all, not to mention actually utilizing them to any degree of success. The framerate was increased to help make the overall experience feel more smooth, only occasionally dropping during victory celebrations and pre-game animations, but each stadium felt truly unique. So, knowing how EA is, when I heard about the inevitable FIFA 09, I was worried that they were just going to ship out the same game again without any useful changes. It is with great joy that I can say that I wasn't completely right on that.

   The most significant tweak EA is adding to all of their 09 sports titles is dynamic stat tracking, which means that if any team or player performs different throughout the course of a week, you will be able to download those statistics which could have a dramatic alteration on how they play out in game, for better or for worse. This marks the first time that they are actually staying up to date on a weekly basis with real world statistics, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. 

   Next up, when you start up the game, it still drops you off in on a field in control of Ronaldinho alone to practice the controls, but there are also tutorials that pop up along the top of the screen so you don't have to discover how complicated it is to do a rainbow kick on your own (<3).>

-Bobhead