“Gamers can now strap on the virtual gloves to play as a goalkeeper for the first time in FIFA 11.
The new Be A Goalkeeper feature for EA SPORTS’s latest version of its best-selling football franchise now gives gamers the chance to control all 22 players on the pitch.”
FIFA 11 has fallen upon this boast as its fail-safe hook to crow-bar regular football gamers into parting with their hard-earned for the latest incarnation of their admittedly excellent game. Enticed? Overly-enthused? Nor me.
It’s well couched in the psyche of a those who hunger for sports videogames to accept that each year he/she will set aside 40 or 50 notes adorning her majesty’s visage (well, if you’re in the UK) to buy the most recent version of their favourite sporting game. It’s taken as read that the newest kits, sponsors, recently-emerged household names etc will mirror the real-life actuality of the chosen sport in this game, and, as such, this latest version will come with a new feature- something to convince you, should you dare waver, that leaving the old game behind and buying this new, shiny one is a commitment to which you must wholeheartedly subscribe and this is FIFA’s offering on this occasion.
360 degrees is nothing new Konami.
It’s not so much the new “control the goalie” feature that leaves me cold, moreover the pigeon-stepped progress in revolutionising how sports games like this are played. The feature in itself is fine but that’s it: it’s fine. To laud hyperbole on it would be to contravene the Trades Description Act. The self-proclaimed Evolutionary PES packs no-less a feeble shot at paving the way for a bright new future: Konami gleefully informed its buyers that the manipulation of players’ movement would be overhauled in PES2011, adopting the ability to move players through angles at 360 degrees. Forgive me but this is less Evolutionary as Reactionary when you consider that FIFA did this last year.
Sure sports games have evolved in the respect that gamers can battle online, the games are HD, imminently 3D etc, but this brag can be extended to any 1 star game spanning any genre that you may care to mention. What we need to realise is this: sports games are lacking a freshness, nay an innovative vision steaming with originality that truly make us look forward to seeing what comes next; being able to choose which way the goalie dives is pretty pants.
How about other games? The Wii, though much maligned by the upper echelons of gaming bourgeois, has opened the proverbial playing field by simply enabling you to engage actively with your chosen sport. Take golf for example. Being able to swing your arm pendulum-like and bask in your virtual golf ball settling obediently (albeit predictably) right next to Tiger’s is pretty cool and it’s also fun. Though this scenario is at best unlikely in real-life, it does give a sense of active engagement that the elitist consoles don’t yet do.
Prolonged play does lead to aching shoulders though.
This leads me onto wondering why we buy games like FIFA 11 (and I will buy it, as will you if you like football) when we know that, before too long, they’re going to get a whole lot better by being decreasingly passive and quite literally sportier. It’s clear that at this moment we stand at the equivalent of a sporting loggerhead- a stalemate. The Wii offers sporting interaction but on such a primary scale that it’s not long out of nappies (or diapers) whilst Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, though peerless in their presentation of graphics, detail and gameplay don’t give you the chance to crack a homerun with a nifty swing of the pad. Nil Nil. A Draw. Checkmate.
And this year we have witnessed that Sony and Microsoft DO aspire to better themselves with Microsoft bringing in the likes of Kinect and Sony the PlayStation Move- gaming focalised more or less entirely on the accuracy with which you move/hit a ball/attempt to save a shot perhaps! (In short- a version of the Wii that “true gamers” like that aforementioned upper echelon will like) but we won’t wait ’til then- we will buy FIFA 11. En masse. Including me. The reason lies not in the fact we can control the keeper, nor the capability to pirouette the players on the field through a complete circle, nope- it’s grounded in the truism that sporting gamers have a near monastic devotion to their sport. It’s the sport we love, not the game.
As a breed we flock back each year with passive obedience and hand over our money for the new version. We don’t question it/delay it/put it off or even sometimes bother reading what the new game delivers as it is the innate desire to be in touch/ up-to-date that brings us back. Who wants FIFA 10 when FIFA 11 is out? Aside from the fact it is cheaper there is NO inclination to shell out on a version that has the old kits/ the wrong players/ the vuvuzelas (“They are SO summer ’10”). Playing puppeteer to a top flight goalie isn’t what swings the purchase- it’s the fact the top flight goalie plays for the right club in this version.
It's the oldies that did it first that everyone still remembers.
A survey carried out by a reputable and widely-read online magazine AskMen.com quizzed their readership on what their Favourite Sports Video Games of All Time were. Their top five were:
5. MLB 09 (PS3)
4. NFL 2K1 (Sega Dreamcast)
3. NHL ’94 (Genesis)
2. Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 (PlayStation)
1 Punch Out (NES)
The list makes for interesting reading. Yes it’s a poll mainly voted for by Americans who are men (the premise being men are the principle populate of gaming and sporting interest) and their sense of nostalgia is perhaps telling in that the only title in “current” circulation is Number 5, but it does suggest that what lives in the memory of the sporting gamer is, as alluded to earlier, originality and not gaming tweaks. Incidentally the same site asked followers what their favourite football game ever was; World Soccer Winning Eleven 8 International came home with the honours there and it hails all the way back from 2005. I don’t remember it too clearly but I’d like to bet you couldn’t do much with the keeper in that game- not that it mattered; like FIFA 11, I was always going to buy it anyway.
Thing is… people are still buying those trash *$SportName 20′$Year* games. Those are the games that dominate the preowned sections in stores. Next time you hear a games exec saying that pre-owned hurts the industry, be sure to turn around and tell them their shitty uninteresting games hurt the industry. People trade them in because they get no emotional attachment to them because they are bland and soul-less.
Another thing that hurts my brain about sports titles is the people who buy them need to be beaten with railway sleepers. My case:
I was working at NaturalMotion when Backbreaker was starting to look awesome. They took a chance and focused on gameplay, a realistic and intense camera angle and a unique visual style (Plus the awesome Euphoria stuff). The majority of reviews panned it… why? What was the main reason? Turns out most of the reviews I read hated the fact that the game lacked team branding. Seriously? Are we that obsessed with the players, sponsorship and corporate whoring that we cant just enjoy playing the sport? When did we all become such mindless zombies? Its “They Live” all over again.
So to wrap up my rant: People need to start beating their kids so we can have a better games industry.
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simoroth (September 7th, 2010)
It’s also worth considering that the game will stay relevant throughout the year. The football season will be in full-swing from release until early May (in the UK at least) and the inclination to ‘recreate’ your teams fixture will be there throughout.
Also, the game has an ton of offline game modes that are never the same. Every fixture will pan out differently. Of course, the basics are the same, but as you say: “we love the sport, not the game.” Only in sandbox games can you truly get this sense. Games with missions have a structure that sports games tend not to have. Perhaps I’m biased as a fan, but there you go.
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Travis Barbour (September 7th, 2010)
If anything I’d rather see Fifa and PES take a look at their current, bloated, feature set and think, ‘Hmm, do we seriously need to include controllable keepers (beyond bringing them off their line) or Dog Heads in the player editor?’. I’d be a much happier man if my keeper just positioned himself correctly, saved most near post shots and turned things around for a corner instead of straight back to the player running in on goal. You don’t need a human being for that, just some half decent AI.
Championship Manager lost it’s way during the Football Manager transition.By allowing you to sim everything it sucked the good old fashioned fun out of the game. Fifa and PES risk doing the same.
Trim the fat and get back to creating a fun and engaging multiplayer experience.
Oh, Sensible World of Soccer would be my No.1 Sports Game of All Time, followed by Links Championship Golf 2001.
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The Ives (September 7th, 2010)