#Fifa manager 11 vs 12 free#
The social gaming spin-off Ultimate Team is present in the retail edition of Fifa for the first time, allowing you to start the card-trading fun with free packs (as ever, you'll need to buy new packs to complete your dream team, though). Outside of the matches themselves, there's an even more exhaustive range of options and extras. Fifa 12, more than any football title before it, is a living embodiment of the unpredictable game. Watching Silva dink around a stray leg, or Terry desperately lung at a passing ball, is gloriously authentic and exciting. But then, it's not all about collision, it's about reaction.
I was dreading a whole bunch of trips and falls, and indeed there are enough "Fifa 12 physics fail" videos on YouTube (all drawn from demo versions of the game, I guess) to suggest dynamic ragdoll physics is a dangerous substitute to bring on.
There's an option on the keypad that allows you to pull and tug at an opponent's shirt, and together with some crunching slide tackles you get a great sense of robust, solid bodies going into high speed collisions and meeting limbs in a realistic way. But however you use it, this is an interesting, adaptive and exhaustive system that shapes the game and gets you to think more about space and movement in your own half.Įlsewhere, the updated player physics brings what you expect – a greater sense of physical presence. Ultimately, the two can be combined into a sort of phased approach, in which defensive midfielders hunt down and contain lone attackers while your defensive line uses the two jockeying functions. The Contain function is more erratic and independent it's reactive. When held, this sends in a teammate to fulfil the more static goal protection, while you either move to cover any possible crosses, or run in and sweep the ball away. But then there's the "team jockey" option, sitting over on the right tab button. Initially, I struggled to separate the contain and jockey functions – they're both about controlling the incoming player, after all, and for ages they seemed interchangeable. Many Fifa fans will find this forces a radical shift in their defensive philosophy, moving from a mobile approach of darting slides from the back and side and head-on nipping tackles, toward a zonal, more rigorously planned approach, where players get into position and block out attacks, only tackling when the ball is clearly there to be taken. Meanwhile, the jockeying function, accessed via the left trigger, allows you to face the incoming player and create a barrier between him and the goal this can also be combined with the "run" button in order to deal with sprinting opponents. That's pretty much as close as we get to the auto-defend nature of previous Fifa incarnations. It's neat, it's effective and it allows you to chain into a proper tackle, like a football beat-'em-up. In Fifa 12, there's a multi-layered system that now lets you hold the A button to "contain" the man on the ball – it brings the player you're controlling right up to him and you'll automatically attempt to shepherd your opponent into disadvantageous positions. It's a little more complicated than that. As you'll know, the old trick of hitting the A button to send an AI defender hurtling toward the attacking player like an Exocet missile in polyester shorts is now gone. Turns out they weren't bluffing.Īfter several hours of play, it's the latter that's emerging as the most important transition. For months, EA Sports has been banging on about its three major changes to the match mechanics: close control, the player impact engine and the new tactical defending option. The annual iteration, the roster update, the Fifa gravy train chugs on… Except, EA Canada has never really been into the idea of making the same thing over and over again with just a serving of updated team sheets, a couple of fresh modes and a new photo of Rooney for the cover.įifa 12 is … different.