It’s so good. They’ve finely tuned so much of the game that I almost regret making voodoo dolls of all of the EA staff…almost. We’ll see how I feel in a month; that’s when the true quality of the game reveals itself.

Let’s list our firsts:

1) First goal scored
2) First result
3) First goal conceded
4) First ‘WTF!?!’ moment
5) First result in net
6) First reaction to the online redemption code

1) Marco Borriello picks Lazio defender’s pocket and passes the ball into the near post in the 89th
2) Roma 1- Lazio 0
3) Friggin’ Floccari
4) Ronaldinho kicks the ball off of Juan’s ass and into the back of the net
5) 7-2 in favor of my opponent
6) “They haven’t made enough money off of us!?!”

Your turn

It’s out, and I never feel better about spending $60 than I do during the first week of FIFA ownership.

WOOT!

I don’t do demos because of what I worry that it will do to my perception of the final product. “They didn’t fix this glaring problem with the demo? Lazy, incompetent @#$%#!”

Roll film…

I LOLed at the bicycle kicks, or rather banana peel slips with a ball involved. Kudos for the song though.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the demo. I will gladly wait another week. Until then, all glory to the engines.

j/k…

meh…

Save the shameless self promotion put forth by Hulu and replace Mapple with any sports video game (not titled FIFA 10), and you’ve got us goofs in our virtual sports worlds. The most glaring, money-burning example hits stores on Tuesday.

And the winner is…Madden! Yay!

We suckerrinos march to the stores and clean out any shelf that has a label that could rhyme with Madden, Tinactin, or Turducken. No matter how much of a glorified roster update the game is from the previous installment, we blindly purchase.

FIFA, PES, Madden, NCAA Football…we’ve gotta have the newest version, and it really doesn’t matter how good the replay quality is if we get sexually excited by the opening cinematics.

Exhibit A (the only exhibit I will use):

There’s nothing amazing that this video shows. Nothing new. It’s just a new view of the same thing. The new playcalling format that they’ve reportedly worked endlessly on just means that none of the simple bugs and tiny nuances will have been fixed. Madden will still crush in sales because we just want the shinest, purdiest there is to be had. While I may stray a little from the Maddenist path and not buy the game right away, I’ll get it and still complain about how they did nothing but re-release the version from the previous year with a shinier cover. So goes life. We’re all big tools who are satisfied with the mediocre as long as it’s shiny.

Madden will have cool cinematics and a new play-calling system, but it’s ultimately the same. FIFA will have personality + and the option to upload your team’s chants and intro’s into the game, but the differences will be minor.

NCAA football hasn’t changed their product in five years, and while there have been several Call of Duty games in the same format, for some reason Modern Warfare 2 totally blew everyone’s mind for reasons scientists can’t explain.

On a related note, PES looks to have a massive makeover this year. I’m excited for that, but everything else I will play for the achievement points.

Surely, they can’t be as bad as they appear, otherwise, they would have been weeded out somewhere lower on the hierarchal ladder. Surely, any idiot who spends their lonely nights with an Xbox controller couldn’t do as well.

God knows that this sentiment gets tossed around every forum, especially during transfer season. As the Ali Dias and Simone Lorias of the world crush fanbases hopes and dreams by single-handedly taking teams into the relegation zone, we wonder who couldn’t do better. Then the supposed voice of reason somehow makes it known that no one else could do any better.

Raymond Domenech begs to differ…

This may seem like a delayed reaction, but this rant started off devoted to how a team with Dirk Kuyt as their CF went to the final. She’s experienced a few changes since then.

So does Marcelo Lippi. Although the consensus is that he believes in the Hot Tub Time Machine, and he realized that once he forgot the Chernobley he would have to rely on bigfoot, whom he confused with De Rossi.

I’m fairly confident that any idiot could throw Zidane on the field with a solid defense and march into the final.

One did.

Any idiot can get out of the group stage with Real Madrid solely based on star power, then get knocked out by a team that isn’t intimidated by payroll.

Several have.

When something doesn’t work in FIFA, I change it. So does everyone else in the gaming world. On that premise alone, someone should be interested in our services.

Qualifications:
11-time scudetto winner
8 domestic cups
7 European Champions League titles

Special skill: Adept at working from a variety of camera angles

P.S.

I’ve still yet to find a FIFA 11 YouTube video that didn’t include nerds talking about what’s supposed to be in the game or this

Instead of boring words, we’ve got video because everyone likes the books with pictures more than those without.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned in life, besides the fact that you shouldn’t touch downed electric lines, it’s that putting a star next to a player’s name in a video game makes them unstoppable. No one can cover Randy Moss, get A-Roid out, or defend Kobe. While the Kobe thing may be more true than not, it gets annoying to get torched by the virtual version of a player just because he drives a yellow Porsche or is on every Got Milk poster ever created.

Based on the totally realistic star power of the 2010 FIFA World Cup game, we now know…

-Sweden didn’t fail to qualify; they were simply denied access to the tournament because the unstoppable Zlatan would have driven opposing defenders into a deep depression with his consistently stellar efforts in the Swedish kit.

-Iker Casillas, Gigi Buffon, and Hugo Lloris will only concede goals if they turn around and throw the ball into their own net

-John Obi Mikel does not miss chances; he only shows them mercy. He also doesn’t cut his grass; he merely stares at it and dares it to grow

-Sepp Blatter presented the Jules Rimet trophy to Spain behind closed doors months ago. Everyone is just going through the motions

-Sepp Blatter presented the golden boot to Didier Drogba shortly after the Spain ceremony, and last night twitter reported an awkward series of texts between Blatter and Drogba which ended with Sepp agreeing to give this tournament’s top goal scorer (huntelaar ) one of Drogba’s old boots

almost here…

for those who wish to think of a time when gli Azzurri were a viable threat

I got slammed by work and other things that sadly come before video games, but eventually, I got around to playing the game.

In a nutshell, it is a refined version of FIFA 10. The players move a little more smoothly, passes are a little more crisp, and chaos ensues if someone shoots into a crowd in front of goal. This idea was something I didn’t like about FIFA 10 and the games prior. PES would crush FIFA in terms of matching the unpredictable nature of the bounce of the ball and deflection goals. The world cup game closes that gap.

All of these factors add up to me probably not touching FIFA 10 again. That’s strong; I will probably play FIFA 10 once the world cup fever has worn off. The gameplay of the world cup game is good, but that’s never what these games are about. The tournament-specific games are meant to take advantage of the excitement around the tournament. World cup music, confetti, and heavy doses of cinematics flow through these types of games. The music is good, as usual, the confetti is bountiful, and the game has no shortage of fans hopping in the stands or managers staring blankly out onto the field.

I would almost call the game great, but all of the superficial fluff isn’t my reasoning. When EA half-assed the new gen versions of FIFA 07, I was able to overlook the absolute crap gameplay for one reason: the challenges. The satisfaction of accomplishing some minute goal seemed to overwhelm the fact that there were no dribbling moves, and the only way to break a team down was the long ball. The World Cup game brings the challenge mode back, and they use it wonderfully. The game mode is called the story of qualifying, and the player gets the opportunity to right some of the wrongs that occurred in qualifying. The fabled Ireland game is included, but I wasn’t weeping over that one. I was weeping over the world having to watch Slovenia instead of Russia. U.S. fans certainly aren’t crying over that swap, but star power is always nice.

The challenges, the gameplay, and the atmosphere of the world cup make this game do what it is meant to do: give you the fever. However, there is one thing about the game that annoys me a great deal. That sore is the Captain Your Country mode which is Be A Pro in world cup fashion. Be A Pro was always hindered by the special needs A.I. FIFA managed to conjure up year after year. As you stand out there as a forward, you watch all of your teammates make the most idiotic challenges and get themselves into card trouble. Occasionally, the defense will whack the ball forward and, if you’re fast enough, you can make something of it despite your lack of support. This was always a problem with Be a Pro, but you had the option to play as the whole team, which made things so much better. The World Cup game does not give you that option.

Ignore the Captain Your Country mode, and your experience will be as wonderful as mine. I give it an A, considering no gameplay improvements were expected. If the A.I. saw more improvement, it would be the best thing since the last game I said was the best thing ever.

Enjoy winning the trophy for your country!

Brilliant video by wepeeler of the YouTube community.

Since the 2008 area, something about customization in the football simulations we love has bothered me. It’s nothing that would ever deter me from getting a game, but it’s one of those things that I always notice and think, “why did they change that?” Being a bigger fan of the Serie A than any other league, it’s something that comes up more and more (cue EPL fans saying that the diving isn’t in-depth enough for Italians).

While PES has always one-upped FIFA in the customization, partly because they have to, they have left the portrayals of players who refuse to pull their socks up to the FIFA specs feeling less important. While one can adjust sock height to make it look like the player is wearing leggings, which Quaresma made famous and Ronaldo made commonplace, the virtual Tottis and Hamsiks of the world have been neglected for a few years by both Konami and EA.

While the rest of the world enjoys a nice, high sock, many players in the Serie A, and Veron for some reason, prefer much of their shin and shinguard brand to show itself to the world. Amauri, Totti, Hamsik, Marchionni, Jovetic, and many other less notable players are left with impostors representing them in the games we hold so dear.

Perhaps it is a shinguard marketing scam that the whole of the Serie A has taken part in. Kudos to FIFA and PES for not getting sucked in, but it still bothers me that the experience isn’t complete. We can’t be idealists here; we want the whole experience. If United gets every PK shout going their way in Old Trafford and the Serie A is caught in the undertow of Shinguard-opoli, then damnit! put it in the game. We want the real thing!

On that note, our favorite ass-kicking FIFA-er has more than one compilation of his confidence destructions, so we will be watching another of this fine player’s videos today.

And on that note, when can everyone have a 360 tourney?