I have never watched an entire football match. People are always shouting at them and fighting each other it kind of ruins it for me, it seems like a community I can’t belong to unless I punch a guy in the face for saying his team is better. I just couldn’t understand where all this unreasonable anger came from, until I played Fifa.
My God the rage. I never realised how terrible a person I actually am till I lost to some obscure Scottish team as Arsenal. Every time they made a goal against me I shouted at the screen, throwing slurs that would cause ladies to swoon at all the players, friendly or not.
It’s so addictive though I just can’t stop playing it. I would play it in the shower if they made a waterproof case for the Vita. They have perfectly ported the console versions of the game including all the more recent features like the ‘Be a pro’ modes where you control a single player on the pitch and level his attributes in football meets RPG style The network play is simple to set up and makes losing to your friends even easier. The only difference I could see between the two platforms is the removal of ‘skill moves’ on the Vita version, this wasn’t a huge loss to me as the only reason I saw for them were my friends gloating to me as an un-superior player.
Shooting, passing, tackling, loosing I’ve done it all and I keep coming back for more. I think one of the reasons for my almost drug like dependence is having to prove to the game that I am actually a man who can do manly things like play Fifa as I’m 90% sure it’s running some complex code to estimate the amount of testicles the current player has (I’m running at -4 currently). I can’t tell whether I’m still playing it because I’m enjoying myself, or whether I just have to win. I did nearly cry when I won my first game however, and I didn’t even cry at the end of Gilmore Girls. Like so many modern games the enjoyment comes from beating people, the gratification from besting your friends or just the easy mode CPU. The game itself isn’t set up for fun, its set up to challenge the player to ensure they are getting the least enjoyment from losing, and the maximum level of euphoria from beating that team made up of pig farmers.
As a launch title for the Vita you expect a certain amount of pointless touch controls that can luckily be turned off. The touch passing on the screen is unresponsive and seems to just ignore where you want it to go. I also found myself accidentally pressing the screen with the tips of my thumbs when I was using the joysticks causing my player to pass the ball wherever the game decided I had pressed on the screen. One of the touch inclusions however is fantastic, when you get within a certain distance of the goal the back touch panel turns into the goal and the player will shoot depending on where you press. This feature is really responsive and helped me, as someone who is usually terrible at shooting score some amazing goals. It is a little hard to get the right amount of power on the shot however as it is incredibly sensitive to ensure you can shoot quickly, but with a bit of practice it’s easy to get the fabled top right goal that was always just a legend to me.
As someone that has always found it difficult to be impassioned about football and could count the number of players I know on one hand, I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of the enjoyment that comes with playing as your favourite team, scoring a goal as your number one player and hearing the crowd cheer for you. It’s great to see a game almost identical to its console version on the Vita, but I feel more could have been done to take advantage of this new hardware. I’m not talking shoehorned gimmicks using the accelerometers or touch screen but even features like being able to put your face onto your pro character using the camera like Virtua Tennis, or taking free kicks by flicking on the screen. I have given it
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
