FIFA 13 PlayStation 3

Released on 28-Sep-2012

• FIFA 13 - Preview

  
  

  

  It's easy to forget that at the outset of this generation, coming up to some seven long years ago, that FIFA wasn't all that. In fact, it really wasn't all that, and FIFA 06 - the first of the series to make it to HD consoles - was a low-point of an already less than glittering launch line-up for the Xbox 360.

  But how things have changed. FIFA 07 introduced a new engine, and from that point it was onwards and upwards for EA Sports. By the time of FIFA 12's release last year, the series had established itself as the unrivalled champion of its chosen genre - and in the process, it had churned out a handful of games that could lay claim to being the best takes on the sport that videogames had ever produced.

  

  Come on! Bigger! Bigger!

  So FIFA 13 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 finds itself launching at what could be the end of a long line of successful games - and its biggest challenge is how it can meaningfully add to what's gone before. Kudos to EA Sports, then, that it's found room for improvement - as well as the space to add a handful of potentially striking new features.

  First the refinements. FIFA 12 introduced the Impact Engine, and it's no real exaggeration to state that it was a feature that helped push the genre forward more than anything else that had preceded it this generation. Players clattered together convincingly, and the physicality that defines the sport was finally brought to life in digital form.

  The problem was, sometimes the players did more than clatter. Sometimes they combined in a tangle of conjoined limbs, or found themselves contorting in ways that would have even Yogic Masters wincing. And sometimes - shock! - they even found themselves entwined in what can only be described as an impassioned embrace.

  

  Bug Catcher

  So FIFA 13's first point of order is fixing some of the bugs that came hand-in-hand with the Impact Engine, though it's gone a little further too. Off-the-ball encounters now have a little more emphasis, and there's a keener attention paid to the attributes of each player when they find themselves in a tussle. If Rio Ferdinand finds himself going toe-to-toe with Luis Suarez, for example, it's likely that the bigger man will force the smaller off the ball, or cause him to lose his balance and miscue any shot he has lined up.

  There are new features too, and they're all designed to introduce some of the unpredictability of real football - as well as the flair and creativity that also define it. First Touch Control sees players spilling the ball more often when trapping it, depriving them of the saintly touch which previous games gifted.

  Complete Dribble, meanwhile, allows players to now dance around the ball, exercising feats of fleet-footedness that put to mind the great contemporary showmen such as Messi, Ronaldo and Neymar. Attacking Intelligence helps all these skills come together, as players off the ball are imbued with a little more intelligence and are able to analyse and utilize space to a much more effective degree.

  They're slight improvements, admittedly, but they're improvements to a game that, on this generation at least, was coming tantalisingly close to perfection. FIFA's fortunes have most definitely changed, and it's likely that this latest addition will do little to impair its well-deserved reputation for excellence.

• FIFA 13 - Preview

  
  

  

  Another year, and, of course, another FIFA game - FIFA 13, to be precise. But publishers EA do their best to ensure that the annual roll-out of the new FIFA game is far from a reliable old staple - they know that they need to evolve the game and keep the it fresh.

  Therein lies the challenge. FIFA 12 was, for many, pretty much close to perfect. It introduced a host of new features that improved the gameplay and it was loved by fans and critics alike - even nominated for the BAFTA game of the year. So... how do you improve on this?

  

  Well, the answer could not come at a better time for football fans. After one of the most dramatic conclusions to a Premier League season ever, and the surprising result of the Champions League final, it's almost like it was planned to coincide with EA's declaration that the changes coming in FIFA 13 would capture the "drama and unpredictability of real-world football".

  
  

  

  Moving The Goalposts

  
  

  The big changes to FIFA 12 were largely there to add a sense of continuity, with only Tactical Defending changing how the game was played (and which didn't quite work properly, either, something that's been addressed in FIFA 13). This year's changes are all about the gameplay, stripping away what remains of the arcade-y features and ramping up the realism.

  Team tactics now play a bigger part. The new 'Attacking Intelligence' allows AI players to follow the ball's direction, and where the ball is likely to go, and not just where the opposing players are. With smarter off-the-ball running in play, there's a much greater sense that the team is attacking together. That's not to say it'll happen every time - we still found ourselves having to wait for the rest of the team to catch up when taking players on a solo run down the pitch. You have to start playing like a team for the game to do so, too.

  Free kicks now come with more added tactics and control. If you're defending, you have greater control over the wall, increasing or decreasing the number of players and even jumping to intercept. You can move players around or even sneak them forward- but be careful, as you can get penalised for this just as in the real thing. For attackers, there's more cat-and-mouse tactics, with dummy runs aplenty. We found ourselves using these new options as something of a guilty pleasure, playing with the extra features more than using them tactically (making the wall jump is a little too fun to resist!), but once the novelty wears off this will prove a very decisive feature.

  

  On the Ball

  
  

  The bigger changes to came down to ball control, both getting the ball and keeping it, in what EA billed as a "True battle for possession". 'First Touch Control' was, for us, the real game changer, with your player no longer guaranteed to receive a ball in some grandiose act that only the best in the world can really achieve. No, much like the real world, factors like speed, direction, position (or running into it) and the skills of the player themselves will all inform if you receive and control the ball. For more experienced FIFA fans, this will add new levels of skill to achieve, but for those more casual players of the game this will prove to be a real challenge to overcome.

  'Complete Dribbling' comes to play, too. FIFA Street proved that skilful and tactical moves are more than welcomed by gamers, so the Street Control feature has been adapted for FIFA 13 to add new levels of technical precision to your movements across the pitch. You can now do things like face one direction while moving and dribbling in another, sidestepping your opponents without losing the ball, and even shield the ball as you move direction around it rather than risk losing it. Again, more realistic moves that fit the players performing them, and triggered contextually to ensure they match the skills of that player.

  This added sense of (in-game) player skills fills a few other of the new features. The 'Player Impact Engine' from FIFA 12 has been tweaked with this in mind so that larger players like Rio Ferdinand will have more impact when colliding with smaller ones. A new 'push and pull' element has been added here too, meaning that off-the-ball interference can influence how well your opponent receives the ball, as well as adding another way to tackle your opponents.

  

  Final Whistle

  
  

  But what do all these tweaks and changes mean when playing the game? Well, from the time we spent playing, it was clear that they do have an impact and make the gameplay much less predictable than in previous iterations. As we were only using a preview version of the game, we only had a handful of top-level clubs to choose from, so the elements that are based on the quality of the in-game players were a lot more evenly matched than they would be if you choose to take on Real Madrid as a mid- or lower-table team like West Brom or QPR.

  The added realism will be more than welcomed by veterans of the FIFA series as goals (if you'll pardon the pun) to master, but with more features now requiring even more skill, casual or first-time players might find this more of a challenge when taking on more experienced players. That said, there is the usual choice of difficulty levels for single players. And a challenge is not necessarily a bad thing!

  Overall, FIFA 13 seems to be doing what many would have thought was not possible - continuing to improve the game to make it as close to real football as possible. And for the fans of the series, much like fans of any football team, this is a great reward for their support, and something to look forward to when the game is released later this year.

  Preview refers to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. Other formats may not include all gameplay features described above.

  Published: 29/05/2012

• Pro Evo developer takes aim at FIFA as footy rivalry hots up

  Konami, the developer and publisher behind the long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series, has taken a swing at rival franchise FIFA for concentrating on aesthetic improvements rather than gameplay.

  "Maybe EA thinks they've gone far enough with gameplay and they've got other things to do," PES producer Jon Murphy told Official PlayStation Magazine. "Maybe they want to attract a different kind of audience with different features. But I've always thought it's right that we should be concentrating really hard on the way you play a game against someone else, and that unique PES feeling, which is all about gameplay."

  This isn't the first time Murphy has gone after EA's golden goose in an interview. Speaking to Eurogamer earlier this year he admitted it was "galling" that people just assumed FIFA was better.

  "I don't think we've been given proper respect for that because so many have bought into the idea that FIFA is better, just in the same way people bought into the idea PES was much better than FIFA in years gone by," he said, recalling the previous console generation when Pro Evo was the footy game of choice with FIFA having to prove its worth. "It took a while for them to get out of that situation because it was so ingrained," Murphy continued. "We're now seeing the opposite's true. There's an automatic assumption now that FIFA is just better."

  Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 is out later this year for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. It features improvements such as PES Full Control, Dynamic First Touch and Deft Touch Dribbling. All aim to make the game more responsive, more realistic and more dependent on your dexterity on the thumbsticks.

  Rival FIFA 13 arrives on September 28th for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Wii and pretty much every format you can think of.

  So which will you support?
  

• Gaming's Sporting Heroes

  
  

  Olympic fever has gripped the planet, and we're only just over halfway through a year that has already been defined by amazing sporting action. From regular favourites like Wimbledon and the UEFA European Championship, to the glitz of the Olympics and surprise wins in the Tour De France, sport has never hogged so many UK headlines. As always, where there's an audience, there are video games looking to capitalise on the popularity - and a famous face certainly helps to catch our attention (although Mario and Sonic don't really count...). Here's our look back over the history of sporting heroes in games.

  

  You can almost go back to the dawn of gaming and find examples of famous athletes promoting games. Daley Thompson's Decathlon was one of the enduring classics of the 8-bit home computer era, a keyboard-bashing run through ten track and field events overseen by the ghostly white pixellated face of digital Daley.

  

  It was inevitable that a footy-loving nation such as ours would attract a flood of cheesy football endorsements as well, with everyone from squeaky scouser Emlyn Hughes to telly pundits Saint and Greavsie, to top flight players like Gazza and Beckham, putting their name to digitised kickabouts. We even had the bizarre sight of a Peter Shilton goalkeeping game, cheekily renamed Handball Maradona after the infamous "hand of god" incident at the 1986 World Cup. And while there's no name on the box, there's no ignoring the key players endorsing both FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer even today.

  
  

  

  Ever-obsessed with sports and strategy, it didn't take long for American software companies to follow suit. John Madden had already retired as both player and coach when his name first adorned the Madden NFL American Football simulation in 1988, but it kicked off a series which endures to this day and is widely considered to be the benchmark of gridiron gaming. Madden was part of the EA Sports stable, a label that knows the value of the right endorsement. In 1999 the company's popular PGA golf series became Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and the fairway superman has been the face of golf games ever since. Indeed, the close tie between game and name may soon become a problem, as the digital Tiger performs better than his struggling real-life counterpart. Will the series revert to plain old PGA Tour when Tiger's star fades, or will EA find a new golfing hero to carry the torch?

  

  That's the gamble when signing a player at the peak of their game. Sometimes, a games company will sign an up and coming athlete in the hopes of backing a long term winner. That worked for Nintendo, when it paid a young Mike Tyson $50,000 to use his likeness in the NES Punch Out boxing game. Within months, Tyson was on his way to being the world heavyweight champ, and the retitled Mike Tyson's Punch Out benefited from his success in the USA.

  

  In the UK, meanwhile, Punch Out was ported to home computers with our very own Frank Bruno as the main character. Punch Out returned to Wii minus its star, while Tyson makes a surprise return to games this year in WWE '13, re-living the brief sting he spent using his name to boost the wrestling company's ratings.

  
  

  

  Often, a sport will bubble up to the top of the popular consciousness thanks to the eye-catching feats of a particular sports-person. In the late 1990s, it was Codemasters that perked up long-running, but fairly obscure rugby and cricket sims, by shrewdly putting hot new stars like Jonah Lomu and Brian Lara above the title. Likewise, it was only when legendary racer Colin McRae put his name to the publisher's rally games that they became the owners of a blockbuster franchise, and while the DiRT series has continued to thrive without him, it was his name that got the customers through the proverbial door to begin with. Such moves weren't restricted to cult UK sports either. In 1999, Japanese firm Namco quickly rebranded the latest entry in its fledgling tennis series as Anna Kournikova Smash Court Tennis in order to attract European gamers.

  
  

  

  It's perhaps notable that the area where celebrity endorsement paid off most spectacularly was in the rise of extreme sports, where off-beat personalities are more openly celebrated and the players are more likely to be gamers. Tony Hawk pioneered this with his skateboarding games, lending not just his credibility but also his insight and expertise to ensure maximum authenticity. Snowboarder Shaun White and BMX rider Dave Mirra quickly followed Hawk's example. Hawk's back this year, too, in an HD re-jigging of some of his classic titles for Xbox LIVE; he's gone from extreme rebel to a traditional figure, but we still love him!

  Whenever sport becomes national obsession, you can bet an enterprising games developer will seize the opportunity. Gold medal-winning swimming star Michael Phelps has got a head start on his Olympic peers this year, with his Push The Limit game for Kinect already on shelves. Will we see Bradley Wiggins grace the cover of next year's Tour De France game? Will Jess Ennis and Mo Farah be running alongside us in the next Kinect Sports? Whoever is next on the podium, it's a good bet that gamers will be the winners.

• FIFA 13 - Review

  
  

  

  Pitch Perfect

  The beautiful game can't get much more beautiful than it already is in EA Sports' gorgeously appointed marquee football series, and the way it played 12 months ago wasn't too shabby either. But despite the potential for the game to stagnate this year as the console generation drags on and only minor refinements are possible, FIFA 13 proves that there are plenty of avenues left for the biggest annual sports franchise on the planet left to explore.

  On the pitch, new features are more like tweaks to the formula than headline changes, but they are welcome ones. First Touch Control means that even the best players won't always bring the ball to heel in exactly the same way - now it has much more to do with their individual stats and the way they receive the ball, so someone like Ronaldo can stop a buzzing knee-high aerial pass dead pretty much all the time, but heaven help Gary Cahill if he receives anything wayward or complicated while it's raining and he's jogging backwards after a sprint.

  Elsewhere players now provide more supporting runs, and there's a new close-control system that's a bit like FIFA Street, so holding both triggers down allows you to put your foot on the ball and hold defenders off while you wait for someone to dash into space. Along with last year's updates like Tactical Defending, Precision Dribbling and the Impact Engine, it makes for a fast-paced, intense football simulation that captures almost every aspect of the sport. Whether you like zipping passes around with the best teams in the world or slogging through a league season with Bristol Rovers, you should be well catered for.

  

  A Game of Two Halves

  Off the pitch, EA has been extremely busy. The optional Match Day Experience means that squads are updated weekly to account for changes in form while commentators allude to big-money transfer dealings or injury problems. You can also take part in the Game of the Week - a dazzling or controversial encounter like QPR vs. Chelsea from the other weekend - and there are numerous other nods to the Sky Sports style of modern football presenting, like touchline reports from Geoff Shreeves, Alan McInally phoning in results from games happening in parallel, and even classified results being read out after a round of matches in Career mode.

  There are new modes, too, like Skill Games - a fantastic collection of mini-games based around particular disciplines like passing, shooting and dribbling. If you like the idea of weaving through cones, beating a defender and scoring - all against the clock, with online leaderboards - then you'll be in heaven. And there's a new Catalogue in EA Sports Football Club where you can spend XP on new boots, Pro player skill boosts, bonus celebrations and other trinkets.

  

  Club Together

  More traditional areas like Ultimate Team and Pro Clubs have also seen some work. The latter benefits from a new seasons-based approach, while Ultimate Team has a brand new interface, online and single-player tournaments, and tweaks that make things like fitness more of a factor, which increases the value of consumable items. It should still be easy to lose countless hours to this side of the game, buying up packs of in-game Ultimate Team cards and tweaking your line-up for best chemistry and performance for hours and hours, keeping one eye on the auction house.

  Whether that's your passion or you prefer Career, Live Seasons, or just playing local multiplayer with your friends, FIFA 13 is the complete package. It's the most fully featured, consistently high-quality and entertaining game EA Sports has ever put out, and it's hard to see what else they can do to tweak the formula. Then again, we said that last year, and here we are. Perhaps the beautiful game will get even more beautiful by the time FIFA 14 rolls around after all.

  GAME's Verdict

  The Good:

  • New Skill Games mode is horribly addictive.
  • Action on the pitch is faultless, with some clever tweaks.
  • Easy to lose a lifetime to playing Ultimate Team.

  The Bad:

  • Evolution rather than revolution on the pitch.
  • Menus are still a bit sluggish.
  • Co-commentary from Alan Smith is still quite bland.

  Published: 26/09/2012

• Back of the net! FIFA 13 is the biggest sports game ever

  There'll be champagne corks popping at EA Sports this week as FIFA 13 booted itself into the record books with an astonishing launch.

  The game shifted 4.5 million copies worldwide since its Friday release, enough to make it instantly top the charts in 40 countries. That includes the UK, of course, where it sold 1.23 million copies in just 48 hours. That's the biggest launch in UK games history, after the various Call of Duty sequels. To put it in perspective, that means on average over the weekend, seven copies of FIFA 13 were being sold in the UK every second.

  The game crushed another record on Sunday, as 800,000 players settled in for online matches at the same time, the highest number of simultaneous players for any EA game ever. 66 million online multiplayer sessions have already been played, adding up to 600 million minutes of gaming. In other words, if you played all those matches one after another, it'd take over one thousand years.

  It's well deserved too. FIFA 13 introduces a bunch of new features, including a deeper career mode that sees you managing international teams as well as local clubs. If you're hungry for more numbers, it boasts 31 leagues, 46 international teams and 69 real world stadiums.

  FIFA 13 is, quite obviously, out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Vita, PSP, and Nintendo 3DS. It'll be out for the Wii U as well, when that launches in November.

  Published: 04/10/2012

• FIFA 13 wins accessibility award from disabled gamers charity

  The end of one year and the start of the next is always a good time to hand out the gongs and statues for the best games of the previous twelve months, but FIFA 13 can holds its head especially high having been voted the 2012 AbleGamers Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year.

  The award is handed out by AbleGamers, a non-profit organisation that helps people with disabilities enjoy mainstream games. FIFA 13 earned the award for introducing multiple "world first" features designed to make the game accessible to all players.

  "FIFA 13 is the first high-end mainstream sports game to allow users to control the entire game with only a mouse," explained the AbleGamers announcement. "For disabled gamers with Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, and even one-handed gamers, the ability to play such a sophisticated sports game with simple controls that can be handled by a trackball or mouse mean gamers who may not have been able to enjoy iconic sporting activities like baseball, football, hockey or soccer can now take part in the fun."

  FIFA 13 was also praised for offering "remappable keys, customisable colour options, high contrast and intuitive menus and visual cues for all audio input". The option to change the pace of the game, as well as the efficiency of the AI, was also singled out for celebration. "For those with cognitive disorders and motor impairments, the ability to set the game to an acceptable rate of speed enables those with even the most severe of disabilities," said AbleGamers.

  The turn-based strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown was also lauded for its "perfect" implementation of features that will allow disabled players to fully enjoy the game.
  

  Published: 04/01/2013

• FIFA 14 should have female players, says petition

  Fernanda Schabarum, a gamer and footy fan from Florida, has launched a petition at Change.org asking EA Sports to include female players in the upcoming FIFA 14.

  She quotes statistics showing that 40% of US soccer players and 47% of gamers are female, and notes that soccer is now the most popular sport for women at US colleges. The gold medal winning success of the US women's team at the 2012 Olympic Games is also noted.

  The petition reads: “By offering just men's teams as playable options on FIFA we're not only denying these girls a chance to relate to the characters they play on a videogame, but we're also wasting a great opportunity to encourage those same girls to be who they are, develop their passion, motivation and promote a healthy image and relation between women and sports.”

  It remains to be seen how EA Sports will react. Similar requests were made last year but weren't reflected in FIFA 13. VG247 points out that EA Canada, which develops both the FIFA and NHL franchises, has already included female players in its hockey series.

  Published: 15/04/2013

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