FIFA 13 Ultimate Edition PlayStation 3

Released on 28-Sep-2012

• 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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