PlayStation Vita (WiFi Version) with FIFA Football and 4GB Memory Card PS Vita

Released on 08-Jun-2012

• FIFA Football (PS Vita) - Review

  
  

  

  Eat My Goal!

  Sometimes it feels as though the imperious FIFA series has been around for as long as gaming itself, but despite numerous iterations over the years - culminating in the sublime FIFA 12 last September - nobody has ever delivered a fully featured FIFA game for a handheld console. At least until now. It's becoming a familiar refrain for PlayStation Vita: this - insert name of famous game series - wasn't possible to get outside of home console releases... until PS Vita came along.

  Thanks to the PlayStation Vita's numerous control methods and its high-powered innards, EA Sports has been able to recreate the home experience almost entirely. Purists can stick to the expected control schemes (Alternative, Classic and Two-Button) and stride across licensed versions of famous pitches passing the ball around at a zippy pace, lofting and sliding through-balls and smashing the ball goal-wards at every opportunity. Those who are willing to try new things can use the touch-screen to pass, which works quite well, or use the rear-touch panel to shoot.

  The latter is one of FIFA Football on PS Vita's best new ideas. The game effectively treats the reverse of the handheld as a sort of one-to-one approximation of the goalposts (it's the right shape, after all). When you get within range of shooting you just tap on the rear panel to fill up a shot meter and then let go to fire the ball. It's surprisingly intuitive for something so alien to our ageing gaming instincts, although the purist in us will always prefer the classic setup. Worth experimenting with.

  

  What's The Score?

  This is a more or less fully featured port of the previous FIFA game, FIFA 11, so it lacks some of the series' newest features - like the Impact Engine and Tactical Defending - but there is still an enormous amount you can do. There are full Career modes where you control an individual player, a player-manager or a whole team, and you can play ranked and unranked matches online with very solid internet play thanks to PlayStation Network.

  On the pitch, whether you're playing against the AI or a human opponent, the action is slick and varied. The analogue stick allows for tight control of the ball, you can weight your passes to suit your objectives, and there are numerous subtle ways to unlock your opponent's defence - elevated through-balls, triangle passing, multiple crossing styles, and a free-kick system that also takes advantage of the PS Vita's unique control schemes. Defending is a matter of holding the X and square buttons to pressure the man in possession and using well-timed stabs of the circle button to slide-tackle, although referees can be quite strict so you may want to hold fire on that whenever you can.

  

  Unbelieveable Tekkers

  Thanks to the amazing underlying simulation you can rely on FIFA Football to present all sorts of different scenarios and variation, however many times you play, and while there are certain tactics that work well against certain opponents, there's no sure-fire way to win besides out-thinking your opponent in footballing terms. Drag players out of position, create space and exploit it - or just do some something inspired. It's real football, and that's why it's so good.

  It is easy to imagine that EA Sports will release a new FIFA Vita title later this year when the inevitable FIFA 13 game rears its head, but in the meantime this is still well worth checking out. Devoted football fans have never been able to play a version of the beautiful game that's this, well, beautiful and fully-featured on a handheld before. Forget the ball-flicking smartphone games - kill your commute with the real deal. As the series itself used to say: Let's FIFA!

  GAME's Verdict

  The Good:

  • As fully featured as the home version of FIFA 11.
    
  • Play online in ranked and unranked matches.
    
  • New touch controls offer precise shooting.

  The Bad:

  • Will probably be replaced by FIFA 13 in a few months' time.
    
  • Touch controls sometimes get in the way.
    
  • Long loading times.

  Published: 08/03/2012

• A Brief History of Handheld Gaming

  
  

  

  This week saw the long-awaited UK release of the PlayStation Vita, the most powerful handheld gaming console ever. Despite a size that fits snugly into your palms, it's a muscular beast of a machine capable of giving its PS3 big brother a run for its money where graphics and processing oomph are concerned. But how did we get here? How did gaming on the go become such a big deal?

  The simple answer is that it's always been a big deal. Even way back in the early 1980s, when the best games were on giant arcade cabinets and the best home gaming had to offer was the bleeping blocks of the Atari 5200, Nintendo was cleaning up with its Game & Watch series of handheld LCD games. Simple in the extreme, they were a cultural phenomena - and Nintendo's first runaway gaming success.

  They were so popular, in fact, that their creator, Gunpei Yokoi, couldn't leave the idea of portable gaming alone. As well as designing classic games such as Donkey Kong and Metroid, he is best known as the father of the GameBoy.

  

  Launched in 1989, this chunky beige brick with a tiny monochrome screen was nothing short of a revolution. Gamers snapped the system up, along with portable versions of hit console games, movie tie-ins, the first entries in the evergreen Pokemon franchise and a certain little game called Tetris. Bundled with the GameBoy, the Russian puzzle classic helped to define handheld gaming as the natural home of simple yet addictive one-more-go game design. It also pioneered the world of multiplayer, using a link cable to allow two GameBoy owners to battle against each other.

  The GameBoy was such an enormous hit - shifting well over 100m units in its lifetime - that other electronics companies tried to ride the bandwagon. Atari released the Lynx, the first handheld with colour graphics, but it struggled to match Nintendo's efficient tech, draining its batteries at inconvenient speed.

  

  More challengers emerged from Japan, such as the TurboExpress, but it would be Nintendo's long-standing rival, Sega, that put up the best fight. The Game Gear launched in 1991, and shrewdly used the same technology as the popular Master System home console, allowing hit games to be quickly ported to the handheld. Although it never outsold the GameBoy, the Game Gear put up a solid challenge.

  GameBoy and Game Gear battled for handheld supremacy throughout the 1990s, with other - often technically superior - portables such as the Neo Geo Pocket and WonderSwan barely making a dent in their dominance. Nintendo's lead was so assured that they waited until 1998 before upgrading the GameBoy's grey and black screen to a colour model.

  

  As the 21st century rolled around, however, the home console experience was becoming so sophisticated that the handhelds were starting to look outdated. Nokia tried to capitalise on the rise of mobile phones with the ill-fated N-Gage, a clumsy hybrid of phone and console that failed to capture the public's imagination.

  It was Nintendo, once again, in 2004 that changed the landscape. The Nintendo DS at first appeared to be an act of supreme folly. Boasting two screens - much like some of the Game & Watch titles of yesteryear - as well as a stylus for touchscreen interaction, it was like nothing else around. And, as with the original GameBoy, Nintendo kept the DS fresh by constantly revising and relaunching the machine in different configurations - smaller, larger, and with more features.

  

  With Sega having long since abandoned the hardware market, the challenge to the DS came from a new rival: SONY. Having exploded into gaming with the PlayStation, SONY's take on handheld gaming was sleek, powerful and designed for the hardcore gamer on the go. The PSP, or PlayStation Portable, certainly made the cheerful DS look like a toy but, much like the Game Gear, it was never quite able to topple Nintendo from its throne, even with cult hits such as Monster Hunter making the system a must-have in Japan.

  

  Which brings us to 2012, where once again Nintendo and SONY are battling for the palm of your hand. Nintendo's 3DS continues the design approach of the original DS, with left field technical innovation and a breezy pick-up-and-play approach. The PS Vita, as we've seen, is the PSP on steroids, a desirable bit of beautiful entertainment technology that pushes the boundaries of what can be done in a small space.

  Looking from dazzling titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, all the way back to the rudimentary two-button Game & Watch experience, it's hard to believe only thirty years separate them and yet it feels as though handheld gaming is only just getting up to speed. Imagine where we'll be in 2042!

  Published: 22/02/2012

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