FIFA 11

Reading the other reviews I have reached the conclusion that i am the only person who wants to play the game in career mode. I long ago reached my limited for online playing. For some reason i find the idea of playing against 12 year olds that spend 9 hours a day playing a little unappealing. The actual "playing" system, the control and action of players in a match, is very good but everything else seems to be half finished or broken. I'll just list my issues from this point.

Biggest issue first - Difficulty settings - I'm not one of the people that thinks the game is so hard it can't be played. I play on semi-pro most of time until i get a good team and then can just about handle pro. My problem is that when you change the setting up the opposition don't seem become more organised or more clinical finishers. The game just "cheats" against you. The ball will always make insane, likely impossible, bounces to fall to the oppositions feet. Opposition players suddenly have traits which are not present when you press R3 in man marking to look at player bios. You cannot tackle. If on the off chance you do you get booked. Your players seem to lose the ability to pass, shot or use skills. I'm also almost certain that there is pre-set scripts that force the opposition to score. You can spot them, probably if you have spent to much time playing, because the feel of the game changes completely, you're players become sluggish and the opposition suddenly become next to impossible to catch. Test this idea out yourselves, keep an eye out for it and intentionally foul someone and wait to see if the opposition score a great free-kick. The most annoying thing is when the game disregards its own rating system. Pato's speed and acceleration are both 90+ but he can start ahead of someone like Terry, who has the speed of dead snail, and be caught up with and tackled within seconds. Maybe it's just me but that really annoys me. Either the rating matter or they don't. I tested this out before writing this review in the best way i could think off. I played on world class using the virtual pro playing as a striker for Barcelona against the worst side i could find, a team from English league 2. So the game would be AI vs AI of best vs worst for all but the final stages of an attack. So what happens. Barcelona are played of the park before the ball can even make it up to the only human player involved. Apparently the Barca defence are incapable of tackling some of the worst players on the game and give away fouls on every 4th tackle, all of which appear to be unfair decisions. My favourite part was when Pique is beaten in the air by a someone 6 inches shorter and rated about 40% lower in skill. It seems like a really lazy way to make it harder to play and one that removes fun and immersion almost completely.

Handballs - always ball to hand and is just annoying.

Referee - Gives free kicks for fair tackles. I think the fouls system is simply broken and it's "slipped through the net" so to speak. You can have a player sent off for a fair standing tackle but get away with a slide from behind, provided you are a 5 star team. Agian, lazy way to increase difficulty - bias ref.

Career - No scouts. No training. No alteration to stadium. No media. Almost no board over-site. No change to the transfer money given after each season, you make Bournemouth win the champions league and they still get the same money from the board as the first season. Completely unrealistic reward cash from winning cups/league, Ł8m-ish for champion leagues final. Ł17m-ish for Premier league? Getting IN TO the Premier league is said to be worth Ł50m. Worst of all no way to request a high transfer price despite the fact that to buy any player, even listed you will increase you bid by about 30% minimum. So it is impossible to get a player as good as the one you are selling to raise cash. All these things are present in Fifa manager so why not just bring them SOME over? Oh right, because the majority of players of the game are retarded 12 year old's that don't have enough ADHD medication to concentrate long enough to understand the extra complexity. You don't need to bring all the Fifa manager stuff across, lets face it the game is pretty much only enjoyed by business and accounting students, but just back to the 08 game with a few extras.

I would also like to be able to create new kits. I'm just putting it out there. I think it was in 98 through 2000 and i liked that. And speaking of 98 i would also like 5-a-side to comeback and song 2 by blur should be on the sound track to every single fifa game because its awesome.

I'll keep this fairly short.
I'm a big fan of FIFA games and really liked the world cup game so I was very excited about FIFA 11.
Unfortunately it really has disappointed me.
There are a few good things such as career mode has improved with the option to be a player, manager or player manager but to be honest I rarely play manager mode as 99% of my gaming is done playing 'ranked online matches', this is where the main issue is. Trying to get a game against somebody is a nightmare, it will normally take 3-5 searches to get a game as it just freezes saying loading and by the time you get into the game the opponent has left. (It's not my connection all other games work fine)
Next is the gameplay, I thought the gameplay was brilliant on the world cup edition so I was looking forward to more of the same this time round but unfortunately again I was dissapointed.
You can try and play a simple pass and the ball goes in completely the wrong direction, the only way to really get through on goal is by playing a lobbed through ball which means you can't play as nice football as previous editions.
There are plenty of little things that are wrong too which seem to be down to laziness such as if you play a cross in and you have a player in an offside position even if the ball isn't played to him and he's not interfering an offside is called also if you try and make a pass and it's intercepted by a defender if the player you tried to pass to was in an offside position the ref blows for a freekick which can be very irritating especially if when you intercept you are trying to counter-attack.
Other random things such as I played Inter Milan the other day online and all the inter players came out wearing Man Utd shirts.
It could still be made into a good game if the glitches are sorted out but you can't play free flowing football like you could on the world cup edition which is the biggest dissapointment for me.

If you play FIFA in Single player mode give this version a wide berth; forget the blurb about personality -EA can't even get the basics right; I though it couldn't be any worse than FIFA 10 I was wrong -it is utter Ar*e Gravy.
Defensive players will try to dribble up the pitch rather than pass n move - Midfielders will not get up the pitch to support an attack so if you are playing as a striker (which you have to if want your team to score - Yes really, the Forward AI is that bad) your own your own. When asking your team mates to press they will get so close and then freeze rather than making the challenge.
AS usual EA have rewritten things that no-one was moaning about and ignored the fundemental flaws in their product; if this was not protected by by anti-consumer legislation I would have gotten a refund within 24 hours it is that unenjoyable an experience.