For the best lawn care in cedar park, please visit our sponsor at lawn service cedar park They are a local lawn care and landscaping company that provide services in such as lawn care, lawn mowing, weeding, and landscape maintenance in Cedar Park, Austin, Round Rock, and Leander area. They are located at:

Lawn Care Service of Cedar Park 100 E Whitestone Blvd Ste 148, #166 Cedar Park, TX 78613 (512) 595-0884

Fifa 2008

Has Fifa taken the best football game crown from PES this year?

  • Yes

    Votes: 33 45.2%

  • No

    Votes: 26 35.6%

  • Nearly, perhaps by next year.

    Votes: 14 19.2%
  • Total voters
    73
Calzone

Calzone

Registered User
Yeah the atmosphere is very good. One thing I don't like is that every player looks evil, like trolls, but thats a very small matter.

I play it on 360 and the gameplay was not to bad in last years version. I just like how there is going to be more leagues in the new Fifa as well. :)
 
Dragonfly

Dragonfly

Waiting....
Whenever a FIFA looks good then I buy it, I always end up disappointed and never play it again after a month. Maybe not even that.
 
D

Dan

Woo Woo Woo
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="gtembed" width="480" height="409"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=24563"/> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <embed src="http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=24563" swLiveConnect="true" name="gtembed" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="409"></embed> </object>

Not sure if this is "be a pro mode" or the online multiplayer, looking quite good either way.
 
Haribo

Haribo

Super Moderator
Looks like typical FIFA. Up close the graphics look nowt spesh. What the hell was that keeper doing at the start?
 
D

Dan

Woo Woo Woo
Well it was Lehmann...



(I think)






How awful are the kits? They look like jump-suits up close.
 
S

Singey

Registered User
They seem to have captured the crowd/commentary sounds very well and realisticly (apart from the delayed celebration of the goal, but you can never get that spot on I guess).

The graphics ok, but the kits are very dodgey as they always have been and the players physical appearance is awful, they look like goons.
 
D

Dan

Woo Woo Woo
Demo confirmed for the 13th chaps on both Xbox Live and PSN.




Don't be surprised if the PS3 demo gets delayed though...They always seem to.
 
D

Dan

Woo Woo Woo
a hand's on from someone who has played the game...

So yesterday I went to GCA in Singapore as I learned that 1. EA would be showing Fifa08 there and 2. it was free entry for the public, so I went there and was very fortunate to spend about 20 minutes chatting to an EA Content Producer* as well as playing a couple of games of 08 on the 360 (one against the EA guy and one against another member of the public).

*Unfortunately because of the immense noise I didn't get the guy's name or job title, it was something like "EA Content Produder", or "EA Product Producer" or something, basically he somewhat oversees and has to know about all EA products, he was a fountain of knowledge on Fifa and was a very friendly, affable guy so I thank him greatly for spending the time to chat with me, if any admins from here know who he might have been please speak up now!

In the Evoweb forums I posted a bunch of long posts about what I saw and was told and also answered a bunch of questions from the Evo web guys, so what I'll do here is copy over the information I posted and then copy over a Q&A, then if anyone has read all of it and still has questions I'm obviously more than happy to answer them.

I'll also post the videos and photos I took, please note that the videos I captured are of extremely poor quality because all I had to capture them was my mobile phone.
Click to expand...

Overview​
 I probably spent about an hour or so in the EA booth, first I chatted to the producer for about 20 minutes, then he showed me some stuff in the game for about 5-10 mins, then I played a match against him, had a little look around the menus and finally was asked by another guy there if I wanted to play against him which I did.

played two full matches in total 6 minute halves, Sheffield United (the EA producer) v Sheffield Wednesday (me), lost 2-0 but it was a really good match, I made loads of chances but couldn't convert them (just like real life!). Dirty cheating blades had Lee Hendrie sent off for two yellows!

Second match was Arsenal v Liverpool, me as Liverpool against another visitor who was there, I won 4-1, 1st 60 mins was really close but I pulled away in the end with a couple of quick goals.

Player Attributes​
We (the EA guy and I) ended up doing a lot with Gary Neville because I used him as the example for the concern a lot of people have for doing skill moves (a little more on that later), so Neville ended up as the player selected in the Arena and then the guy showed me Neville's stats (I specifically asked if I could see what attributes make up each player).


(ignore the fact that the first pic doesn't show Neville, that's because there's a slight pause whilst it loads the selected player and my photo finger was a little faster than the 360!)
http://img507.imageshack.us/my.php?image=neville01nn1.jpg
http://img337.imageshack.us/my.php?image=neville02sw8.jpg
http://img266.imageshack.us/my.php?image=neville03an9.jpg

I didn't manage to catch all the stats as he scrolled through but as you can see from the scrollbar there's something like 20-30 stats and attributes so they really add up to making a player unique from another player, also something which I only just noticed now is that a player finally has more than one position if applicable, Neville as you can see is listed as RB/CB/RWB and his "top attributes" are about what you'd expect them to be for Neville.

Videos​
In total I have 5 shakeycam videos that I captured on my phone, 3 are essentially useless, 1 is the opening cutscenes of the Sheff Utd v Sheffield Wednesday match and the other is me using Yoann Folly in the Arena trying to do skill moves one handed whilst holding my phone at the TV!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0YU3NQXGH6o

Tricks and the "Gary Neville" factor​
I said to the EA guy that whilst a lot of people seem excited about Fifa 08's tricks one of the biggest concerns is that players like Gary Neville will be running around doing flipflaps and Blanco jumps and what not, he told me this wasn't how it will be, and that the ability to do tricks for each player is primarily stat based, with attributes such as agility, ball control and others being what define what tricks a player can do.

There are 3 levels to the tricks, the basic ones such as feints, the middle ones such as step overs and then the highest level of tricks that only the very, very best players can do such as flipflap, Blanco's jump, Christiano Ronaldo's turn etc. etc.

Now this is the bit some people will disagree with but I think is realistic, even Gary Neville can do the most basic tricks, such as feints and such, although because of his stats they will be much slower than if a "good" player was doing them, I think this is correct because anyone, even a 60 year old granny can stand next to a football and do a feint, it's just a shoulder/leg movement, just if a granny (or Gary Neville) does it then it will be slow and pretty much ineffective.

The inverse is also true for the top level of tricks, example Ronaldhino can do Blanco's jump, or Christiano Ronaldo's turn, and again I think that's accurate, if Ronaldinho is skilled enough to be able to do the tricks we know he can do such as the flipflap, he could just as easily learn to do Blanco's jump or any other trick that the best players pull off.

Finally regarding tricks, I asked the EA guy if we will see the AI utilising the tricks, for example if we play as Chelsea v Barcelona will we see Ronaldinho running around doing tricks even if the AI are controlling the team and he confirmed that is the case, which is good news.

I said to the EA guy that whilst a lot of people seem excited about Fifa 08's tricks one of the biggest concerns is that players like Gary Neville will be running around doing flipflaps and Blanco jumps and what not, he told me this wasn't how it will be, and that the ability to do tricks for each player is primarily stat based, with attributes such as agility, ball control and others being what define what tricks a player can do.

There are 3 levels to the tricks, the basic ones such as feints, the middle ones such as step overs and then the highest level of tricks that only the very, very best players can do such as flipflap, Blanco's jump, Christiano Ronaldo's turn etc. etc.

Now this is the bit some people will disagree with but I think is realistic, even Gary Neville can do the most basic tricks, such as feints and such, although because of his stats they will be much slower than if a "good" player was doing them, I think this is correct because anyone, even a 60 year old granny can stand next to a football and do a feint, it's just a shoulder/leg movement, just if a granny (or Gary Neville) does it then it will be slow and pretty much ineffective.

The inverse is also true for the top level of tricks, example Ronaldhino can do Blanco's jump, or Christiano Ronaldo's turn, and again I think that's accurate, if Ronaldinho is skilled enough to be able to do the tricks we know he can do such as the flipflap, he could just as easily learn to do Blanco's jump or any other trick that the best players pull off.

Finally regarding tricks, I asked the EA guy if we will see the AI utilising the tricks, for example if we play as Chelsea v Barcelona will we see Ronaldinho running around doing tricks even if the AI are controlling the team and he confirmed that is the case, which is good news

Quick change FK taker​
one of the things that bugged me about 07/UCL next gen is that when you get a freekick/corner there's no quick way to change the freekick taker (in 07 PS2 you hold down R1 then scroll with the D-pad, works great), I asked the EA guy if there would be a way to quickly change kick takers, the strange thing was when he went to do it to show me it was no longer working, so it looks like for some reason it was removed/disabled from the build they were showing in GCA, so I'm hoping that means there's a chance it will be in the release version (it looked like he was trying to press "LB" for it).

Be a Pro 5v5 outside EU/USA​
there's been a little confusion about the availability of Be a Pro 5v5 and why it won't be available in certain regions. The EA guy confirmed to me that sadly it won't be available in Asia or any other continent outside the USA/EU (I didn't ask about Canada but I'm pretty much assuming it will be available there)

The reason that for example Australia/Asia won't be able to have be a pro 5v5 is because there aren't sufficient EA Servers in these regions so the latency would be so bad it would make the mode unstable and unenjoyable to play. The good news is that EA want to make the mode available worldwide and are currently investigating what needs to be done and where to make this possible. I asked if he had any idea of a time-scale for Asia or other parts of the world (I asked if perhaps we'd be able to see it before Fifa09) and he answered that they honestly didn't know.

Be a Pro Arena Mode​
not a very big thing but something I noticed, when you set up a Be a Pro match, during the loading of the game it appears that the player you chose to control is automatically the one you have available to you in the Arena as the game is loading (I accidentally chose Yoann Folly as the player I was controlling in be a pro and whilst loading it was Folly I had in the arena, hence the video of me doing tricks one handed with him Wink), it seemed like a good, simple idea as you then can take a little time familiarising yourself with how that player moves and shoots, or if you chose Drogba you can familiarise yourself with how he throws himself to the ground as if shot by the 2nd sniper on the grassy knoll every time he's tackled

Core makeup of current gen/next gen teams​
we talked a little about feature content of both current and next gen, how current gen seems to have more of the little touches and features we would like next gen to have (pre-season friendlies, keepers that can be sent off or injured, etc. etc.), I told him that a lot of people were unhappy about the apparent lack of "extra pazazz" in next gen, I also told him that the new updates to the FAQ had been badly received, that it was basically "is this, this this and this in next gen, answer no, no, no, no". He went on to explain to me that with Fifa08 the current gen team constitutes a larger portion of designers (because the graphics and AI have reached a level where they are at the extremes of what the systems can offer), whereas the next gen dev team constitutes a larger portion of programmers (for the AI, movement, tactical awareness, threat mapping and all that) and "graphicians" (all the extra kits, stadiums, balls and what not of 30 leagues needed creating by someone). So that reason is part of the reason that next gen (in comparison to current gen), looks like it's lacking a little love, feature wise, now that everything has been created for 08 it should mean that less stuff needs to be made from scratch in 09 and there is more room in the team for extra love/features/pazazz in 09

Edit Mode​
one question I asked him about edit mode was to clear up some confusion I'd been reading, we were told that for the star players with real faces we couldn't edit their face (which of course makes sense), but the question was whether or not we can change their hair/facial hair? Beckham being the perfect example, for two weeks he was bleached blonde so appears that way in all EA's Fifa08 shots and then in his last Galaxy appearance we see he's shaved it all off, so obviously a year with Beckham's white hair would be annoying. Unfortunately the EA guy confirmed that for players with "real" faces we will not be able to change their hair/facial hair, I pointed out to him that PES lets us do that so I think he took it on board Wink

According to the EA guy, there is no hard coded limit in edit mode for next gen other than the storage space you have available (for example memory card/hard drive), I should mention he was going from memory and he's not 100% certain, but if it's true that's really great news.

One thing I was very keen to look for was the edit mode, I wanted to see if for example you can change the skin tone of a player easily, just playing as Sheffield Wednesday I saw a couple of players that need some adjusting (Wade Small in game is light black but in real life he's very black black), unfortunately I couldn't find the edit mode, I went into creation centre/edit player but all I could see was the usual edit stuff such as name/DOB/nationality/tape or no tape/shirt tucked or untucked and where you edit his attributes, so either I wasn't looking in the right place or it was disabled in the build I was playing, the EA guy had left at that point so unfortunately I couldn't ask him about it.

Now on to the Q&A, again no apologies on verbosity, if I write too much text for you then feel free to ignore.​


have you noticed any major flaws in the game?
Yes I have, Sheffield Wednesday's team stats are all around 55-60, I told the EA guy that was very wrong and they should all be at 99!


how felt the scoring?

was it more satisfying than in FIFA07/UCL ?

The shooting is highly impressive, I ended up using Christian Ronaldo in the arena for some reason, even though I dislike him, I tried some shooting from around 20-25 yards and it was a thing of beauty, ball moves really well, good speed about it, sent one drive crashing off the crossbar

During the Liverpool v Arsenal game I hit a shot with Alonso that was probably the highlight of my experience with 08, he's about 25 yards out, in the "inside left" position as they like to call it, I point him towards the far post then shoot to the left post, medium height dipping shot, fair amount of power, I'm about to celebrate but then Lehman pulled off a fantastic full stretch one handed save to push it out for a corner, looked really class

EA have speeded up the "powering up" of crosses and shots and such so at first if you're used to UCL you'll find yourself hitting shots over the bar, but once you get used to it you get your timing back and can really hit the ball well, the movement of the ball from shots just looks fantastic, really smooth and organic, looks spot on and not elasticy or whatever like older Fifa's, it somewhat reminded me of PES' shooting in the way that it felt pure and organic.

lacebo, you lucky sod Very Happy

What ball was used for the Steel derby?? Football League??

Net Physics any good??

Computer AI smooth??

Any major glitches that stood out??

Sorry for all the questions, just really excited!! !
To be honest balls and net physics are never something I notice because they don't interest me all that much. I did talk to the EA guy for about 20 mins before I actually got to play so net physics was one of the things I mentioned because I know how a lot of you are really into it.

I commented that recent videos have been meeting with a better response than the Leipzig version and he said that yes it's a newer build that was shown recently (eg gamespot vids), and the version they were showing in Singapore is only about a week or two old, much newer than the Leipzig floor demo, the version they let us play today is pretty much the full version of the game rather than a limited demo.

I only played versus another human so can't really comment on AI, goalkeepers seemed to do what they're supposed to do and obviously they're AI so that's something, when I first a couple of people were playing separately against the AI and from what I saw the AI attacked and moved in a very convincing way.

I don't remember any glitches, I'll try to rack my brain....

One thing that was very cool, I passed back to Reina, the guy I was playing closed him down with Van Persie and when I powered up kick and released it Reina panicked because of the pressure and fluffed his kick resulting in an almost air shot, the ball only just left the box, fortunately my defenders were awake and cleared it, very cool and very accurate I thought !

Interesting read Placebo, did you notice players play differently? Did the Liverpool players play as you'd expect them to? What was the Liverpool first team?




Liverpool first team IIRC:

Reina
Finnan Carragher Agger Riise
Pennant Gerrard Alonso Babel
Torres Kuyt

I was mostly focussing on my own game but one player who stood out was Fabregas for Arsenal, his movement and passing I thought looked very good, he seemed to be always in space when the guy passed to him and when Fabregas passed he generally passed well. van Persie also seemed very much to move and shoot and such as van Persie should do, for Liverpool I made some good bustling runs with Gerrard, he's very strong so can win the ball well and also run past players if they don't make very strong challenges, I believe at least one of my goals was a Gerrard assist which was nice, Kuyt header from a Gerrard cross IIRC.

Skill wise it takes practice to get the timing right for the moves, at first I was doing them too late before a challenge so lost the ball, later on especially in the last 20 mins of the bot-bot/Live game my timing was better but certain players were better than others, I had most success with Ryan Babel, I guess because he's athletic and skillful but also because being on the wing you get a little more time, I tried skillmoves with Kuyt but struggled to pull anything off, I did round the keeper rather nicely with Kuyt and tap into an empty net which I especially liked!

Sweet, can't remember the last time I've seen a player round a keeper in a football game! Did you trick past him or just normal stick movements?
IIRC it was simply a case of rounding the keeper by moving to the side as he rushed out at me, a few times I did beat the defender coming to tackle me by doing a skill move and I can tell you now it feels sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet, and I'm someone who when it was announced about the skillmoves being in 08 went "blahh", but now I've seen them and tried them it's fantastic, a couple of times to tease the guy I had the ball with Gerrard, stood still then started doing "keepy uppy" until he came to tackle me then passed the ball off!

_________________All this copy and pasting is tiring me out. I'll post the rest later____________
 
Lörd TH

Lörd TH

Registered User
by the sounds of that it seems quite good , hopefully the demo coming out for xbl and psn should be a similar if not this version of fifa 08
 
D

Dan

Woo Woo Woo
Right, here's the rest...

my question; im playing always with in-game tactics....i have 4 tactis each game --> pressing, counterattack, full attack and offside!

i can remember that in fifa RTWC98 it was possible to activ the offside with the L2 shoulder button...

will the in-game tactics be in fifa 08?
I can confirm that yes you use the D-pad as before to choose an attacking or defending tactic same as current gen or 07/UCL next gen !

UCL uses the R1 button? to make your defenders play offside, I'm sure it's in 08 but I couldn't find the button that did it, the control scheme was not one I'm used to, I did change it 10 mins into the Steel City derby but I don't think I found the one I'm used to from UCL, my excuse for being 2 down

What about aerial play, because 1up are complaining that there are some problems with this..
As in heading towards goal to try to score and heading out of the box to clear when you're a defender? I thought is was pretty much as it should be, if you're in a better position than the guy you're challenging then you'll win the ball most likely, if the guy you're challenging is a stronger player who is better in the air then he might well win the ball, during the Blades v Owls game Steve Watson won a lot of headers in the box which he should have done because he's a big fat strong bugger Wink During Arsenal v Liverpool Carragher dominated Arsenal in the air because he was mostly challenging van Persie who is neither strong nor a good header, at the other end Kuyt won a couple of headers "he had no right to win" because he was up against weaker players with less heading ability, and as I mentioned I scored one very nice headed goal during the game, I'm pretty sure I hit the crossbar with a header from Frannie Jeffers as well !

placebo how you fell the passes in the game!??
they are really 100% free??
you can do long balls from where you want in the game!??
and the teammates AI??
they really move around you trying to get you a options from passes??
i see in the pics from neville attributes, one call movement??
this indicate if players run more or less in the pitch or is the movement with the ball???
Unfortunately by default player switching and passing assistance were turned on and to a high degree, I didn't really feel like I could stand there for 10 mins in front of the EA guy turning off all the assistance so I just made do with it, normally I'd prefer manual player switching and completely manual passing so my feelings for the passing/switching were a little bit lowered because of that.

So yes you can do long balls from whereever you want, it looks like players can actually kick a little further as I played a long ball with Carragher and it actually went all the way through to Lehman with just two bounces which seemed improved over 07/UCL 360.

AI movement seemed very good, I couldn't figure out which button made the AI do runs for me but they seemed more than smart enough to do it themselves anyway, during the Owls v Blades match especially I did some really, really nice passing moves, short one-twos, through balls into space etc. etc. I guess it partly helped because stat wise the players were slower than the Liverpool/Arsenal players !

I'm afraid I don't know what movement is for but at a guess I'd say it's his movement off the ball, moving into space to be smart defensively as well as moving into space in an attacking sense to give options to the player on the ball.

Quick question (my favourite question to people who play a game I want to play)... What was your favourite thing about the game, and what was your least favourite thing about it?
Favourite bit was probably the shooting, as mentioned with the Alonso shot, it wasn't a goal but everything about it, receiving the ball, moving into space, taking aim, shooting, watching the ball travel and dip, waiting for it to nestle in the back of the net, seeing Lehman dive, seeing his arm stretch out, seeing his hand pawing at the ball, watching him "get a big hand to the ball", watching it go out for a corner, audibly going "oooooh" cos it all looked so sweet, that was the best part.

Beating a human defender with a skill move is also high up there.

Saving a penalty in the 3rd minute against the EA guy was also nice (I went for the old faithful keeper's bottom right and it worked), unfortunately I didn't clear the rebound and he ended up scoring anyway but it was still sweet!

Least favourite? I'll have to have a think about that, the most frustrating thing was simply using a control scheme you're not used to.

Maybe through balls on the wings, especially when I was Wednesday I had a player moving into space and I couldn't really chip in a through ball enough ahead of him, but I'm assuming that's simply due to not having manual passing that I'm used to !

Woooo!! Sorry I'll try and calm down a bit. Is it better than UCL? What stood out most for you. I'm so excited I've forgotten what quesrtions I wanna ask. But please tell me the guy who was Arsenal was a total newb because Liverpool 4-1 just aint right. How was the shooting and did scoring give you satisfaction?
Yes it's better than UCL without a doubt, even though I'm a big fan of UCL I think this has an all round better feel to it and I really enjoyed playing it.

Yeah the guy who played as Arsenal was a noob, he said it was his first time playing Fifa as he normally plays WE (in fact halfway through he had to ask me which was the shoot button because of course Fifa default is opposite to WE/PES so I had to tell him!).

Shooting I think I've mentioned in fair depth but to reiterate shooting is superb, and scoring is very satisfying, but I'd say that the really nice moves you can put together are almost as satisfying, I put together some great moves as Sheffield Wednesday but sadly I had no end product (just like the Owls in real life!)

What about the player skills? Can you feel the different between ronaldinho and for example materrazi? In the PC Version all players can dribble,shoot, run........ like C Ronaldo or Ronaldinho.
I only played as Liverpool and Sheffield Wednesday, plus a little time as Christiano Ronaldo in the arena, I can say for sure that playing as Liverpool and playing as Sheffield Wednesday feels different, and I found myself playing different, I actually played a shorter game with Wednesday because they didn't have the speed/skills/passing/movement that Liverpool had to play a slightly more direct game that having 3 tall players up front (Babel, Torres, Kuyt) makes me feel like playing.

I would say that different players play and "feel" (I know you like that word Wink) differently, Gerrard as I mentioned is powerful in tackle, strong at running with the ball, Babel is more skilful and agile, Kuyt is less skilful but stronger. Christiano Ronaldo from what little I used him in the arena moves and reacts on another level compared to the average Liverpool or Wednesday player, I guess as he should !

Whether or not the difference between players will be enough to make everyone happy I don't know, but at the end of the day I'm very, very impressed and happy with what I've played !

so with the increase of player stats, i think we can tweak the players stats for a perfect footi sim like we did in PES! thats something that move the game to a other dimension...
Yeah I think that's the good thing about the amount of stats they have, people must remember that with UCL 360 especially the amount of stats each player had was reduced greatly compared to 07 and 08 because of the whole trading card aspect.

Also it's not just about the attributes you can see, certain players have hidden attributes which help to define the player they are, for example Gerrard is strong on the ball, has a powerful long shot, Lampard will shoot as soon as he can see the goal etc. etc.

Placebo out of 10 what would you give it on first impressions.
Hmm I'd say 8.5, I didn't get to see any of manager mode, and I couldn't figure out where you edit a player to change his appearance and skin tone etc. etc. so I think 8.5 right now is a fair score !


How much better than UCL would you say it is?
How much better than UCL? At least 50%, 07 - UCL I thought was about 25% better so you could say 08 is 75% better than 07

The shooting alone is 37 times as good as 07 and 23 times as good as UCL

[b"]ALERT, ALERT...[/b"] bad goalkeeping shown in new video at gamevideos.com

Placebo, did you notice this?

Haven't watched the video yet, will do shortly, I didn't notice any dodgy keeping during my time with 08 today, that's not to assume there is non at all but either I was lucky and there was non in the games I played or I simply didn't notice it.

The 2nd goal the EA Producer scored against me was a left footed daisy cutter into the bottom left corner of the goal, scored by Rob Hulse, it wasn't overly powerful but it was exactly in the bottom left corner and the sort of goal you think the keeper might have saved but in reality he just couldn't quite get down to it quickly enough.....

Thanks for the vids even though 2 are a blur. lol. It looks like Deon Burton is finally black in 08' if I could tell correct from your arena video and they the little afro as well. So How much of an improvemnt over UCL is it?

Unfortunately as mentioned that was Yoann Folly Wink I believe Deon in 08 is "light black", which does make him look white when zoomed out, Wade Small is the same, I was berating the EA guy saying "Wade Small is not white!" then during a cutscene it showed he also was "light black", so I told him that was acceptable for Deon but Wade should be blacker, he said he's gonna try and get that fixed for me for retail Wink

I think the figure I gave was 75% better than UCL? I'll stick with that, sounds about right !

Worst video I have seen, Keeper comes rushing out with no awareness for the ball nor the attacker.

Dissapointed.

I played the arena a fair bit and every time I got too close to the keeper he rushed out directly at me and won the ball 90% of the time except for the couple of times I pulled off a "skill move™" at the correct time and left him clawing for air !

As I mentioned earlier one of the goals I scored with Liverpool was me rounding Lehman and slotting into an empty net, for one thing Lehman came straight at me, for another it was a situation where I very much noticed the improved response compared to UCL, I actually timed my swerve away from Lehman too late (at least that's what I thought compared to how I'd have to time it to round the keeper in UCL) but Kuyt responded very quickly and Lehman was clawing at my shadow as I tapped it in to an empty net ! And you have to consider that presumably Kuyt has a lower agility attribute compared to many other forwards because that's how he is in real life......

How would you rate the collision physics, have they improved so there is little stop/start when players collide?

Is the ref more forgiving allowing the game to flow?

I moved the two similar questions together), collision physics seemed right, certainly nothing happened I was like "WHY happened there", the tackling was really, really sweet, when you get a sliding, lunging tackle right and you win the ball leaving the guy on the ground it's a really nice feeling, obviously timing is the key there, get it wrong and you'll be punished, during the Owls v Blades game the EA guy tackled Tommy Spurr with one of the most crunching tackles I've seen, I was certain it was a foul, I actually stopped playing and was like "bloody hell that's a foul" but it wasn't he must have won the ball and play went on !

Is the actual pace of the player realistic, ie when you try to pull away from a defender, do you get the feeling of him accelerating?

Overall pace is good, I read that the game had been slowed down but I didn't feel that if it had it was in any way a detriment to the gameplay.

One thing I wasn't happy with and I believe it's because I was using the wrong control config as to what I'm used to was sprinting, in UCL I hold down the right trigger to sprint but that wasn't in the control config I was using today so basically I couldn't figure out how to really sprint with the ball, I guess that's why I ended up attacking with lots of triangles and short passes and such, which in a way was a good thing

How would you rate the overall atmosphere of the game? ie sound, crowd, lighting and stadia.

Unfortunately it was so loud there I heard nothing of the sound, if the commentary is as good as UCL then I'll be happy as I felt that UCL 360's commentary was the best in any football game ever, I'd also say that the crowd noise in UCL 360 was the best of any football game ever, so I expect it to be as good.

One thing of note is that each team has at least one rival (it actually says who their rival is on the team profile screen), and when you play the rival the commentators will specifically mention it's a derby match or you're playing a rival or whatever, and apparently that will also include championship teams so when I play Sheff Weds v Sheff Utd the commentators should talk about how it's a big derby and the result is important blah blah, which is a nice touch

Which one are you most looking forward to, PES or FIFA and why??

TBH I was always looking forward to Fifa08 more than PES2008 because I've grown disillusioned over the last couple of years with what Konami have been doing.

I actually talked to the EA guy about it, I was like "no offense but with EA there used to be a give and take, we'll give you a game and take your money, that was the extent of the give and take, but it seems that now it's Konami who've gone down that path and EA actually seem to be trying to make more of an effort to give the gamer what they want, to keep evolving the game and the series", an example of that is the Fifa forums, you have a number of different EA community guys posting in there now trying to give feedback, even if the answer is "no" it's still more feedback than Konami are giving. I gave the EA guy the example with PES that annoyed a lot of singleplayer gamers such as myself, we begged and begged from PES3 for an improved ML, and what we got next was the same old ML but giant animal heads we could put on the players. I told him as one community guy to another I was impressed with the efforts I'd seen EA putting in with regards community outreach in the last year or so.

Sadly the awful GK positioning in FKs is still there Sad Sad
So unrealistic.

I picked this complaint post about the FK at random so don't take it personally.....

Obviously with the first goal the keeping was awful, he should have punched or done something, the only headed goal of the two games I played today was mine versus Arsenal, Gerrard cross from the right to Kuyt on the far post who headed across the keeper and into the top corner right corner, if I remember correctly Lehman stayed on his line and dived to try to save it but the header was too good.

Now the freekick, I'm sorry but I don't see what's wrong with the goalkeeper's positioning? Isn't that in real life how they defend freekicks? The keeper stands to the side of the goal not being covered by the wall?

http://img514.imageshack.us/my.php?image=position01ik0.jpg

In position one it does look a little as though he's too far to his righthand side of the goal, but look at position 2.....

http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=position02zn7.jpg

ou can see that's he's as far left as he can be yet still see the ball, by positioning himself so he can see the ball it gives him a greater chance to see in which direction the ball is being kicked.

If the keeper was positioned behind the wall then if the FK taker is left footed he has a very easy chance to score in the keeper's right hand side, or he has a good chance to cross the ball in with pace for a tap in into the keeper's right hand side. TBH I think the FK positioning is about right (for what my humble opinion may or may not be worth of course!)

Tnx for the answer regarding response time. That has made me more positive about the game as the response time in UCL was just too slow for me. In what way do you consider it faster/sharper? Is it in shooting/passing response or also in movement response i.e. turning?

In both ways, how quickly they pass the ball and shoot as well as how quickly they respond to your movements on the stick, not sure if my comment about rounding Lehman was before or after this question but in UCL to round the keeper you pretty much have to start making your movements before you're close to the keeper because of how he responds and how wide the turning circle is, as mentioned in 08 I thought I'd timed it too late but the kick response time and the agile way Kuyt moved meant I rounded Lehman really close to him and it just looked so sweet, I looked at the kid I was playing and he even seemed impressed with how it happened, he had the kind of "I know you just scored against me but that was a good goal and it was a deserved goal well taken" look !
Click to expand...

Also some more gameplay footage.

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/14534

Click on wmv for a bigger screen, that way you can actually see what's going on.

The keepers are looking useless. :erm:
 
The Stig

The Stig

.........................
Does anyone know if you can actually change your teams captain in 08? Cause for some reason when I downloaded the winter transfer update for 07 Daniel Agger is the captain of Liverpool instead of Gerrard. Then when you eventually sub Agger the team has no Captain :laugh: Can you not choose a captain on 07? Seems a bit stupid.

Edit: Done my research and found out to change your captain you just highlight your selected player and press 'X' =\ such a stupid idea from whoever decided that at EA. Oh well learn something new everyday lol.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top