Very nice post by Mel. A lot of intellectual and intelligent words spoken there. I have been a soccermaniac (originally footballmaniac till I moved to US) for years including the gaming part. Originally started with the pong soccer, I don’t remember what it was originally called, soccer version of pong, the simplest soccer game ever, stick man moving and kicking the ball that never stops. Then advanced to playin Commodore64 soccer games at friend’s houses, and also on my own spectrum-sinclair system finally after a long time, this is like back in early 80s. Then came the PCs. My first soccer game on PC was Manchester United soccer or something like that where you could only play as Man Utd which made me a Man Utd supporter as well after playing for hours, you can’t help it you know. Then there were other soccer games including Goal! Being one of my favorites.
But then everything changed, still no competition to its uniqueness in our high high technology today, sensible world of soccer changed my soccer gaming, and life too, considering I was literally playing the game at least 4-5 hours everyday, no sleep but play SWOS all night. I spent weeks worth of my life on that game, sadly, but it was fun.
Back in 95 I believe, I tried a demo of FIFA, felt like a joke, never picked it up. Around 2000, being a big fan of playing against friends instead of AI, I believe it was FIFA 2000 that let you play friends through modem connection. That’s when I started playing FIFA, not very enjoyable arcade play, but no alternatives to what it came like. Then meeting the console world, started playing FIFA series starting with 2001 on PS2. Through 2004. Till I played WE6, there was no better option to FIFA, so I felt like sticking with it, constantly complaining that how they can ignore including simple and basic features that would make FIFA 10x better and not really a big deal to implement features. WE6 was the game that felt closest to SWOS, something I’m still hungry of, but limited in some aspects of the game. After WE6, FIFA is no fun to play. But as I mentioned before, playing against real people excites me, which is the only reason I purchased FIFA 2004, not that I was expecting a revolutionary change in the game play, and I don’t expect it anytime soon.
On that matter, EA makes sense with the way they choose, regardless of us here on these forums, I can understand how many gamers out there would prefer a game that’s simpler to play (FIFA definitely offers that), especially in US where soccer is not known as much, who wants to deal with tactics and strategy as deep as WE series have, just pick a formation, tell them to be attacking or neutral, and let the AI take care of the rest. Just the press of couple buttons and nice things happen, that’s what majority wants to experience here in the US as far as I can see. So I don’t blame EA for their decisions, hey they even make me somehow pay 50$ for that game every year, even after having WE6 and loving it. It’s our choice to buy it, and some of us do. Another thing to mention, EA seems to be adding nice features in one version, and then taking out some neat features but adding something very nice next version, and then the very next one, they add something that they took out earlier and take out something from the previous one, and that drives me crazy but that’s how they make it look like there’s something new in the new version. Simple example, being able to play in a season with multiple players taking different teams, this has been in and out constantly, as well as the manual direction of passing, and other little things.
I got WE7 the day it was released in US, unfortunately way later than PES, price of being in US, I love it, I would never ever trade it with FIFA, but I still play FIFA meanwhile due to its online feature. Hopefully WE8 will be the point where I don’t have to spend any money on EA anymore. Each game is offering their goods, and at this point I stick with both due to the fact that FIFA has online play, even running an online league since the day it was out, it’s our 3rd season already. And I am hoping that the league will become WE8 as soon as it comes out and with the online play feature.
Bottom line, I think both games are targeting different crowds including a little portion where they meet, like myself, and it’s kinda pointless to argue about FIFA while we are enjoying WE/PES (I don’t really know if there’s a major difference between these two) series so much. And if we are still questioning EA for things that they don’t do but we want, that’s kind of a admiration on FIFA isn’t it? We like WE, but we still believe there are beautiful things that EA potential can bring into the soccer gaming, and that’s why we’re not comfortable with the current situation. But will it ever be?
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