A major complaint in the earlier FIFA games in this console generation has been the lack or responsiveness in the game's controls. This issue has been addressed to a large extent, resulting in a drastically improved and free-flowing game. It's still not as responsive as it should be though, and often the player takes a couple of strides too many before delivering the pass, and that can often be the difference between an off-side and a neat goal after slicing the defence apart. Those extra strides that the player takes before passing the ball could be put down to the realistic player animations and heavy emphasis on player momentum and physics, but when it comes down to it, it breaks the flow of the game and keeps you from playing attractive football. Despite these occasional follies, the responsiveness is much improved and kudos to EA for addressing this key issue.
But while they've fixed one aspect of the gameplay, they've got another horribly wrong. If you ever decide to ping forward a through ball, a high pass, or a lobbed through ball, you might as well put the controller down and pray that the receiver latches on to it. Players receiving through balls and lobbed passes just don't seem to be able to make contact with the ball. They will run all the way behind the ball and just when they're inches away from it, it's as if the ball disappears off the pitch and the receiver is seen faffing about not knowing what to do.
Throughout these instances, which are disconcertingly frequent whether against AI or human opposition, you have absolutely no control over the receiving player. Now this doesn't occur every time you try a high pass or through ball, just way too often to be passed off as a random bug. On the whole, however, this year's gameplay improvements far outweigh the negatives, resulting in immersive gameplay that I haven't experienced in any FIFA game in the last decade.
In an attempt to lure more PES fans to FIFA, EA have also given players the option of completely changing the controller layout and you can now map the game's controls to your preference. Since PES's controls differ from FIFA's (SQUARE to shoot rather CIRCLE), this is indeed a useful option. But what EA probably didn't realise, is that many PES players use the D-Pad for movement rather than the analog stick, and although you do have the option to use the D-Pad for movement in FIFA 09, the implementation is way off and nowhere as accurate as the analog stick, resulting in frequent misdirected passes and player runs. So you're better off sticking to the analog stick even if it takes a while getting used to.
Also see: Grand Theft Auto IV rocks!
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