Thanks to the great guys at EA, myself and a few of the community leaders from around the globe were able to test out a very early build of FIFA ‘09 this past weekend, and the reviews are all glowing.  We were able to test the new game on PC, XBOX 360, Playstation 3 as well as Wii.  And let me be the first to tell you that major strides have been made in the game for all platforms. Pleas note that the version we played was 6 weeks old (apparently they have another big announcement they’re planning on making and want to keep it hush hush for now) so it was very rough, and the producers assured us that many of our concerns had already been addressed.

I will start with my thoughts on the next-gen version of this game, as that is mostly what people, at least in the US, play.  Tomorrow I’ll post thoughts on the PC and WIi versions of the game. I will be the first to say that I was not a big fan of FIFA ‘08, in fact I at times found it unplayable because of the tracks players appeared to run on and the difficulty of playing through balls.  Because of this I entered this community day a bit skeptical, but to be honest, my mind was blown with how well the team had done to overhaul many of last years shortcomings and put out a very impressive “alpha” build of the game for us to play.

Perhaps the most major change that I noticed was almost a complete redo of the way players react on the field.  The collision system was redone, so that this year physics are actually taken into account and the tackles are a lot more real.  If a player is clipped in their right leg they will fall the correct way, as if their right leg had been taken out, rather than just a generic fall as was the case in last years game. Read the rest of this entry »