It took me by surprise when I found out that the first Wednesday after the summer of XBLA would have three releases instead of one. I was only surprised until I played them; only one of the three is worth looking at. In the never ending quest to charge money for things that are free (and possibly better) elsewhere comes Gin Rummy.
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Can you believe they gave Giggs a yellow card in the box?
First, let me say EA is beginning to annoy me. Why must they continue to make decent games? Everyone loved the evil empire shtick. You knew where you stood with EA - they make awful games and you could hate them for it.
But FIFA 08 is just another game in a line of successes for EA, after both skate and Madden both being excellent games, this latest iteration of the ludicrously popular football (if anyone says soccer I swear…) franchise that has been around since the mid-nineties.
The game is fun to play. For the longest time, the series fell back upon the lucrative licenses EA have for all major leagues and teams. But now the gameplay is superb. Player movement is fluid; the animations are both realistic and functional. The controls work well to convey a sense of momentum which has long been missing from football games. The ball now hits players, and players now have weight and energy. This makes crunching tackles even more brutal.
Passing is simple; performing the basics is also nailed down. No longer are there problems with heading the ball, or interceptions. It all just works. So much so that you hardly notice it and focus more on the prestige moves, like flicks and tricks, long balls and outrageous shots.
You can play against the capable AI, which still feels a little cheap at times but certainly puts up a good fair fight, but you can also play against other people in an incredible amount of ways. Local games are of course a lock, but the game features online leagues, multiplayer modes of all kinds, tournaments, specialty leagues and all kinds of custom-made matches between exorbitant amounts of teams.
The staples of the series are also all present; repetitive commentary, awful set piece mechanics (making free kicks and corners less viable than throw-ins) and horrible menu music. The game also has a disgustingly large amount of modeled players that, for the first time in a long time, actually look like real human beings and not wax-work horrors. The breadth of teams available is more than you would expect, even though the majority of people will still play their favorite team.
But overall, FIFA 08, like Madden 08, improves on all of the problems of the previous game and throws in some surprises of its own. It is an exciting and enjoyable game to play, and should not be considered anything less than the definitive football game out at the moment. Overall, it is an excellent game for sports fans and another franchise saved by EA. Highly recommended.
“Steps Toward an Elitist Critic Future” at Rock Paper Shotgun
I went into this article expecting the “elitist critic future” to be presented as a negative thing, but no. Kieron Gillen is openly admitting here that he likes it. I think he’s buying into the idea that games need what you could call “indie cred” (not his words) to be worthwhile. I love Earth Defense Force 2017, but no, Kieron, it’s not better than Gears of War.
Lower the price of the hard drive, Microsoft. I want to give you more money, all you have to do is let me.
“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.