FIFA 09
Final score.
If this were old-days FIFA, we'd now moan that it's all very well having more options than Starbucks, but it all looks a bit indulgent when your football moves around on a secret network of arching conveyors and the score's 16-7. Not any more, of course, and FIFA 09 rams the point home with the emphasis on physical midfield battles and possession football, where teams hold their shape and press, and jostle with great effect, and it's up to you to exploit them by dragging defenders out of position, switching the play and paying attention to personnel. Slide tackles haven't much place here, and sprinting is best saved for decisive openings, or you'll run out and continually lose the ball as it moves a fraction out of control with every step. Meanwhile, pressing with two players at once - the default tactic for impatient defenders - does more harm than good, particularly as the refs are officious to say the least.
Along with the tactical presets on the d-pad (or analogue stick, if you switch them around), you also have a broader range of skill moves, accessed by holding a shoulder button and wiggling the right stick in prescribed patterns. The right stick also handles your first touch when receiving the ball, and elsewhere in the increasingly complex control system are various holding moves, jockeying options, fakes, dummies and shot or pass modifiers. As ever though, a player with a good eye for space and movement can get by with just a few buttons and no in-depth knowledge of the fancy bits, even if it never hurts to bone up.
FIFA 09 may want a certain type of passing football to succeed, then, but it's also built on a bedrock of good ball physics and realistic player behaviour, and it's not quite as mean around the box as PES used to be, so while the goals are hard to come by, they can be spectacular. Volleyed and driven shots are particularly fearsome, and while 25-yard potshots won't work as often as placement and good build-up, you rarely feel like the ball is caught under your feet when you should be in prime position to really murder it home. The only slight disappointment is how little joy we had from corners and wing play. Cutting inside to pass it to the striker was always a better ploy, as the physical presence of centre-halfs and the goalkeeper turfed us out of the box on most of the occasions the ball arrived in the air. Particularly strong aerial attackers, like People's Hero Peter Crouch, are exceptions, but it's odd to see the likes of Torres coming up so short.
Otherwise, there are only niggles. There's one irritatingly persistent bug that spins your player round when he's running onto a loose ball, which looks odd and often costs you possession, and there are other times when your team-mates apparently lose all sense of time and place, as well as the traditional football game grumbles of the player-select button selecting a player you didn't want, passes going to the player next to the one you meant, and button presses getting buffered for the next player on the ball, who passes it harmlessly into touch when you wanted him to run with it.
On the whole though, the depth of choice on and off the pitch makes up for these things. FIFA 09 feels like a proper football game. It used to pretend to be football, dressed up in face masks and gluey boots, but these days football is exactly what it's computing. And the face masks are prettier too. Likenesses do vary in quality (Crouch looks like a tanned smurf, for one), but the animation is phenomenal, and there's so much subtle variation in the visual language EA's defined that we could swear they've even replicated stuff like Kuyt's shambling gait. But then perhaps we're just imagining it, or expecting it, because the game's otherwise very convincing. It feels like football, it rewards football, and it punishes football, for football reasons. It may not always be your brand of football, and you can ask for more, but only by degrees. The myth is dead. "Let's FIFA".