FIFA 13 details announced, more of the usual groundbreaking moving forward of the footballing genre:
EASPORTSFIFA on Twitter wrote:
FIFA 13 has five game changing innovations:
1 - Attacking intelligence - Players can analyse plays and take up better positions, making intelligent runs off-the-ball
2 - Complete dribbling - Players utilise precise dribble touches with true 360 degree mobility
3 - 1st touch control - Eliminates near-perfect control for every player by creating context sensitive uncertainty
4 - 2nd generation player impact engine - Expands physical play from just collisions to off-the-ball battles
5 - Tactical free kicks - Can position up to 3 attacking players over the ball. Dummy runs, lay off options and elaborate free kicks
Here is my take on this:
1 - A MASSIVE thing, if it's any good. Roddy has moaned on and on about this for the best part of a decade on here and he's right. Up to now the only real movements were made by the human player, but his team mates were so utterly static when you had the ball. If they can improve this so for examples fullbacks make forward runs and there is fluid motion on the field, it will take a lot of the classic FIFA rigidity away.
2 - Sounds like a bit of PR fluff to me, 360 movement and precision dribbling were highlights of FIFA 12, so all they've done is change 'precision' for 'complete'. Will be interesting to see if they've tightened up the controls on this, as it's not a feature anyone ever used on FIFA 12 in my experience.
3 - Another BRILLIANT feature update from EA. They really do have to be commended for listening to the feedback and acting upon it. The magnetised, automatic control meant that it was still so, so easy to just ping passes around. So now if you ping a 45 yard pass over Tony Hibbert's shoulder, rather than control in an instance, he's going to shin it into the second row of the crowd like he would in real life.
4 - Making off the ball motion more fluid and lifelike is a good thing, but I hope this doesn't mean off the ball players will do the horrible 'jockying' animation from the current games where they are basically locked together, pulling and pushing for 60 metres at a time.
5 - 'Tactical' free kicks? What is tactical about a free kick exactly? Why the buzz word? Why not 'better free kicks'? Again, another feature which is already in the game on FIFA 12 where you can create free kicks in training, just another feature no one uses.