FIFA 08 - Dear O Dear

This is not a review as I haven't played any of the other recent FIFA titles or played any Pro Evolution Soccer either.  This is more of my nightmare playing FIFA 08.

The list pretty much grows everytime I play it, and I guess I should stop playing it but I played for it so I should play it and enjoy not that that has ever happened in my 5 hours or so of playing FIFA 08 since receiving the game.

I will start off with actual in game problems that I have constantly. 

Number 1 being the passing.  It is absolutely atrocious.  It doesn't matter where you tell it to the pass the ball it will pass the ball where it deems it necessary.  Then when you lose the ball you have to get it back.  Simply running in to the player has 3 outcomes.  The first being the other player runs straight through you with the ball at his feet.  The second when you get the ball at your feet and the other player gets the ball right back again and your player falls to the ground like he has been shot by a sniper.  The third being that the opposition player falls to the ground like he has been shot by a sniper and gets a free kick for his acting efforts.

Then when we go in to slide tackles the problems even worse.  Free kicks aren't given where the player goes down but more where the original slide tackle started from.  So if you tackle the opponent with a slide tackle outside the 18 yard box from inside the area you will give away a penalty for your tackle.  Which with all due respect is a lot of bullshit.

The third problem with the game is the players positioning, they stand still like idle fucks not knowing what on earth they are doing.  Being a Crystal Palace fan this is realistic in game but not when you are playing with Barcelona.

Number 4, free kicks.  The last FIFA game I played was FIFA 2002 or 2003, I can't really remember but it was a while ago and you could tell the game where you wanted the free kick add whatever spin you wanted and shoot.  Not anymore you can't.  You now have to take a rough estimate where you want the ball to land then somehow judge how much power is needed to get in to row Z, because quite frankly there is no point aiming for the goal because it won't go near the goal.  You are supposed to be able to add spin to the ball once you have released the shoot button but that does about as much as a Polish immigrant.  Shooting also suffers problems similar to the free kicks but I have always had this problem, perhaps it is because I am shit, but I prefer the old days of SWOS where if you got in to a certain position you would have a 100% chance of scoring.

Number 6 may be a problem that many people won't come across.  But I played with a guest as the second player on my team.  Players constantly ran in to each other even though each player was telling the player in game to go opposite ways.  I can only assume the players had a deep love for each other and couldn't stay away.  The end result of these situations was normally humour as it often ended with one of your players slide tackling your own team to the floor leaving the opposition with a one on one opportunity at goal.

Point 7 takes me in to the manager league mode thing.  Why is it that only your team suffers from fatigue.  The opponents are always have full stamina at the beginning of the game even though they have played the same if not more games than you.

8.  Xbox Live.  I have to say this wasn't too bad except for the same problems as single player with the passing, the tackling and the shooting....yeah the basics of Football (Soccer for Americans).  But the problem was with lag in the game, I can only assume these people were on slow connections or far away or were downloading a lot of porn while playing the Xbox.  This resulted in pressing shoot then watching a slow motion version of your player shooting before finally losing connection with the other player because they started to download another video of a woman getting shagged by a goat.

The game is sought with problems and should be fixed.  I haven't played a single game that has realistically immitated any sport at all.  So I don't see why developers even try to anymore.  SWOS was an arcade game and was a good fun game to play, although saying that, the remake of the game was worse than FIFA 08, but I won't go in to that.

If you are considering getting FIFA 08 I would advise you not to.  Even though I have no idea what PES is like I am sure it is better than this lump of crap.