• 29Apr 13

  FIFA 14 -- what I wish for

  This is a recollection of my thoughts on FIFA 13 and what I wish to see in FIFA 14. I play FIFA 13 regularly in a Pro Club with 5-6 of my friends. It is great fun and a truly great concept! We are 2 of the 7 that truly care for, and pay attention to, real world football. The funny thing is when 7 people join forces on a football team-- seven people with seven thoughts on how football should be played-- the chemistry will not be perfect. We play mainly to have fun as friends, but some of us (usually the ones that follow football IRL) tend to get annoyed and irritated with some of our team mates. I guess it is the competetive side of us.
  
  Anyway, on to my main message. These are things that I would like to draw attention to considering FIFA 13 and things that I wish will be better in FIFA 14.

   

  The FIFA 13 Pro-Club is a great game mode; pick 10 of your best friends and create a team, each taking up one position on the field. Formations and tactics can be altered as the team develops. Play in divisions and fight your way to the top tier or compete in cups to earn trophies. Most of my suggestions will revolve around this mode as this is the mode I play the most.
  
  -Game Face; this is good fun, but due to some flaw, error or "mistake" the game face cannot be shown to other players. All game faces will appear as a "generic" face to others than yourself, which is quite sad. In previous FIFA's you could download the game face of your friends so that you would be able to see them while playing FIFA Pro Club. This is no longer the case. I wish they would bring back this option.
  
  -Off-ball animations; players shows emotion after a failed effort or when scoring a goal. This is pretty cool, but I would like to extend this by adding some selectable emotions. Like when receving a great pass from a friend, and you manage to place it in the keeper's hands-- there should be a key-press that prompted some basic animations, like "thumbs up" to the passer, clapping animation (good effort, mate), point to the passer (good ball! Keep it coming!). Also animations of frustrations -- yelling at the passer of the ball, arms gesturing towards boots (THIS is where I want the pass, mate!), and other ways of showing how you wish the previous action was done better. This could also be applied when, after a good chance the camera sometimes zooms in on your player, to show to the passer what you thought of it. This would be great to apply to Drop-In Matches where not everybody has mics.
  
  -Greater defense; FIFA 13 has some appalling defense (CPU), and this needs to be fixed. The computer controlling the defense will sometimes do super-silly stuff, like suddenly stopping their marking of a player, when chasing and scuffling for the ball (with the opposite team's striker), leaving the striker to get a one-on-one. Other things include suddenly stopping their current action and just staring at the ball, heading the ball into dangerous areas, and many other stupid stuff.
  
  -Playing using automatic controls; can be a truly horrendous ordeal. When there are a lot of passing options available (ex. coming from wing position close to the deadline in on goal), the automatic pass seems to never pass where you want it to pass. EA should add a button that if pressed, the controls switched to manual as long as that button is pressed, possibly with a transparent line indicating where the pass will go (my controller is a bit..."uncalibrated").
  
  -Training option for pro-clubs; This should be added so that the club could have simple training sessions where we could train on passing, formations, tactics, one-on-one defense, goal attempts, cross-ins and..just generally train together. An easy interface could tell how to set up the training (player vs. player, players vs. cpu, etc.) set-plays practice and so on. This could also be used when waiting for a game instead of just the arena.
  
  -Better stability; me and my friends have constant stability issues. Often the game semi-freezes which results in a restart of the game. Sometimes, it feels like playing football in an ice-rink as the controls are a bit laggy (the player will keep going for a short few steps before following your controllers new direction). When doing cross-ins the game sometimes doesn't recognize my tripple taps on [Square] which means that my cross will not be what I intended.
  
  I am looking forward to a new season of FIFA 14 and hopefully the pro-club game mode will be even better.

  • Posted Apr 29, 2013 4:48 am GMT
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• 14Feb 13

  Rpg Rpg!

  This can't be the first example of this kind of humor? In the words of Kenny Bania: "This is Gold, Jerry! GOLD!"
  
  

  • Posted Feb 14, 2013 3:18 am GMT
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• 5Feb 13

  Trophy Hunting: Re-visiting older games

  Trophy Hunting
  
  
  Lately I've been playing some older games that I have to try and finish off some trophies and possibly going for that big platinum trophy. Only downside is that many games have a) a couple online trophies that are pretty hard to obtain, and b) some new trophies connected to a dlc of some kind. The games I have been playing are some games that have been laying around. This oppertunity has given me a chance to re-evaluate the games.
  

  
  

  These are the games I have been playing:
  
  1) Top Spin 4
  
  This game I bought used at my local "Game" store. The reason why I bought it is that I really enjoy tennis on tv and try to pay attention to the major events e.g. Rolland Garros, Wimbeldon etc.
  Another reason I bought it was that I was told that it had a really awesome character creator, or face creator. This is true; when creating a character you can choose to use simple, advanced or expert face creating. The simple selection allows the player to choose a preset face and simply edit the face options. The advanced lets you pick different types of noses and tweak 'em with bars. The expert introduces a system with nodes which you can adjust in many ways to create the face you want. I enjoyed this, but the faces usually came out the same.
  
  I remember playing "Virtua Tennis" for the Dreamcast and I was stunned by the graphics. I couldn't believe it and at that point I thought "this is as good as it gets". I kept following the VT games and enjoyed the arcade feel of the gameplay -simplistic tennis with all the shot types and control schemes. When I played "Top Spin 4" I was introduced to a new control system. It took plenty of time getting used too, but I really enjoy it now; it feels more realistic and more skill dependant. I do miss some of the funny mini games from the VT series, but "Top Spin 4" is a great tennis game and I wonder what the next game will bring to the series.
  
  This game features a wide array of trophies, many which are tied to the career mode of the game concerning levelling up and beating pro players. None which seem to hard and I will try to get most of 'em.
  
  2) Skate 3
  
  One regret I have in life is that I never learned how to skate. The art of skating is so awesome, so badass, and one of the greatest things ever! I started really enjoying the art in "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3". This game got me really into the skating games. It was, and still is, a great arcade skater game and had a fantastic soundtrack. I haven't played "Skate" or "Skate 2". The reason for this is because while in the store I suddenly noticed "Skate 3" in the bargain bin. I picked it up because it's a skating game. I did help alot that I had recently seed some hilarious footage of "Skate 3" bloopers on a very known video site.
  
  I love this game. There are no stats involved meaning every skater can do the same things which seems right. Only the player evolve; I had such a hard time getting any vert skating done, but now I am slowly getting to grips with it and getting bigger air. I personally enjoy the street skating more. I love to do grinds and the very pleasable flip tricks. The only thing I am having a problem with is the flick-it controls. The older skating games used x to ollie, but in Skate 3 they use a new inovative flick-it system. All ollies and flip tricks are done using the right analoge stick which can be frustrating at times, but I guess you get used to it.
  
  This game has something every game should include: and awesome replay editor. The game always keeps your last 25 secs. recorded. When you press 'select' the game launches you into a replay editor. Here you can trim and edit the last 25 secs. played. This is awesome. The editor is simple and easy to use, but advanced enough to create awesome clips of skateboarding and bloopers. Every game should include this. So many times silly stuff has happened to me as I have been playing and many times I wished for a feature like this.
  
  3) Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
  
  Let me start of by saying; Yes, I am a huge Resident Evil fan, but I am not a "fan-boy". I have enjoyed every game of the series until the latest edition which I haven't even bought yet (RE 6). I still don't think the game deserved the low score it got here on GameSpot. I have however noticed one thing that is silly and I think it was addressed by Mr. Van Ord in his review: the bullet sponge thing. Enemies, even humans, take a lot of bullets before they die, but I have figured out why. When the soldiers are hit, they usually have a little animation to show they have been shot. If you keep firing on the soldier during this animation, your bullets won't count. If you wait till the animation is over, THEN fire at the soldier, the bullet sponge effect will be gone. I just discovered this recently while replaying the game. This is the only flaw with the game I find.
  
  I find the graphics of this game pretty great. The character models for the Wolfpack gang is great, and the animations is also pretty cool. I love the panic in the face of Willow when grappled by a zombie, and I enjoy the badass CQC animations. The texture of Bertha's clothe scream latex while you can clearly see that Four Eyes' clothes are of a different texture. Also I find the camera setup ideal for a third-person shooter game (here "Army of Two" could learn a few things). The character is not "in the way" and offers a great view of your character as well as the battlefield.
  
  This game has some hard trophies though, many online trophies. I won't go platinum of this trophy though, but I will try to get as many as I can while enjoying the game.
  
  What games are the easiest games to get platinum trophies on?
  What trophies did you most enjoy to get?
  
  Thanks if you read this very blog-like blog.
  

  • Posted Feb 5, 2013 3:28 am GMT
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