“Here comes the dance of triumph” – FIFA 10

FIFA 10 has an achievement called “Real Fan” which is earned by playing the game for fifty hours. Since I played it on Xbox 360 both when it came out and now, I can see that I earned that achievement, along with enough others to total 550 points. In contrast to my experience with later FIFAs, that includes a lot relating to single player stuff as well as online. I have played a lot of this game.

When it comes to specific memories of it, though, I struggled to think of any which I could pin down to this one specifically. Thanks to Arsenal’s distinctive shirt at the time with only the tops of sleeves white (that made them look like Charlton) I can remember scoring a couple of exquisite tight-angled lobs, and consulting my old message board posts I can see I won one online match on penalties after a 7-7 draw, a ridiculous scoring level not replicated in any successive version. The broader lack of specific memorability comes with the territory of the gradual yearly update.

What’s new in FIFA 10?

This time most of the back of the box is dedicated to incremental improvements to specific modes. And there are new celebrations and a slight expansion of Ultimate Team, but that was still only in a DLC annex. The exception is “360° dribbling”, the idea of being able to take players in a much broader range of directions at any time. It doesn’t jump out as particularly different, which is probably the best measure of its success. The same sense of gently heightened reality as the previous game continues, but a tiny bit smoother.

Who is on the cover?

A change! No longer Rooney and Ronaldinho as FIFA signifier, possibly reflecting the transition of console generations which could finally be declared done. Or, well, Rooney is still front and centre, so maybe it reflects a more footballing change of generations, with no one quite considering Ronaldinho one of the word’s best players any more. Rooney is joined by two more English Premier League stars, Frank Lampard and Theo Walcott, to give coverage of a few of the top teams (and produce a symmetrical composition of the three, mouths wide open). The paint splatter effect in the background is back, a further acknowledgement that the previous year’s was a bit too brutally simplistic.

What’s on the soundtrack?

The landfill indie incursion of FIFA 09 recedes, in favour of an indier indie selection than ever (Dananananaykroyd! The Whitest Boy Alive!) as just one element amid a broader picture of easy-going variety. This is probably about the best era of FIFA soundtrack, cool without being too try-hard and without the sense of being part of quite as many detailed record company career-launch plans as later ones.

Who is the best player in the game?

The best players are rated 91/100 once again. Iker Casillas is there once again. Otherwise, it’s a move into the duopoly we’re barely out of now, as Cristiano Ronaldo is replaced at the top by Lionel Messi. The careful integration of different levels of skill moves means player ratings do feel a bit more obvious at this point, if not at the single-point difference level.

Who is the worst player in the game?

The bottom end of the used rating range is also still at the same point as its predecessor, at 35. One is Philipp Hörmann, 19-year-old reserve midfielder at Austrian side Sturm Graz, who are an oddly successful team to find someone so low-rated at. In real life he was at their separate reserve side, Sturm Graz II, and never made it to the main one but has had a career across many other Austrian teams.

Then there’s Daryl Sydes, 18-year-old Leyton Orient right back. Searching him turns up some articles where he is listed among Orient subs in a few games, plus an even earlier appearance in the Puma Football League Youth Alliance South East Conference. He has not appeared in FIFA again since.

Still, if you think that’s bad, the final lowest-rated player is Enrico Antoniol of Cittadella, rated by EA Sports as one of the world’s worst notable professional footballers for the second year running. I take that as saying something more about the update process being not entirely comprehensive than about poor Enrico’s skills.

What do the players look like?

I did a bit more zooming in on the cover stars as a test and found that:

1) Theo Walcott’s virtual facial hair is an exercise in careful precision.

2) If you catch someone at the wrong distance, you can get a photo-pasted-onto-lower-res-model effect which is rather uncanny.

In the course of actual gameplay that generally doesn’t come up so impressions are good, although it’s interesting how matches start with close-ups of fictional referees rather than daring to go in close in the tunnel like Pro Evo.

How does it play?

No drastic changes, but it’s just a fraction slower and more careful than FIFA 09, enough to make it a bit of a tougher prospect to get back into. Being more controlled is a good thing longer term, though, and the change of speed means that getting counterattacks right feels great. Pulling off that crucial trick or chipped pass to get past a defender comes with a little extra thrill of acceleration.

How does it score on the sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gif greed index?

I can completely copy paste this one! There aren’t a lot of changes, but what changes there are work well. On the other hand… as with other EA games in 2009, they were really getting into the downloadable content space, and for FIFA this included some new idea called FIFA Ultimate Team which I will be coming back to at length. In short, it was the diabolically brilliant idea of implanting a footballer-based collectible card game into your football video game. 0.2 sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gifs with a bonus further 0.2.

If FIFA 10 was a football team at the time, who would it be?

Winning lots, not the most free-flowing around but capable of scoring absurd numbers of goals, part of the ongoing rush of huge amounts of money… let’s go back to Chelsea again.