Ah the beautiful game. Konami had things pretty much their own way a few years ago. Ask a large cross section of footie fans and a good 80% would of stated that Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) was the best footie game every. Times have changed since those heady days. Konami dropped the ball almost right out of the gate on the then “next gen” systems, releasing a version of PES that was so broken that they apologised for it! In this time EA, criticised for many years about their lack-lustre updates to the Fifa franchise, took control of the situation and stripped Fifa back to basics – That was Fifa '08. Well it was an improvement but was still not up to the heady heights of PES in its glory days. Then came EA Canada's reinvention of the franchise, Fifa '09, and suddenly EA had got the balance right. The play was much improved, the balls physics top notch, the passing game was robust enough and it even had online play. Fifa was back… but can they sustain this momentum this year?

Graphically Fifa '10 is incredibly good. Player models are large and bulky without every feeling clunky, and when relevant they actually look like their real-world counterparts – so much so I have taken to kicking Wayne Rooney at any opportunity. The stadiums are all well created with lush looking playing surfaces and tons of ambient lights. The post goal animations are starting to get a little old as these have not varied from the last two or three iterations of Fifa – but then what can you honestly do with them? The stadiums are full of lively & colourful spectators that jostle and sway and jump as you might expect a crowd to do at these events. The menus are nicely designed but the nested nature of them sometimes makes it a real maze to navigate. Animation is top notch on the field withfashion girlsbusiness employee health insurance small everything smooth and a nice solid frame rate. A few odd times I spotted a late texture fill popping in on close ups but this is rare and hard to spot so won't disrupt the feel and flow of the game.

Let's deal with this old chestnut – the commentary is good! Actually not too repetitive, sure you get the odd time when it misses the action or Andy Gray/Martin Tyler says “ooh that just slid off his foot” when in fact you just headed the ball, but mainly top notch. Phrases seem to repeat less often than many recent sports titles (Madden!) and is probably on par (pun intended!) with Tiger Woods '10. The real star of the audio is the ambience. The stadiums erupt in noise and when you score or fill with shouts an chants to help let you know how your fans feel about you teams current play streak. The audio is never less than spot-on in this game, from the sound of the boot hitting the ball to the menu music – it all works very well.

Gameplay wise EA Canada has refined an already great playing title. The balls control and physics seem to be spot on and long balls, crosses and passes all perform much better and faster – a complaint in Fifa 09 was that the ball sometimes seemed to lack pace. The players also seem to of been refined with the general speed of the game taking a slight notch for the slower. This means that no longer can you just hoof the ball up field and hope to find a pace passed striker to grab it and score. There are a plethora of game modes available to you this time around as well as the ability to construct your own set pieces. To be honest the set piece element is a bit gimmicky and under developed but will provide a good diversion for a short time.

The game splits fairly nicely in to two camps, one of which, personally, I feel is a bit of a disappointment, the other is a great blast. The one that disappoints me is EA's taken on the football manager tasks. You can opt to manage your team in a sort of Football Manager / Championship Manager lite kind of way. This works to some degree and they have included many new items here such as realistic transfers, the use of the weather mechanics from theinstrumento usan laboratoriogrupo deutsche bank es full game etc. This just feels like the wrong place for this element to be. What is on offer seems robust enough and the ability to set about managing the team as a whole can be appealing for die-hard footie fans.

The real meat for me lay in the ‘Virtual Pro Mode', this year's take on ‘Be a Pro' from previous games. This allows you to create a new player, assign a look, stats and even your own face in much the same was as Tiger Woods, Madden and Fight Night Round 4 did. You can then place your new star in any team you fancy, Everton in my case – what!? Once you place your character in that team you can then manage elements of the team such as formation etc. The idea is to start of as a newbie in the reserve team and make your way to the upper echelons of the football world. To help this happen you are given a set of match criteria to meet by the manager. Things like ‘Score 3 goals' or ‘Win by 2 goals'. The one constant is to achieve a certain Player Rating level. Your rating is decided based on how well you perform during the match. Shots on target, completed passes and tackles all add to your score rating. Another contributory factor is your player's position on the pitch. You get awarded and penalised respectively for your player's position in relation to the game. This can become very frustrating as, for example, you may want to break out of midfield and make a clear run to open up a great passing opportunity. If you do this then you will be marked down by 1 point for each infraction. If it all pans out and, for example, your run nets your team a goal then this negative will be negated by the positive of that goal but it can lead to either frustration or an unwillingness to move out or your area of play.

There is also a full compliment of online match play for you to delve in to. An issue mentioned with Fifa '09 was that the online played was a little janky at times, with lag creeping in. I can say that the times I played online seemed smooth and issue free. Matches loaded up quickly and a great game was had by all. The feeling of playing a human opponent adds greatly to this experience. The AI does a reasonable job butapple macintosh problemsmercedes mercado ocasion united states desde 2002 there is nothing like the real thing. I was unable to test the new Live League mode as it was offline at time of review.

That said the game is great fun, by far the best football game I have played and a credit to the hard work EA Canada have put in to the thing. There are, as always, a few glitches. The odd commentary issues as mentioned. The frustration with the Player Rating scores. There are odd times when the AI of your team will do something stupid like just boot the ball out of play for no reason or they will ignore the fact you are in yards of free space with a free run at goal and just toe the ball into the middle of the field straight on to the waiting boot of the opposite team.

Final Thoughts:
EA have done a marvellous job in shining up what was great about Fifa '09 and bringing a few new elements to the table to warrant the update. Make no mistake this is THE best football game on any platform – with the possible exception of SWOS on the Amiga. If you like Fifa '09 this IS worth the update. If you have held off either buying a football game or a Fifa title then this is the place to start.

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