Be Excellent To Each Other

UPDATE: I've made a pro club for the forum, which is where we use our virtual pros to make a full team. I think there's leagues and cups to compete fail in, so should be a bit more less fun than the old way we used to play. Since you have to use your virtual pro, you can improve him by completing the accomplishments which will improve certain skills.

Anyway details on how to join.

First create your Virtual Pro.
Then click on Pro Clubs
Then there should be an option for search for club.
Club name is: BEEX Dream Team
Abbreviation is: BEE
Club badge is: Beerschot AC (which has MaliBear on)

Then send a transfer request to me and I'll accept and you'll be ready for whenever we play online.






The FIFA 12 demo is out today and the game is out on the 30th of September.

I've just had a quick game on the demo and it's probably the most different FIFA in ages just because the defending is totally different, so much that it gives you a tutorial at the start of the demo to tell you what you should be doing.

You now have to rely on jockeying far much more, and you now have to time your standing tackles rather than the homing missile pressure of previous games. it's going to take me a good few hours to get used to this alone, although it does seem like you have to press a ridiculous amount of buttons now just to do something as simple as tackling.

Attacking is pretty similar to last year, shots seem a bit floatier, I'm not sure if that's a good thing though, and passing seems a bit more accurate than last year. Commentary is dull as usual even with Alan Smith replacing Andy Gray. And the player ratings are bemusing. Fabregas who had a pretty injury ravaged and forgettable season has went up to 89 from a previous 87 I think and is still at Arsenal although I think this is the demo from Gamescom so that would explain that.

As for new features, ultimate team is now already on the disc, career mode has more drama or some rubbish apparently and now there's online seasons, where head to head games are formed into leagues and cups. Which is were I'll be found for the next year.

Is the demo multiplayer?

Not online but I'd imagine offline would be.

Oh well, will give it a try anyway, but as I haven't bought a FIFA since 09 I doubt I will buy it new. I may just pick up 11 on the cheap, until they turn the servers off.

I still haven't played 11 online, stupid leaving the code in england.

It's been three years since I bought a FIFA game, so it's about time I delved back in.

Haven't had time to download the demo yet, but I my annual Fifa so pretty excited by this.

Bit wary of the new moves and such, but then they're not really practical to use in any case, so I mostly don't dabble in the step-overs and all that nonsense anyway.

Oh and if you really hate the new defending controls then you can go back to the old way by switching the defending mode to 'legacy controls'.

I haven't went back yet, I'm going to try and get used to the new way.

liked the defending tutorials, which make the new covering actions a good and realistic idea, alwaus though defending in football games was too much man-2-man tackling instad of proper covering and stuff... but then i played the demo, and although i liked it, i never really did covering..

Spent some time with the demo last night and very impressed.

I think on the whole the new defending stuff will prove to be a quality addition, and if people take the time to try and master this, it'll really give you an edge, seeing as it appears to put much emphasis on skill and timing and so on.

Saying that, personally I've not found it simple and will need to spend quite some time practicing this, but that's fair and I do get the early impression that learning it properly will bring its rewards.

Other points - passing seemed more accurate, as I think has already been mentioned. Shooting feels a bit soft, so I suspect they've tweaked this too.

Overall I enjoyed it and pleased to see some noticeable changes (or so it feels, i.e. the defending), plus the presentation seems 'cleaner' and less cluttered in terms of the menus and stuff.

Really excited for the full game now.

Also: was wary about the new "player impact" thing, because in the trailers it made it look like too many silly physical tackles, but I didn't experience this, though admittedly have only played a handful of the demo matches so far.

I played this last night and it didn't feel significantly different from Fifa 09. I'm pretty sure all the jockeying and stuff was in there before - doesn't seem much different.

Colour-me-meh.

You're definitely a spacker if you still haven't noticed the 360 degree dribbling. FIFA 09 was still 8 directions.

As for the jockeying - yes it was there before. It was just showing you that as part of the overall defending tutorial. What they have changed is:

A button now does a contextual jockeying dependent on the position of the opposing player and the direction you press the left stick - towards or away from said player. This basically rips off PES11's system, but it's a good system so I'll let them off. Previously holding the A button would simply have your player "home in" on the opposition until they stole the ball.

X button now tugs at opposing players and jostles with them, allowing you to put them off their stride. Previously it brought in a second AI player who would attempt to tackle.

The RB button now brings in said AI player who attempts to tackle.

They've basically made defending a little bit more tricky by the looks of things - possibly to encourage more dribbling and bursts past players rather than passing it about all of the time. Also, a little more realistic. FIFA 11 was basically: get the ball, have two players home in on you like wasps, play a through ball to your now unmarked team mate or get tackled. Pretty limited.

Oh yeah, I noticed that. I just guess I expected a massive difference after three years. It is a football game after all, so I don't know what I was expecting. Explosive balls?

The new FIFA Street is out in January and there's been some impressed previews so far. Pretty much using the current engine and alot of the games going to be based round the tricks system from the normal FIFA games.

Does anyone play that other mode in Fifa, that trading card game thing? I've never bothered with this since I've always thought it rather pointless, but it appears to be incredibly popular.

I've played it a ridiculous amount of time, and you should at least try it out. It's both offline and online so everyone will be able to progress, getting more points, to get more cards, so you get better players and better teams.

You don't have to use points to buy packets by the way which quite a few people seem to think. Just play games and you'll get coins to buy them with.

At one point this year, I had one of the top 50 most valuable teams in the world (The value of all the players in your collection added together). I think I had over 2000 players.

I went and looked up a review for last year's version, and to be fair it does seem like I had entirely the wrong idea of what it was.

Anyway with the new game I'll play 'proper' Fifa for a while then have a dabble with this.

I played the PES demo, it isn't very good, the passing is terrible. You can't do shor passes in the opposition half if there is a player on your team behind the person you want to pass to. 1-2s are almost impossible becaue of this.

If you can go back to the old controls on FIFA, with the a button used to 'home in' on the attacker, that's an issue for me. If I've taken the time to learn the new defending controls I don't want to go online and find someone using the old controls to nick the ball of me with ease. Saying that, playing online has never been that fun or fair anyway.

Yeah I can see that being a problem. Although I'm hoping it will be disabled for ranked head to head games.

The defending on the demo is really difficult for me as I just usually homed in on them. I can understand the changing, but the mixing of the buttons the X to RB is really quite confusing.

Yeah, I must admit I played this loads more at the weekend and am rather struggling now with the new defending.

I know what I'm doing wrong - I'm over-thinking which type of tackle I need to be doing, or button to be pressing, and wasting those valuable seconds instead of getting close enough to the player to even try whichever tackle.

Which is probably a bit on my part.

I'll keep trying, but if I can't sort it then I'll just go back to the legacy wotsit.

Apparently you can only use the new method online, so get used to it!

Well I suppose they had to make a choice for the online side of things. I also wonder what percentage of people just use that 2-button control system.

Still it doesn't impact on me a great deal since I hardly play online, but I guess a lot of people could be hacked off with it.

Ranked only I'd imagine. Surely custom games would allow it.

If anyone plays Ultimate Team, you can get your starting squad tomorrow on the online ultimate team site, also 2 free packets for recurring players and you also get bonuses and prizes to win everyday.

Yeah I'd be surprised if none-ranked games forced it. But, I only bother with the ranked games any way. I don't mind the new system. It definitely needed changing. It's just a case of getting used to the button layout. Although that's kind of irrelevant now as well because the demo seems to offer fully customisable controls if you're so inclined.

Okay, so I think I'm finally starting to click with the new defending system.

Knowing EA though, we'll all spend 12 months learning this, then they will totally swap it for something else again.

Seriously though, can't wait for next Friday.

Hopefully getting this next weekend. Still not tried the demo but I'm a slave to the FIFA franchise. Always disappointing to see how far Celtic have fallen though in real life and in the game!

Still for the game at least, you could cheat a bit and do some sneaky in-game transfers!

How's your puppy doing these days? I remember playing against you in the last game, and at one point your dog pulled out the controller lead (or something), meaning for about five mins I was essentially playing against a team standing still. I still didn't manage to score.

Yeah its always nice to see Celtic winning the champions league
Willow is fine, she's not a puppy anymore, she's a teenager lol. She doesn't bother us when we play Xbox anymore, she's got more important things to do like sit in the blinds and watch the street

Has anyone seen any offers in the paper or anything for this? I'm not expecting much after the last few previous big game launch deals.

I expect something similar to Gears. £40-odd with some bundled points. I think the supermarkets have realised that they're not as great a loss-leader as they thought they might be a couple of years ago. I doubt we'll see £25 anywhere.

Sainsbury's are doing it for £28.99 when you spend £30 on food.

Damn it! We spent £160 on food last night

Well, half of it was food. Plus, technically it wasn't my money, but still. We share everything!

And it was in Tesco.

According to UKHotDeals, with a little bit of chicanery (sadly involving - ugh - buying the a copy of The Sun) you can buy F1 2011 and FIFA 12 for a combined £49 at Morrisons. You could then just sell F1 2011, I suppose.

Pre-ordered my copy of FIFA12 from Amazon last week, after realising that my plan for last year's game (waiting a few months then buying a second hand copy of that year's FIFA for £15) would mean the "bonus features" code (i.e. the "get to actually use about 30% of the game you've bought" code) had already been used up. This year I plan to be able to have my arse regularly handed to me by online opponents once more. Assuming the cocking EA servers are capable of staying online for more than seven minutes at a time this season.

I'm another Ultimate Team addict, having already traded my way up to a reasonable Russian League-only 4-1-2-1-2 hi-chem XI using the web app. Hopefully this time UT matches against the computer WON'T require the EA servers to be available throughout. There's little more annoying than being 88 minutes into battling your way past Inter in the final of a single-player tournament on 'legendary', only for the telltale "trying to connect" clock icon preceding a "connection to EA servers lost, returning to arena" message.

I generally play unfavoured formations for cheaper players/positions and formations.

I'm going to try 3-4-1-2 this year over my usual 5-3-1.

My teams pretty impressive so far, mostly 83/84 players, currently the chem is only 64 but a few formation cards should get it up to high 70's hopefully.

I have no idea what any of this means.

Seriously though, I am keen to try the UT thingy, but will play the regular game first for a good while.

I read the EuroGamer review of the new Pro Evo earlier - sounds horrid mostly, yet they still give it 8/10, one point less than Fifa, which they've basically raved over.

5-3-1 is certainly an unfavoured formation for most teams.

The annual football game reviews are next to worthless. You can find out everything you need to know by simply playing the demos. As for game modes and features, look at the back of the box.

I'm not hating on any particular reviewers - I think it's genuinely difficult to articulate the subtle changes (or lack of subtle changes) that these games show every year. You really have to feel it for yourself. I had a blast of the PES demo and it's barely different to last year. Last year was a good leap in the right direction with promises of more major changes this year that would put it back on par with FIFA. I don't know what they've been doing for 12 months, but keeping their promises isn't it. I think they need to write off this generation completely and hit the ground running next time around with a game that doesn't suck complete arse. They basically ruined what was an excellent game and they've been very slowly trying to get back to that point. Only, they seem to have forgotten what made the old ones good. Doesn't make sense to me at all.

I tried the demo of last year's Pro Evo but couldn't get into it at all, so won't even bother with the latest one.

Still I agree though, and strange how far the series has fallen, considering the situation of about five years back.

It's very disappointing. Fortunately, FIFA is genuinely great now, so fuck it. Part of me still itches for some of the subtleties of PES, especially when playing against my mates on the sofa, but you can't knock FIFA for features, game modes, authenticity and even gameplay these days. I'll be getting it this weekend and my chums will be coming down at some point in the next week for a beer and FIFA night. Because money is tight, I'm actually prioritising it over Gears 3, so that probably says something.

I take it there is no return to 11v11 on FIFA? That's the thing that would make me jump back in if bezzies did too.

Would assume that mode is still in there. I've tried it a few times before (in general, not with anyone on here I don't think), but it just didn't work for me - hardly anyone keeps the discipline and shape of the team.

I'll be up for playing it. Last year you could make your own club and play in cups and leagues.

Interesting. I thought it had gone when there was no option in wc2010. I'm up for it, some of my best bezzies time was Wednesday night FIFA.

I would also be happy to take part in such a weekly event again. (Especially as Liverpool are hardly likely to be playing any European matches on Wednesday nights this season.)