Fifa 12 Review Xbox 360 | LoudMouthedGamers

FIFA 12 – Review – Xbox 360

By Jedi House (Writer) on 30 September 2011 in Reviews, Xbox 360 with 1,526 Comments

Love Soccer – Play Soccer is the tagline for this years installment of Fifa, and it’s a fitting one. Fans of the sport will find the most authentic football game ever produced, and non fans will become lovers of the worlds most beautiful game. Fifa 12 is a strong contender for sports game of the year and may even get a few votes in the overall GOTY fight.

Story: Just like in all major sports games you need to use your imagination to build up a story in the games Career Mode. Starting one up nets you the choice of Player, Manager, or Player/Manager for your favorite club. The Career Mode in itself has seen on a few cosmetic changes over the past couple of years and is still just a spruced up menu system between games. Trying to buy or sell a player is annoying as the transfers menu is muddled even with a search feature.Using your virtual pro as player/manager is the best way to play the mode, and you can earn experience to build his stats up over the seasons. After seasons end you are given a plethora of options on changing clubs if you so choose.

Gameplay: Fifa has always been game with solid gameplay, I used to think you couldnt even improve on last years version. Boy was I wrong. The addition of the “Player Impact Engine” and Tactical Defending make this the most realistic football game ever produced. Players now react how they would in real life to situations such as a down player being dribbled around or jumped over depending on agility and dribbling skills. Crossing into the box has also been fixed, so now every cross isn’t a perfect setup for a goal. Passing the ball is also much more realistic so no longer will you be beaten down the pitch by insane deep passes over your defense and into the penalty area. EA sports has really been on a hot streak lately and each game continues to get better. New this year is also the EA Sports Football Club. EASFC is a stat tracker/leaderboard for your favorite team and your friends. Games played are tracked a long with Virtual Pro achievements. Gain experience for games played or challenges completed and help you favorite team earn its way up the table against the other teams in the leagues. You can also track your experience gain against your friends and rub in their faces how much better you are.

Graphics/Audio: Big name players are rendered nearly perfect to their real life counter parts. Even the lesser known player models are well done and varied. The new engine adds a ton of new animations and they are all brought together brilliantly. The announcers which stand out to me as some of the biggest problems in EA’s other 2 big sports franchises (NHL and Madden) are easy on the ears. Martin Tyler is great as usual and old staple Andy Gray is replaced this year (due to sexist comments towards a female linesman) by Alan Smith. Fifa 12 also features an amazingly varied and wonderful soundtrack, every song is catchy and fits the sport nearly flawlessly.

Overall: As far as sports games go FIFA 12 is the cream of the crop. Outshining last years version by leaps and bounds while adding great new features such as EASFC. I still think Ultimate Team could use a better search feature, but even with that minor complaint this is by far the best sports game ever produced. Even people who don’t see themselves as soccer fans should give FIFA 12 a try, because as a game this deserves a play. I’m surprised I was able to pull myself away long enough to write this review.