In this age of gargantuan development teams and expanding budgets, it seems the best we can all hope for with each successive football release is a slight change of play focus and the hope that Robbie Williams hasn’t made it onto the tracklist. While PES has spent the last few years drifting towards some arcade caricature of the game, its ancient AI routines struggling to keep up with its pace, FIFA has trodden a somewhat more wayward path, from the brute physicality of 08 and 09 to a somewhat more technical game of late.

He shoots! (Again)

Bizarre it is, then, that EA Canada has chosen to return to the game’s darker side. Or perhaps not, if the World Cup final is anything to go by. Regardless, there looks set to be some considerable ground between the two rivals again this year, one becoming a modern day Kick-Off, the other a far more physical yet nevertheless enthralling proposition.

The reason? EA’s favourite phrase (360 degrees) is making a return, and isn’t limited to the number of directions in which your overpaid megastar can turn. No, this time around player will be able to interact with each other from all angles, perhaps giving rise to videogame equivalent of Vinnie Jones’ ‘physical interaction’ with Paul Gascoigne. Ask your dad.

Or, perhaps, don’t. Still, expect light forwards to be given a significant shove to the back, target men running towards the ball like pylons, their arms extended more to protect space than themselves plus a whole range of incidental contact in-between.

He dribbles! (Again)

Though all well and good written down in a presentation, things really do bear out on the field. Matches have become physical practically to FIFA 09 standard, heavier players shoving their weedy, so-called technical brethren off the ball entirely. Basically, if FIFA was an accurate predictor, Bolton will be shoo-ins for the title and Spain would be world champions. Oh dear…

Moving swiftly on, the EA Canada team has implemented a few changes to their passing system, criticised by some as a sure thing. Dubbed the Pro Passing engine, it can be better described in layman’s terms as semi-automatic. There’s now a passing power bar players can use to judge weight, while attempted kicks will head more clearly in the direction players have selected, rather than having code step in to lend a helping hand. Of course, player skill will also play a part in assessing whether the ball is inch-perfect or runs out of play. This is where EA’s second innovation comes into play.

Or should that be ‘innovation?’ Personality+, put in place to exaggerate the abilities of FIFA 11’s top pros, will feature a database of nearly 100 variables (that must surely have most already been included in FIFA’s code, one way or another), will lend players a greater degree of personality than before. If this all sounds somewhat familiar to PES 2010’s personality cards, well, that’s because it is.

But, seeing as there was really quite a significant degree of difference between forwards as potentially similar in pace and strength as, say, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Jermain Defoe last time out, it’s likely such a feature will add depth to proceedings. The foundations upon which all this will be built, after all, has been three years in preparation.

… continued