What are you playing?

[Captain Russ]

Downloaded the demo for FIFA 12 today. Played a couple of matches and I honestly thought it was balls. Very slow. Unintuitive, sluggish controls. Players are dumb as a pile of rocks (again.) Through balls go where the game wants to put them as opposed to where you want them to go (again.) Granted, I've not been playing games for a few months, but that's no excuse for a title of this stature to feel so flat and joyless.

It is EA, after all.

[Anderson]

Speaking of that NHL 12 plays like a bag of dicks.

[Captain Russ]

That sucks. 11 was good times with the precision shoot/pass stuff.

[Captain Russ]

In my dreams, I am playing Dark Souls.

[Abraham Smashington]

Soooo close to beating Donkey Kong....

[Bobby Bear]

It is EA, after all.

I am really growing tired of them. FIFA 10 was a fantastically playable football game. Almost as good as you're going to get. Granted, it had its flaws (namely, passes going where the game can handle passes going, not where you want them to), but it was a solid template for future incarnations. Then, they started to balls about with it in 11, sapping the matches of some of their pace and over-complicating things with too many button combinations and a clumsy defensive system. 12 only seems to further the decline.

Come on, Konami. Give me a viable alternative. Please.

[Captain Russ]

Absolutely agree that 10 was the last great one. 11 was marred by a horrid defensive overhaul (which consequently destroyed pace) and those overcomplicated finesse schemes you mentioned.

I played the demo for a bit earlier today and while some of the pace issues are addressed and a couple of the defense issues were given a band-aid (the auto-jostle), the detection on tackles and the new-fangled jostle system are terrible at the best of times.

Seems like I might be looking to change over to the Pro Evo team soon.

[Abraham Smashington]

OR GO BACK TO 10! I still have that one hahaa

[BillyG]

EA probably shut down the 2010 servers by now.

My best friend and I are talking about doing Diablo 2 co-op this weekend. Who wants in?

[Captain Russ]

My eggbox ate 10. All I still have is 11.

And who juants that?

[Bobby Bear]

Absolutely agree that 10 was the last great one. 11 was marred by a horrid defensive overhaul (which consequently destroyed pace) and those overcomplicated finesse schemes you mentioned.

I played the demo for a bit earlier today and while some of the pace issues are addressed and a couple of the defense issues were given a band-aid (the auto-jostle), the detection on tackles and the new-fangled jostle system are terrible at the best of times.

Seems like I might be looking to change over to the Pro Evo team soon.

I just can't get on board with these more recent defensive systems. 10 was delightful because it was so simple. If someone was running at you, pressing x would immediately apply pressure. You could hover around them and can pick your moment to make a tackle. Or, if you were using a stronger player, just shoulder-charge them off the ball. Brilliant. And very realistic.

Now I find myself being forced to back off players and give them more time to do something with the ball. I like to play football games the way I like to really play football. Close the opposition down fast so that they panic and you can reclaim the ball quickly. This makes it a lot harder to do that because you always seem to be on the back-foot, inviting attacks.

In the end, I just gave up on the press and tried to defend manually, but that just made my defenders sprint right past the attacker like they were in a relay race or something. Ridiculous. The players really do seem completely inept when stuff like that is allowed to happen. Or they don't run into space that even a schoolboy winger would know to run into.

And that's another thing - lateral running. I could give a monkeys about these games looking ultra-flashy if they got stuff like fluid movement from CPU players right. I don't want to see my AI team-mates' support play foiled because there is a defender directly in front of them (and they can't run around them.)

On the plus side, I hear that Pro Evo is a lot better this year.

OR GO BACK TO 10! I still have that one hahaa

Mate, I'd love to if I actually thought the option was there (or people would still be using it.)

[Bobby Bear]

Remember when, in the wake of Homergate, the guy from Rock Bottom had to apologize for the mistakes his show sometimes makes in its hasty search for the truth? Well, I know how he feels. I've made the second such mistake in about a week.

FIFA 12, much like Black Dynamite, is much better than I initially gave it credit for. I know it's only a demo, but I gave it another try yesterday and really got into it, racking up quite a few consecutive matches in the process. The defending was the straw that did the camel in last time with me, but I found it to be enjoyably challenging with a little more time and controller-familiarity. A bit like real defending, I suppose. You know a football game is onto something when it captures all the fun and frustration of the shoulder-charge.

I crushed Man City with Milan. Pato clinched a hat-trick, including what can only be described as a majestic chip from inside the box.

[Captain Russ]

It seems they've lightened up on the supreme role defending took in the last one, so pace is a bit better. I am slapping anyone who chooses Barca. Ever.

They're too good, it hardly seems fair.

I love how in the goaline cam, David Villa looks like a hobbit.

[Bobby Bear]

It seems they've lightened up on the supreme role defending took in the last one, so pace is a bit better. I am slapping anyone who chooses Barca. Ever.

They're too good, it hardly seems fair.

Indeed. In the last few editions, 90% of people (a conservative estimate) are bad even for online gamers' standards. If it isn't Barcelona, it'll be Real. Or Chelsea. Or Inter. Or maybe United. But normally just Barca or Real...

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...

My default team in FIFA 11 is set to Rangers. I did so in the hope of encouraging other people to, you know, not use a team with all-but-perfect stats. Largely to no avail, of course. Nothing like playing the umpteenth El Clásico for these people, I suppose.

It just makes it all the more frustrating because the handful of matches I've been able to secure with weaker teams have been far and away the most fun I've ever had on any football game. A hard-fought 3-3 Old Firm clash or a sensational 0-1 away win for Northern Ireland in Poland... it's the stuff dreams are made of.

[Matt]

Playing Age of Conan again. They've got a freetoplay mode now if you want to give it a try.