FVPA - Fifa 13 First Look

Myself and Mark were lucky enough to be invited to a recent and exclusive webcast for Fifa Community Representatives with producers Aaron McHardy and Nick Channon, Lead Community Manager Romily Broad was monitoring live feedback and questions from the attendees.

The first offering and big news this year involves the "fundamental" Gameplay and first impressions hearing an explanation of the changes and seeing the changes in actual Fifa 13 footage was very positive and encouraging.

Here are the features discussed at the webcast.

1. Attacking Intelligence
2. Complete Dribbling
3. First Touch Control
4. Player Impact Engine
5. Tactical Free Kicks

Attacking Intelligence

This won't affect Pro Clubs who play with more than a few players, the Attacker Intelligence is a new system for AI attackers, smarter movement, curved runs to avoid offside, confident and intelligent runs into the box, think 2 plays ahead. Pretty good if one of your strikers does lag out, the videos of this in development mode look very impressive especially shown alongside actual real life football scenarios. Will the AI Attackers hit the target more often, no information has come out regarding AI shooting as yet but I imagine it should be better than this years offering, otherwise the new Attacking Intelligence will be wasted unless your an ANY and change player just at the crucial moment.

Complete Dribbling

Precision Dribbling as we know it now has been enhanced, meaning you can now move in a direction you are not facing. The element of movement and the way you are facing has been separated. Learnings from Fifa Street's Street ball control have helped shape Fifa 13 Precision 2.0 - Improved Shielding, Face up Defenders, slow down and speed up more fluidly.

First Touch Control

In Fifa 12, an 80 yd diagonal ball from left back to right striker, the striker will bring it down with ease right? realistic if he does it 100% of the time, no not really. Improvements in First Touch Control make for a more realistic experience, depending on your positioning, whether your static or moving and your players attributes will factor in how accurate at receiving the ball you will be. In the scenario first mentioned a defender will have a better chance than now to pick up a ball that has bounced away from the attackers feet/chest - more realistic.

Player Impact Engine

Improvements have been made to the logic of collisions and how players will separate and get up more realistically to avoid situations like Carroll kissing and cuddling the Keeper! Players will be looking to roll away rather than trying to get up where they land. Push and Pull has been worked on also and will be enabled all over the pitch not just where the ball is.

Tactical Free Kicks

I actually think this is good in principal, a lot of work has gone into making free kicks more user friendly and defined. As a team you can now have up 3 players around the ball, up to 2 dummy shots, layoffs, pass through to dummy, or shoot. Will make for a more interesting free kick taking experience. Players in the wall can be added or removed, if the Wall jumps on a dummy kick, it can quickly reform for another Jump. Wall can also move forward, but be careful the Ref will be ready to get his cards out depending on how strict he is if you try and take too many yards.

Game Play Summary

All in all I think the changes being made to game play will make the game more realistic and is definitely a step in the right direction to making Fifa 13 the best release of the series. How they will affect Pro Clubs is open to debate, but I think we will see certain over used moves being less effective than before and the changes could promote more realism in how we play the game. Watching and listening is all we have to go on, the sooner we can get our hands on the game to test it the more we can understand the differences and fluidity of the game. See how these improvements feel compared to previous instalments.

Many thanks to EA for inviting us to the Webcast!

Kelley

For more indepth analysis of the new Gameplay offerings and Screenshots be sure to Check out our Community Partner write ups!!