Studs Up

That’s right, I said it.

Now let me give you a bit of backstory. Growing up, I was a FIFA lad up until the late 90s, primarily due to a lack of awareness of Pro Evolution Soccer (or Winning Eleven as it was called when played on my hacked Playstation).

At some point during my latter school years, I was introduced to Pro Evo/Winning Eleven and immediately saw the light. Realistic football action that was a stark contrast to the arcade-y, “gliding” animation that was rife in the FIFA series at the time. I was immediately sold.

Fast forward about a decade and I’m still staunchly behind PES, laughing at those who dare endorse FIFA. However, I continued to try out the FIFA demos when they became available on my Xbox360, with the lure of official player licenses and far superior production values proving enough to at least give the game a chance. Alas, each provided gameplay far inferior to PES.

That began to change with FIFA08, I wasn’t completely sold but I noticed a distinct effort by EA Sports to bring in much of the gameplay mechanics that made PES so great. Controlled passing and player movement, proper through-balls etc. Interesting.

FIFA09 was the tipping point. I was sick of Konami’s laziness when it came to progressing the PES series, with each proving to be barely an upgrade on the previous years. What’s worse, the game was clearly designed for the Playstation and the Xbox360 was merely a port, and a terrible one at that. Meanwhile, EA was clearly willing to do whatever it took to reclaim the market. I gave the FIFA09 demo a shot, was blown away by the gameplay as well as the licenses and production values, and officially converted. The two games aren’t even close right now.

But the 2010 series of games should be incredibly competitive. PES 2010 looks like they’ve really stepped things up graphically and of course the gameplay should be there. I know loads of people who have converted this past year from PES to FIFA, and you can bet that EA know it as well. The last thing they’ll want to do is start losing ground now due to complacency.

What’s more, I am now the proud owner of an Xbox360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. So I plan to get whatever game works best for each platform and give them all a fair shot. After all, what’s more important that having the perfect football video game to pass the time? F*** all, that’s what.