Australian Gamer Feature :: FIFA 08 Preview

A RAPTURE A DAY KEEPS THE BIG DADDIES AT BAY

FIFA 08 Preview - the Event

Matt and Yug travel to Sydney to attend EA's preview event for their upcoming game FIFA 08

FIFA 08 Preview - the Trip | FIFA 08 Preview - the Event | FIFA 08 Preview - the Preview

Discuss in official forum

view profile

It was hard for EA to live up to my expectations. You see, the last EA event I went to was a sedate and professional affair, followed later by an alcoholic binge of epic proportions. It was at said binge, where I was relatively un-binging myself that I chatted to a fellow who was fairly thoroughly binged. At one point in our conversation a very attractive young woman walked up to us and he introduced me in a way that baffled, confused, and horrified me. "This is my friend Matt! He's a pedophile."

Where do you go from there? Seriously. Remarkably she said "Oh my god! Me too!". We chatted for the rest of the night and started up what turned into a full-blown relationship, my most recent one, in fact. Eventually I was all ready to move to Sydney, but she finally realized she was too good for me (which I'd figured out months before) and broke it off.

Long story short, the association in my mind was "EA give you free girlfriends", so the chances of being 100% satisfied with my trip to Sydney were pretty slim.

My first impression of FIFA 08 was uninspiring. It was quite blandly textured, and looked oddly blurry. It took a few seconds of looking around with my eyeballs to realize that this was FIFA 08 on the PS2, not PS3. The unit behind me was a 360, and it looked gorgeous. That's a bad word. You really can't say it without sounding a little fruity.

The tightly packed room of playable FIFA 08 stands.

The event was laid out as these things tend to be, and the space allowed. It was a longish affair, with one end containing tightly packed gaming goodness. At the other end were chairs, arranged in a traditional shape, much like Stonehenge. If all the rocks were watching a presenter. We looked around for a little while. Yug wanted to take a happy snap with me posing like a goose for you the reader, but I'd just lost my phone and felt like a sad panda, so I performed a rude gesture known the world over as "I'm not currently ready for photographs due to my fragile emotional state, but I have no doubt that soon I shall be feeling better if you don't mind waiting a bit". We wandered around looking at stuff for a bit. The game was really very shiny, and it was nice to see the smoothness of the movement of players in these new-fangled games.

I watched the PS3 version and the Xbox 360 version to see if I could detect any difference. I'm reliably informed that they're exactly identical, but I did spot a difference. A small and subtle difference, that's actually pretty trivial and you wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it. There were certain patterns that while moving would shift graphically just slightly on one but not the other. The most noticeable place this happened was the center circle and goal circles, the curves of the lines would shimmer just a little bit. It was only visible on that kind of curve, and not particularly an issue. The interesting thing is that it was the PS3 version that did that, while the 360 version was rock solid.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this that are actually not to do with the game, but the most likely two are something to do with different screens possibly being used, and different output resolutions or something. In particular, if the 360 was outputting in 720p while the PS3 was 1080i, that could quite probably have that effect.

FIFA 08 running on the Xbox 360

After wandering back and forth looking at games someone called us over, and we began filing into the seats that were there. There followed a short talk from a few people including Craig Foster and Andrew Wilson who was the producer of FIFA 08. He talked extensively and entertainingly about the game and what they've done with it this year, and his passion and enthusiasm were both obvious and sincere. The interesting thing was that he actually has a bit of a Wil Anderson sort of vibe, which is by no means a bad thing. If I had to choose between Wil Anderson style and my current Rick Moranis vibe, I'd have no trouble picking Willy boy.

Mostly Andrew talked about what they've done to the physics engine. Past FIFA games, up to but not including FIFA 07, have had the ball basically glued onto the player. FIFA 07 revised that, giving the ball its own physics properties and enabling "skill moves", the sort of ball handling tricks top level players use to get around and through defenders.

FIFA 08 expands a great deal on that, with impressive and silky smooth skill moves that can be chained together for mind bendingly complex runs of play to goal. This video shows the sort of things that are possible in FIFA 08. It all looked very impressive, and Andrew did a great job of making it look easy.

He took some questions from the audience, most of which were forgettable, except for one goose who asked about a glitch in FIFA07 that had been exploited in a tournament, ruining the tournament. The question was basically whether that glitch had been addressed. Thankfully I was not asked, and Andrew was much nicer than me and didn't respond with "No, there was a major bug in the game and we just all jacked off in a circle instead of fixing it, you spastic". Working with Yug has given me a limited tolerance for complete morons.

Craig Foster and Archie Thompson talk about the inclusion of the A-League in the game.

There followed a slightly forced conversation between Craig Foster and Archie Thompson about the state of the A-League. Archie is the face of FIFA 08, and a pretty face it is too. Their conversation was interview style and to be honest was a bit hard to follow for those of us who don't follow or particularly care. Nevertheless, both of those guys showed a great deal of passion for what they do and were entertaining and likeable.

After the little presentation we went outside for a walk. We sat just outside in the stands, and out on the field stood a nice row of real-life football players. These were introduced in turn as players from A-League teams, including Sydney FC, the Central Coast Mariners, and the optimistically titled Melbourne Victory. The players were all introduced, and it's pretty clear there's some skilled and respected talent in Australian Soccer these days.

A-League players lined up in a row.

After introductions were done we were herded down to the field.

This was a big part of the "pitch" for this particular event. We were invited to step on the field and spend some time playing and getting coached by some genuine A-League players. This is a great honour and privilege. To get pointers and tips from real professionals and professional coaches is really something special. And on EA's tab, too, bargain!

That's probably why of the assorted gaming journalists, soccer fans, and various invited guests, I was the lone single solitary person who couldn't be arsed.

I'm going to be honest, here. I haven't actually "run" since 1992. And that event alone was a one-off, because a very large dog was chasing me. It was a dalmation and it persued me across its yard like I was its favourite new chew-toy. I tripped in a garden, and the dog was on me. It began licking my face and then got a ball to throw. The lesson I learned from this, of course, is that there's never any good reason to run. Ever.

So all the people with functioning limbs went onto the field, after getting changed into soccer-suitable attire, and I took a comfortable seat to watch. Or play PSP. Whatever I felt like, really.

Then I found the hidden flaw in my cunning plan. It was still really, really cold. Standing in the sun was OK, but regularly the sun dipped behind the clouds. Well, technically the clouds moved into a position that obscured the sun, but you know what I mean. When that happened, the temperature dropped like the middle of the big storm thing in The Day After Tomorrow.

Yug stands out among the suprisingly skilled collection of participants.

I watched Yug play for a while, and took some photos, which was the point of me sitting it out. I would just like to say in his defense that he didn't looks nearly as clumsy on there as he does in the photos. It just happened what every photo I took makes him look like a bit of a clutz. I'm totally ok with that, but I thought he deserved the consideration of at least pointing it out.

The other thing I should point out is that not everyone there was a journo. Sure there were some, but there were a number of other people who weren't gaming journos. They had been brought in not for their love of gaming, but for their love of soccer. As a consequence, they were actually pretty good.

For all Yug's recent movements toward fitness, he doesn't play soccer every weekend. The group he was put with...did.

One of the slightly less retarded action shots of Yug kicking the ball.

A little bit into it, I went to get a pen out of my bag and realized something. Yug's jacket was there. Sitting next to his bag. It wasn't a warm puffy jacket, but it was better than my thin yet elegant dress shirt. "Ooooh," thought I " a jacket to warm my bones!" So I went over and picked it up. What hit me then was almost beyond description. Yug's jacket smelled like Yug. Concentrated. I don't even mean "a tiny bit of smell from his cologne". It smelled like a mixture of asshole and anger. It's clear that as his body has been detoxing all the toxins have been coming out of his body and straight into his goddamned jacket.

But I was very cold. So I put it on. I'm not proud of it, but like I said, I was cold. Cold and desperate.

After a while of watching Yug get walloped by better players (which is as much fun as it sounds) and taking photos to ensure his humiliation was both lasting and public, we had to go back inside. We had some interviews lined up.

First up we managed to grab Craig Foster when SBS had finished talking to him. I didn't mention this before (because I'm stupid) but if you don't know the name, Craig is the official "voice of Soccer" in Australia, commentating all A-League and� well� soccer of any kind in Australia. He was very entertaining to speak to.

Craig's been around in the soccer industry for a long time, and was a player before he was a commentator. He spoke to us at some length about his love of games and gaming. Apparently a lot of soccer players are gamers, often dragging Xbox or PS2 consoles to hotel room TVs for group gaming sessions, or these days playing PSP tournaments through the walls. With only a few hours a day of actual "work" to do, a lot of the boys find ways to entertain themselves. In fact, there was a player that blamed his own poor on-field performance on his excessive playtime.

Craig, as I said, is an avid gamer. He's a big fan of FPS games, and mentioned that he's been an enthusiast and obsessive player of BLACK recently, having discovered it for the Xbox. He gets very heavily into games when he starts playing them, so I did ask with concern if he'd played any MMO-RPG games before. Thankfully he hasn't played any, so Australia will continue to have a football commentator for now.

Craig Foster has a game of FIFA against Archie Thompson, with the freaky tournament player guy helping them.

Craig's enthusiasm for the sport and for gaming was excellent to see. He was saying, in fact, that FIFA as a series is the highest selling series of games in Australia even, which is not a big Soccer loving country (as evidenced by the fact that we don't call it "football" like the real countries do). With Australia's recent-ish successes in soccer leagues, the sport is growing quickly in popularity. Craig also did make the point that while it's never really been a big professional sport here it's always been hugely popular as an amateur sport, and there's a lot of love for it here. As soon as he said that I was reminded of any number of fields and paddocks where I grew up and around the area, and a vast majority of them are actually soccer fields, complete with net, etc. There would be more teen and pre-teens playing soccer than any other sport except masturbation, and that's in a country where soccer "isn't that big".

Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the highlights of chatting with Craig was that they brought us beer and these awesome crepe things. They were basically filled with� duck. Which is a very odd thing to put in a pancake, I think, but was nevertheless quite tasty. I've never been much of a duck fan, but this was really very good.

After a great conversation with Craig we wandered off and talked for a little bit with Cameron Jenkins, the PR Manager at EA. We've spoken to Cameron on the phone a little bit, so it was nice to be able to put a face to the name. I'd like to thank Cameron and also Jamie McKinlay for inviting us down to see the game, though I'd like them to make it a bit warmer next time, thanks.

Talking to Cameron was good, and filled in a little time before we got a chance to leap on Andrew Wilson, FIFA 08's producer. Andrew was running on pure caffeine, having flown in from Canada the day before and not slept. Nevertheless he was surprisingly focused and intelligent. In his position I would have been randomly yelling out "THE ANTS" and twitching, but he kept it together and was entertaining and charismatic.

Andrew is actually a Gold Coast boy, which makes him not only an ex-pat Aussie, but a genuine Queenslander, the greatest of all Aussies. Andrew is the producer of FIFA, and also one of its most passionate evangelists. He's been involved in production of FIFA games since FIFA07, which is when the series really started to get exciting, in my opinion. He spoke about the new things they've added in the game, which Yug will talk about more in the next page, and how they're going about balancing and improving the gameplay.

One of the major new additions is that of something called "Be A Pro", which essentially makes you play a single player role on the field, a set position with a specific job. The view is different to your traditional sports "top down isometric" view, though, being more of a third person with the camera behind. Through online play, and in theory, each player on each team could be a real human, leading to some really impressive battles and tournaments.

At present, though, a training mode is all that's included. The reason it's a training mode is pretty simple. It's just not ready yet. While the technology is there, they're still working on ways to make sure it's consistently fun. Not everyone can be a striker, and some positions are going to be spending a lot of time just standing around waiting. At the moment their internal playing devolves immediately into what he called "8 year old football" where everyone just runs at the ball. Balancing it out to keep everyone where they're supposed to be, etc, is going to take some work.

The FIFA office is a soccer office, and like many games development studios, a diversely populated one. Flags from all over the world are hung up, representing countries or regional teams. Passions run high, especially around World Cup time, and now with a number of Australians in prominent positions in the FIFA development team we're getting a good bit of representation. Australia's success in the World Cup in 2006 was a big help, with members of the dev team from "real" soccer countries no longer being able to look at Andrew et al and say "What would THEY know about football?"

We stopped our conversation with Andrew to watch a set up FIFA08 game between Archie Thompson and Craig Foster. It was good to see a proper game played, rather than just demos, and it really is a surprisingly entertaining game even just to watch. The enthusiasm and enjoyment of the small crowd of people watching really shows how good game is going to be with a couple of mates and some beers.

Archie won handily, largely because he had some help. There was a guy there, a tournament player who had clearly been invited because he was one of the best. This guy literally commandeered a 360 demo console and just sat there for several hours practicing ball handling in practice mode. He had a tournament that night on the game, and wanted to be in tip-top shape. There's something very very wrong with the majority of competitive gamers. I don't mean to be mean, Starks, but what's wrong with you people?

Post game we talked to Cameron again, explaining some of our plans for the complete domination of the Australian Gaming Journalism Scene through a combination of bribery and blackmail. As well as Cameron we were finally introduced to the gorgeous EA girl from earlier, who turned out to be called Renae or Renee, I didn't think to ask her to spell it. Renee is actually a keen soccer player and has just come over to EA recently, following a stint at Vivendi. Renee is also even cuter when you talk to her. Unfortunately my awesome powers of seduction were stifled by the presence of David from PALGN, who resolutely refused to let me weave my web of magical attraction. I gave her my business card but she apparently mistook it for a professional gesture and hasn't called me. Oh well. Sailor Vee, as the French don't say.

Matt, Cameron, Renae, and Yug

Time passed by like Stephen Hawking made it to do and we had to leave the event, at which we'd pretty much just degenerated into chit-chat anyway. There was a car waiting to take us back to the airport (this time it worked out) and we ended up sharing a cab back to the airport with Jason Hill.

Jason Hill is from the moderately popular Screenplay blog, the official gaming blog of unknown independent street press, The Age. Jason's little shtick is exceptionally well written and relevant articles, put together with careful research and genuine talent for journalism. If that sort of pointless gimmick appeals to you then by all means check it out. And also, why are you at our site? He's is pretty much at the peak of gaming journalism in Australia. I stole some of his undies, and have since had them framed.

There's not much to say after that. The plane came and we got on it. It flew to Brisbane. We got off. There wasn't a car waiting for us there, either. Well, there was, but we had to bring our own driver.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE ONTO THE PREVIEW

Discuss in official forum