Why FIFA 11 will never be as good as FIFA 98…
Now it’s king of the footballing hill, you might think EA has done everything right in its battle for supremacy against PES. As ever, you would be wrong: EA has still omitted one crucial element that made its old games so special, and as such, FIFA 11 has no hope of matching Road to World Cup 98…
Ah, 1997. New Labour had just arrrived in power and Tony Blair still resembled a doe-eyed politician rather than a war-ravaged emperor, D:Ream had fluked its way into the number one spot with a song so irritating it’s probably banned under the Geneva convention and Bill Clinton celebrated winning his second term in office with a big cigar.
It was also the year when FIFA Road to the World Cup 98 came out, the first of 37 World Cup related games EA put out that year. At the time, FIFA still was nowhere near as good as PES, but it had an ace in the hole: a mode so playable and downright enjoyable that its omission from recent games is an act on par with war crime: the five-a- side indoor mode.
Pictured: billions of hours of fun. Really.
FIFA may be king of the hill at the moment, with its fancy-pants graphics and fun gameplay, but the indoor mode was football streamlined, enabling players to jump in and have a kick about without the need for such fripperies as ‘tactics’, ‘positions’ and ‘defenders’. The lack of throw-ins or corners ensured the game was always played at a speed nudging ‘amphetamines’, and the small pitch size decreed that goals would be plentiful and that the rather superfluous skills of the main game needed to be used to create space and beat a man, creating a game full of incident, excitement and variety.
We have no idea why Konami or EA hasn’t incorporated and expanded this mode into its latest line of games, but we do know it’s a crying shame, and that whoever is responsible for this decision should have to spend the next thirty years playing nothing but Ryan Giggs World Class Soccer. That’s how strongly we feel about it. Developers, you know what to do: don’t fob us off with some condescending, plebian, ‘yoof’ street ‘soccer’ games, full of nonsense about footballers arranging to play a match in a car park after the actual game, because we all know that footballers only go to car parks for one reason, and that reason is to do with a different game altogether.
Give us the mechanics that serve your main games so well and transpose them into an indoor setting, and we guarantee that your next game will get a ten (this is not a guarantee). Throw in a Masters mode and we’ll be even more grateful, and if you allow users to create their own dream team of players then we’ll love you forever. You know what to do.
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I totally agree. Ever since the start of Skysports’ Masters Football I’ve wanted it to appear in PES or FIFA. Can you imagine being able to play with all the old greats and you could even have it linked in with Manager Mode, so that as players retire in that, they move into the Masters mode.
Or as you say, have a dream team version…….come on EA (or Konami)
You are 100% right – in-door football rocks!
Oh, and on the screen – shadows rule:D
Like it! Funny stuff AND FIFA 98 was great fun. Someone bring back indoor 5-a-side arenas !
You’ve got Classics on Pro Evo and can sign them in Master League, just use your imagination and you can have years of fun.
I disagree, the tactical, positioning and defensive part of Fifa isn’t exactly complex anyway and there’s always lower difficulty settings if someone wants an easy match.
An indoor mode would be great though but you can’t compare a game over a decade old to the advancements that have been made since. It’s on a completely different level now.