thisempty said:
...americans in general dont like/understand football...
Quit your nationalistic hate. I'm American, and I've forgotten more about football than you will ever know. FIFA 07 - for the PC - is a robust tweak of the current game engine, period. EA is a corporation, and FIFA - despite the commitments of the hard-core gamers - remains a cash-cow just how it is right now. So the only place that hardcore developers got the space and place to try out a substantively new game engine is in next-gen.
For PC gamers, this is disappointing, but you are right in that it doesn't necessarily mean that FIFA 07, because it is 94% of what FIFA 06 was, is a bad game. Some reviewers grade games on their own merits; some, the ones I prefer, look at games that represent a SERIES and ask the pertinent question: What, exactly, about this game would be compelling enough a difference between the 06 adn 07 versions to warrant a purchase? Most reviewers aren't just writing to the hard-core that inhabit this board; they are writing to a panopoly of consumers, most of which are NOT hard-core.
For them, it probably isn't enough of a difference to DEMAND a purchase. For those folks, just playing as, for example, Manchester United is enough, regardless of the "updated" rosters that, for hard-core players, would be hopelessly outdated, and every year always is so.
Same applies to ball physics; understnad that hard-core contingents of game-buying populations usually comprise no more than 25%. and you're gonna get the game anyway too. But if the game were totally tailored to you, you might, from EA's corporate mindset, alienate the other 75% who can no longer pick and play.
It's about money. That's it; that's all. Period.
This is also true for most reviewers. They cater to their audience, to their brand profile, however fragmented, across the board. That tension is supposed to lead us to revamped games. It doesn't, because reviewers aren't indpendent, and corporate deveopers operate under the notion of planned obsolescence.
It is noone's best interest to make the best possible product they can make; indeed, if you actually knew any folks in corporate branding/marketing, you'd know that the prevailign sentiment is to get you/me/us committed NOT to a product, but to the process of purchasing that product, a distinction with a difference. What corporations TODAY want is for all of us to be caught up in the buying, and then, post-purchase, to be immediately dissatisfed; NOT with the product; the product, again, is irrelevant, but with the fact that we are no longer engaged in the purchasing/anticipation process, and to get, once again, into that mode (the immediate launching of "Wishlists for FIFA 08" threads in November, among the hard-core, is reflective of the subversive and transformative process).
Now, having played soccer (yes, and English word, shortened by Conrinthian amatuer college brits from "association football" to "assoc" to soccer, so don't blame Americans for such language in its origin or in its continued propagation - where is WORLD SOCCER edited?) since the age of 8 (i'm now 36), and having worked at the highest levels of CONCACAF, for FIFA as a delegate and as a technology liaison, and having attended matches at the vast majority of stadia - across divisions, not just Ligue1/Premiership - in Britian and France, I feel comfortable submitting I know JUST a little bit about the sport.
For me, FIFA continues to evolve, yes, but never at the pace most of us would like; while PES, after evolving at a suitable pace, has actually slowed to the EA model. The base from which these game engines started - EA is essentially still employing the game engine for 07 that was launched in FIFA 99, and PES6 is the same game engine as PES3, made worse, actually, imv, and I'm excluding, for ow, the next-gen discussion b/c I have not played those - reflects that evolution, but, just as importantly, the RATE of evolution.
Reviews that don't reflect this, challenge it, and push companies to resist their corproatised aversion to risk fail all of us generally, and the hard corre community specifically.
