Originally posted by Mel Brennan
I wonder with whom Issac sits? And what has been said?
I suppose he sits with a big sack of money and dirty conscience.
Can anyone over 10-yrs old (or with a 10 yr-old's football sensibility, regardless of age...maybe I'm being harsh on ten year olds...lol) really submit that EA deserves anyone's benefit of the doubt?
I'm 21. As for my familiarity with football and footie sims, I'm consciously watching football since WC 94 and playing all kind of sims since I first got some NES game console. Well, those wasn't actually sims, of course.
First real sim I played was also the first fifa game, fifa94 on megadrive. I played only few games at my frinends house and all I remember is that it was builded on the same ''engine'' and had similar though worst ''graphic'' to fifa95, fifa95 being slight better game overall.
And actually fifa95 is still one of my top footie sims through out the time. Of course, valuating it in the context of it's own time. It looked great, the graphics were really lifelike, sound effects and crowd chants were great really adding that ''big football feel'' and the gameplay was extremely immersive at that time. Ok, the goals may've been very scripted and 90% of them were long range blasts or headers, but passing was good.
And then EA started it's tradition to make crappy sequels. fifa96/97 for megadrive were absolutely unplayable and it looked bad too. First of they made the stadium and pitch look like an oil painting with dim colours and unnaturally looking everything. The goal loked more of a spider net and the goal mouth itself was unproportionally huge compered to players. The grass was coloured in some dirty greenish colur and could of been used to grow potatoes in there. Player models and their animations were bad, a lot worse than in fifa94/95. The gameplay was annoying. You couldn't play a calm passing/buildup play, but had to get rid of the ball as soon as you could, because unlike fifa95 you couldn't dribble past anyone. Also they added this idiotic ''rainbow'' trick which didn't help and looked weird. Oh yeah, they decided that to make game more realistic, ball should change it size when closer to camera or whatever, so when you kicked the ball up in the skies it swelled like a baloon. Now that's a feature.
The only good things that were added are training mode and for the first time, real player names.
Then I got PS1. The first game was fifa again, fifa97. I didn't play it much and it's hard to judge now coz I was too crazy about the new console at the time and liked everything on it. It was a huge jump from the megadrive.
OK, Fifa 98: The road to world cup. That was and still is an awesome game. It has everything top notch. The graphics were so smooth, player animations very realistic, not robust anymore. Appearence of the players was superb. You could always tell who's who, just like in Konami games. The sound was better than ever srtarting from excelent soundtrack ending with to realistic crowd chants and sound effects and one of the best comentaries any sports sim ever had. Also the tournament/league system was the best I remember from any fifa games including very handi interface, all the licences and great atmosphere. What else? There were absolutely all the national teams, I mean ALL. There was snow and it I usually weared mittens to keep it warm and cousy becauso of realistic look feel of it.
Rain also looked much more real than in many upcomming fifa games. Terrific player creation center.
And most important, the gameplay was best ever for a fifa game. I had quite a freedom on the field, especially in the terms of passing and buildup. Shots and golaies weren't as good, but still better than in sequals. It's funny that EA never understood it and instead of getting it even better by fixing/adding to existing engine just crippled it in the next games only offering us some candy skill tricks.
Fabulous game. Who wants to call me a fifa basher now?
The next, 99/2000/euro2000 and 2001 were pretty much the same crap to me. Graphics, especially the player models were made worse again. Maybe there were more detalization and all, but it never looked like football. You know what comes to my head when I recall the faces and bodies of players in those games? Catholic monks with big bellies and bald middle of the head. For some reason they all looked alike, nothing like in fifa98. Also their stance and the way of running remainded me some sort of a large monkey behavior. Goals were all the same and since fifa99 EA got this habbit to make shots enourmously speedy. Etc., etc. I'm lazy to point out all the sh!t. Let's move on.
I don't remember exactly when I first played a Konami game, but and which it was, but it had words Iss Pro soccer in it. I played 3 or 4 Konami games on PS1, but I haven't kept them. All I can say Is that I was addicted to those so much, I sometimes even busted school and played it through out the whole nigts which never happened with fifa or any other games at all. Well no, the same was with Fallout1/2
. I still kicked some fifa sometimes, but without any real enthusiasm. At that time I didn't philosophize why.
Oh, a little intermission before we get to PC section.
There were quite a lot of footie sims on PS1 and I myself had somewhere about 30 or more CD of them. I don't remember most of them coz they were mostly very bad. However two of them I remember well.
Champions League (there were 2 sequels I guess). It actually had the best graphics and for my mind, the bet presentation on PS1 footie game ever. Yes, not fifa. Comentaries were also excelent, I suppose, better than Motson/McCoyst. One of the comemntators was G.Lineker.
Viva Football. Crappy graphics and quite frustrating gameplay (some good implementations though, like ability to pass anywhere on the field and non scripted shooting/long balls). I liked it because of the excelent base idea. You could choose one of the nationals and play out through all the world cups since the very first in 34'. In every next WC or qualifyers you got to play the next generation of real footballers of those days with real names and correct stats. Good way to learn more about footbal history. High education value
.
Since I never had any other console after PS1, I had to stick with PC and the first footie I played on it was fifa2002. Well, not the worse of them all. Not so scripted anymore. I've scored some quite unconventional goals in it. Also the pace of the game was right, not too fast or slow if you played on games speed set to ''slow''. Allaround decent, but you have to consider it was the ONLY footie sim on PC at the time.
WC2002. Now this was a nice game. The engine was still the same. Like terribly tweaked fifa99 engine and horribly improved graphics
. For the first time players faces were really photorealistic and the whole game had a great world cup atmosphere. Gameplay was quite entertaining and the ball player phisyques were the excelent. Pace of the game was realistic enough and the variations of goalscoring slighttly diversified. Only thing that irritated me a little was it's difficulty. CPU tackles were deadly and even weak times scored a lot of goals against me, I just couldn't stop them and I felt CPU is cheating a lot, but maybe it's only me.
At first couple of moments I thought that fifa 2003 is a huge improvement, because I really like the new engine. It felt better and looked more like a real football broadcast, but after about a 2 weeks of playing it was already tedious and repetitive. Well, you know all that, no need to list all the flaws. I played it quite rarely, only when there was a strong urge to play something footballish.
Fifa2004/euro2004. Who cares about them when Pes3 has been released aproximately at the same time. It invaded the hearts of PC gamers and made fifa look sorry as it was. Nuff said.
So, that's my brief biography of virtual footballing.
