I’ve never been much of a soccer fan, but I tried the demo and it was awesome, so I bought it. It’s a great game. It looks and feels like watching an actual game on TV. The movement is really fluid and feels completely open-ended, unlike the pre-made animations that plague Madden.
The learning curve is huge, but not very steep. You can pick it up and play it pretty easily right off the bat, but you won’t be doing much but running around and doing really basic passing and shooting.
Where the game really shines, and becomes much more difficult, is the skilled dribbling. The moves are a combination of holding L2 (on the PS3) and moving the right stick in certain motions, depending on what you want to do. It sounds kind of easy, but it’s actually really tough to master. For one, the way you move the right stick has to be relative to the direction your player is facing, so if he’s running up at a 45-degree angle, you have to make sure your right stick move is adjusted to that angle too - it’s really tough at first. You also have to time it perfectly, both making sure the ball is in a place that allows you to do the move, and timing it according to where defenders are. But when you do pull it off, it definitely makes you feel awesome. Until you realize that it’s just a video game and you’re not even wearing pants in real life and it’s already noon.
Luckily, the game has what they call the “Arena”, which is basically just a big open field for you to mess around and practice on. You can do 1-on-1 (you vs goalie), practice match, where you choose the amount of defenders and attackers (very useful for practicing skill moves), and you can also set up specific scenarios like corners and free kicks.
Anyway, this review is mostly just an excuse to see who else plays this (hopefully on PS3), and what your PSN names are.
