Review by: William Abner

FIFA 12 reminds me a lot of the first year EA’s NHL series tried its hand at the Skill Stick System. That first attempt at a new physics engine and control scheme was a huge hit with fans and yet left those looking for a simulation of NHL hockey on the outside looking in. It wasn’t until the NHL team refined its game that it started to truly shine. FIFA 12’s sim aspects are better than NHL ‘08, but at the same time you can also see some growing pains as FIFA tries to reinvent itself.

The Player Impact Engine is a radical change from previous games; all you need to do is fire up FIFA 11 and play around with it a bit then jump immediately to FIFA 12 to see the changes, which are at times jarring, as EA plugs in its new scheme. Everything from the flight of the ball, the way it reacts to players, grass, and posts, the tugging and pulling on jerseys as players make a run, the collision detection when players run into each other – it all feels different and more lifelike.

Everything rolls right along until you see the AI make a tackle and freeze inside another player or see an AI defender inexplicably slowly dribble towards his own goal. These aren’t every game occurrences but they happen often enough to cause concern. Still, it comes off as an almost expected growing pain as the game truly does play differently than any FIFA game before it.

The new Tactical Defending mechanic, which is a new control scheme to help you play more effective defense, will take getting used to as you now hold the A button on the 360 to “contain” the player with the ball. The player will not manually tackle using this button but he simply mirrors him. It’s really sort of a mini-cheat – much like a basketball game will allow you to guard a crafty point guard, this allows you to mark the man with the ball by holding down a button. The B button is now a manual tackle, another subtle change from last year. You can do a “running jockey” move, which is a way to contain a player while sprinting, by holding the left AND right trigger. You now hold the RB to call for teammate assistance. It’s getting to the point where the advanced controls are getting a bit much. There is a lot of finger ninja stuff going in in FIFA 12 and to get the most out of it you are going to have to practice – a lot.

Precision Dribbling also makes an appearance, which is another neat way this new engine is put to good use. These small, quick touch dribbles allow for more precision when attacking and allows you to pull off some basic, yet highly effective moves to free yourself to get off a shot.

Unfortunately, some old issues remain. The CPU still struggles to mount a realistic offense; it’s not that it can’t score – it most certainly can but it almost always feels pre-determined. You can tell when the CPU has decided it’s time to do something and you feel absolutely helpless to stop it. EA will deny any sort of shady programming exists in the game but FIFA players have been talking about this for years. Some players going so far as to intentionally foul a CPU player just to break up the flow. That‘s front and center in FIFA 12.