EA spends a lot of money on its premiere sports titles and this one is no exception: FIFA 12 is a great-looking game, but then it has been for some time. This year’s iteration has largely defensive tweaks, as the controls for tackling players relentlessly give way to a containment system that more closely mirrors what happens in real life — as such, timing is quite important, but at the same time it’s harder to simply rush in against inexperienced opponents.
EA’s been making FIFA games for a long time now, so much so that it’s seemingly settled on just tweaking around the edges of them. Commentary is fair, although it’s not great and you’ll quickly burn through the phrases that are associated with your team or players; however, there’s still a decent big-game atmosphere to the whole proceeding.
As with EA’s other games, online play requires a unique passcode — you get one only with a copy of the game and will have to pay for another if needed, which is a tactic to discourage second-hand sales. Given that we tested the game on Xbox 360 where online play is already a paid option, it’s a touch annoying, but then there are few sports games with such an enthusiastic following as FIFA.
FIFA 12 is a fine game, although the diehard long-term fans may find the slightly simplified defence containment controls annoying.
