Buggy, unfinished and still flawed. Great multiplayer at the expensive of single player fun and def not worth £40.
I can't believe they charge £40 for this game considering what they've added which is essentially an update to fifa 08 albeit a fairly good one.
The new menu options are good and the 'Be a Pro' is wicked but clearly unfinished. You can play for your international team but only friendles??? What's the point? It would be amazing if you could play a world cup with your player.... perhaps EA have realised that and decided to 'withhold' that option for the next FIFA. There is also a major bug in that mode when a player in your team gets suspended they don't come back!!! I played with Roma for 2 seasons and by the end of the 2nd season there wasn't a sinlge original player left, all of them being replaced by naff reserve players. How the hell did a bug like that get past beta testing???? Bizzarely we were still unbeaten and won the league even on professional level. And why have they limited your career to 4 seasons???? Why not give us the option to play over a whole life span (15 seasons perhaps) and speed etc deterioates as you get older but other stats like passing improve just like real life. If you do choose a long career they can quite easily change the ratio of how much XP you get per match.
One stupid thing about the 'Be a Pro' mode is that there is no change to how youre rated when you increase the game length. So to obtain a perfect 10 each match I just put the game length to 20 min a half.. loads of time to score a hatrick and tons of assists! One international game against Korea we won 15-1 and I scored 8 goals!!! The thing is even on 5 min halfs, after just 2 seasons with the stats I had, I was probably regarded as the best player in the world (in professional level).
With regards to single and multi gameplay fifa09 has some major issues. Firstly it's far too easy to put strikers through 1 on 1 now and nearly all your goals will come from them. Crossing was the best way in previous fifa but now it's very hard to score from crosses.. except the computer teams that score most from crosses (which is more realistic). The whole balance is just not quite right when it comes to scoring goals. There aren't enough scrambled goals, deflections or from crosses and unless you've got the best strikers/midfielders in the world you can forget quick snap shots or shooting outside the box unless your player is totally 'balanced' when he does. It's even challenging for a div 2 player (championship) to score from the near the penalty spot unless he's running down on goal.
Secondly and even more annoying is to cater for online play they've made almost impossible to score from direct and indirect free kicks and corners. I have yet to score a direct freekick even with some of the best players, I thought it was me so I asked all my mates who kane the crap out of the game online and they said they very rarely score or conceed freekicks. What's the point? Why not make it so you have to press certain buttons and move joystick at a perfect time to get a perfect shot, if you don't get it perfect you scuff the shot or it's not as accurate or not so much bend. I'm not saying put those silly moving bars in like they had in the old FIFA but more like a combination of buttons pressed at the right time and the better a player is at freekicks the less accurate your button presses need to be. It's not perfect but at least you'll score some great goals a season.
Likewise corners are totally boring. To score you just end up crossing in the same place everytime because too far to the back or past penalty spot and it's too far from goal and too close and the keeper always gets it. You just never get those 2nd chances like you do in real footy were the defender doesn't clear properly, it falls to the man lerking on the 6yrd box who prods it in through a mass of legs or drops to the man on the outside of the box, he shoots it gets deflected and comes off the donkey defenders knee caps who was up there to head it initially (you know the sort...john terry ahhemm) and flies through the man on the lines legs. If you've ever been to a match or played footy those goals are probably more exciting than scoring the perfect 30 yarders because you get the 'he's going to score.. no he's not... yes.. no...get in!!!!' kind of thing going on. Next time you watch footy game you will see all the players celebrate alot more when it's a scrambled goal rather than a long range shot.
One thing I've also noticed but I'm not sure it's me is the ridiculous amount of times the ball will hit the bar and post when heading or shooting! I'm talking on average 3-4 times per 10 min game and even more annoying is that it always seems to happen when the goals would have been awesome like volleys or over head kicks.
Okay so I've banged on enough on what's wrong with the game so what's right?
Passing and tackling are just right and theirs a lovely balance to the gamplay in terms of 'easy to play difficult to master'. You do have to be more skillful than PES to win matches against friends. PES you can be a complete noob and still draw 0-0 with a veteran gamer where as Fifa09 if you're a noob you're going to get your ass kicked. The computer AI is excellent (although still a litltle buggy) and not as repetiive as PES, they defend differently and seem to make decisions rather than follow a set precedure to defend or attack. A wierd bug was once a winger was running down the wing and turned back towards his goal to shield the ball and just kept running all the way back from near my box to his own by-line before booting it out for a throw.
The keepers are good and the tricks you can do are wicked, the interface is excellent (PES is just awful and always has been) and online is superb (mostly because its xbox360) although you get some absolute t***ers on there hurling verbal and threatening abuse if you win, occasionally threatening to stab you or even actually CRYING because you beat them begging you to quit so the don't lose there 48th ranking in the world.. no I'm not joking it actually happened. You get alot of people on there with serious mental issues.
To sum it up.. it's good fun and these games will always be but it's also very fustrating, with better scoring options it could have been better and each update is a complete rip off.