Corrupted referees, bugs, and forced settings. This is what FIFA Soccer 2011 is all about. A terrible game.
Basically, as it is a soccer game, it has no revolutionary additions. You load the game, choose your favourite team, choose the mode you will play in (instant match, Manager mode, Be a Pro mode, Tournament mode) and you are all set to lead your team to victory. There are a lot of teams to choose from and a lot of leagues to play in. Also, if you own a gamepad, your football experience will skyrocket as it will be a lot easier to perform tricks with your football superstars.
Why did I give this game a 1.0 score if it is so good, you ask? Plenty of reasons. Firstly, it has a huge number of bugs which, for a large corporation such as EA, is totally unacceptable. The first bug I encountered was when creating a player for the Be a Pro mode. Not only did the game not save the player, it also froze after finessing all his attributes. Twice.
Secondly, the most irritating thing about the game is the referee. I am sure EA wanted to create realism but even if corrupted referees are present in real-life football, I do not want to see this feature in the game. Basically, the referee will always take sides with your opponent, no matter what. The opponent may and will slide tackle you, injure your players, even touch the ball with his hands, and the game will proceed as usual. Yet when you even try to touch the opponent player, you will be awarded a yellow card for fouling. And if that is not enough, my player was given a yellow for just shooting at the opponent's goal.
Thirdly, unreal player attributes as seen on the pitch. For example, I have played a match between Manchester United (human controlled) and Oxford. No offense to the fans/players of the latter team, but Manchester should win this game easily, right? Wrong. Oxford players acted like supermen on the field, even though their attributes on paper were not even close to those of ManU. Their sprint was twice as fast as Rooney's, their shots on goal were very powerful and accurate, and their tackles were always successful, no matter what I tried. This all happened on the Semi-pro difficulty level which is the second most easy level, right after Amateur.
Finally, what is also irritating about the game are the settings. We live in the 21st century, right? So how in the world would EA not include resolution settings, for example, in the game? Why does the player have to quit the game every time he/she wants to change his/her resolution?! That is just plain stupid! Not to mention the game takes forever to load so in order to perfect your resolution, it would take about an hour or two of your precious time. Also, why is the Autosave feature obligatory? Why is the player forced to have Autosave on? Some players have argued that it prevents cheating in Manager mode. However, since Manager mode takes place offline, I really do not see the logic in this kind of thinking since it is no one's business what a player does in offline mode but the player's.
I have played a lot of FIFA games in my life but this one certainly is THE worst in the series. Because of the bugs, clearly corrupted referees and illogical features, this game would deserve a score of 0.0 if it were possible. And since GameSpot's lowest score to choose from is 1.0, I was given no choice but to accept it, even though in my personal opinion, even a 1.0 score is far too much for such an appalling game.