With improvements over the last game, FIFA 12 is perhaps the best football (soccer) games yet.
One of this year's biggest feature is the Player Impact Engine and Injuries. With this feature, the player movement and collisions of players are significantly more realistic than ever. Players now fall down similar to those seen in real matches and got injured over time. But this feature is definitely at its beginning, there are some instances that the physics engine produces some very comical effect, making you laughing out loud at what happened.
Another big change is the Tactical Defending. Defending is now harder than ever, even to FIFA veterans. Now, you can't do the "brute force" defending like you used to, and must carefully plan your defenders positioning and timing. It will take some time to used to, and even frustrates at many moment. This has certainly made the game more realistic and much fairer when playing online.
Other improvements are the career mode and online features. Career mode is more robust now, players will be affected by match performances, contract issues and the number of appearances. If you can't keep players happy, they might leave the club. Transfers of players is more accurate and more realistic now, other clubs come knocking at your club to buy players more often now and transfer wars are more likely to be seen in the game now. The online feature is now more integrated into the game, your progress is tracked even when playing offline matches and there are regular challenges for players who want harder challenges and faster progression.
Support Your Club is added as well. The feature is basically tracking your XP and add them to your favourite club, to keep your club at the top of the league. But I found this feature very bad and one-sided. Due to the calculations, smaller clubs with smaller number of fans is more likely to be at the top. This is because the amount of XP is divided by the number of fans. With bigger number of fans, ie. Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid are more likely end up at the bottom table than the smaller clubs.
Although is the best of the sports games genre, FIFA 12 still have a lot of problems. For example, the AI of teammates are still as numb as ever, they are unable to respond to attacking team directly, often end up two or three players unmarked and have clear chances. The ball directions and physics are still very predictable, the ball will usually end up at one of the players feet easily, as if the passes are ridiculously accurately most of the time.
Still, FIFA 12 is the best football game ever made so far, perhaps even the best sports game. Even with the number of problems, FIFA 12 is a fun game to play. When playing with a number of friends, especially in the same room with many other friends watching together, is even more fun!!! Highly recommended!!!
Pros: Physics are more realistic, player injuries more common, more robust career mode, defending is much fairer and realistic, improved online...
Cons: Physics bugs, teammate AI is still poor, Support Your Club feature is one-sided, the game can be frustrating at times
The best thing: There are so many features, you don't need to go online for games!!!