I'm off round to my mates to play it on his Xbox as its not on PS3 until tonight!

Slightly off topic here, but is Saint Viper still around here? The american state department official murdered in Libya yesterday was Sean Smith AKA "Vile Rat" from EvE online who im sure, Saint Viper knows. Sean, singlehandedly shaped the politics within EvE and was without doubt, the most respected player within the game and one of the nicest people you could wish to meet. He leaves a wife and 2 children

Re FIFA 13;

I was unaware that if you've worked some space down the flank and are free of your marker it becomes standard procedure for said defender to nigh-on WARP to your man with the ball, completely negating any space you've made for yourself

Just played my third game, overall scored none conceeded four. Friggin' 'ard!

That sounds like last years Madden where defenders would warp towards the ball, turn around to find the ball despite facing the wrong way so they will have never seen the ball being thrown or being able to jump up to double said players height



EA really seem to struggle with things like that in sports game.

So far having played the demo a bit more I'm getting frustrated with it. Rather than fix the problems that fifa 12 had they seem to have just added more.

Controlling the ball is very difficult and a lot of sloppy touches going about making it hard to keep the ball. when making a break the defenders always seem to catch my strikers ridiculously easily. and it's a lot harder to get a shot on target from distance because everything is just blocked. even if you think you should have more than enough room.

And just like fifa 12, you know when the opposition are going to score. you can see it coming and theres nothing you can do about it. It will no doubt grow on me, and ill still probably get it because I'm just as bad as the rest of the sheep in the world who buy it no matter what.

Just played the 2nd PES demo and it is definitely and improvement on the first. I downloaded the FIFA demo as well but haven't played it yet.

I've been a fan of FIFA since this generation of consoles and my initial impressions of the demo won't change that. I've had a couple of hours on it tonight and my impressions are:

- League positions commentary bit is just silly, no commentator would say that in a CL game, if they did they would wrap it in a more natural statement, like "Juve are struggling at the moment, currently languishing in 14th but that's not a problem City are facing, the Champions are unbeaten and top of the Premier League". Not "The home is currently 14th in their league, the away team is currently 1st in their league".
- The players seem smaller in the default camera angle and you have a better view of the pitch
- The overall feel of the game is good, it's impressive for a demo
- Defending controls are again really good, FIFA has this nailed
- AI attacking movement is significantly better
- The first touch is sensational now. With skilful players you can do some wonderful things, with Robinho I've managed to volley the ball over the head of a defender and score from a lobbed through ball and I made Noccerino catch the ball on his foot and turn 180 degrees with it. Conversely play a poor pass and the player will struggle to control it, or play a lofted pass to a centre back and they'll control it with their shin and end up scrambling to clear it. Really impressive stuff.
- AI in general seems far better, even on medium difficulties the AI will attack and counter attack with pace. It actually tries to score on the lower difficulty levels now, which it's never done on previous games. I always had the problem of not being able to score on the highest difficulty, but then very, very rarely conceding on easier levels. That could be fixed on this evidence.
- The AI makes mistakes, which I don't remember it doing before. It will miss place passes if you put them under pressure, slice crosses and shots and mis control passes. The AI also reacts to what you do. For example if you are defending and follow the player with the ball, on FIFA 12 I would be able to spot who he was going to pass it to and either intercept or tackle the player he passed to as soon as he got the ball. On the FIFA 13 demo, they spot that and keep the ball, turning with it.
- Refereeing seems good. It really does. I've not come across any daft moments with it yet, nor with the impact engine.
- I've not seen any evidence of AI defenders stupidly catching players they weren't in a position to. This happens if you just use sprint, as the player is just running with the ball. It would happen in real life too. Using right stick properly is now crucial. You use it to control the ball and also to knock it ahead of yourself when sprinting. I got Abate clear from a corner and knocked it passed a centre back on the half way line with a flick of right stick and there wasn't an AI player on the screen bar the keeper by the time I reached the goal, rounded the keeper (right stick again) and fell over with an air shot as the ball had run on too far.

Having said all that and despite having my mind made up to buy 13 within an hour or so, it's still FIFA. If you are one of those that moaned about previous games, don't bother with it. It's current gen FIFA tweaked about as far as it can be.

Let's be honest though Saddened, they could release FIFA '96 again and you'd still say it was a stupendously complete game that epitomises fairness and balance. As you say, it's still FIFA, so the same old crap that we moan about every year will still be there, because it's FIFA and its aim is never to change or to develop, but to add gimmick in the most simple of ways to generate an immediate positive reaction. I've not played the demo but I bet I enjoy it, I bet I like quite a bit of it, but I won't buy it on the back of the demo, I'll wait to see how people are after a few weeks with it, as once the dust settles on a new FIFA, it resorts to the same old crap. Mashing closing down buttons, stupendous counter-attacking and the random.

I changed all the controls massively to try and make them as close to the pes controls as possible. But this left me confused as to how to do any skills with the ball at my feet, or any of that first touch stuff that Saddened mentioned. Being able to move with the d-pad was pleasing.

I'm going to give the demo a bit more time, probably at the weekend, because this was the first time in a long time that I actually enjoyed playing a fifa game. Scored a very nice goal too!
But if I can't figure out how to adapt my control settings to incorporate the skills and first touches I probably still won't buy it, because without any of that stuff I'll just get crucified online/at the highest difficulty settings etc.