Then there’s the ball. It looks like a football, but when you punt it, strange things begin to happen. It’s almost like playing in Zero-G at times. Additionally, because every player essentially feels the same, your capacity for tactics is castrated. The tasty tactical fruit salad of PES is nowhere to be seen. Konami’s masterclass routinely has you leaping out of the chair with joy or indignation, walloping each virtual pass as it were your own foot; FIFA manages to conjure only apathy, because it simply feels like a... videogame. No more, no less.
One aspect that did catch our eye was the new offline Be A Pro mode, devised to allow us to get up to speed with playing in the Libero Grande style before EA kicks off their much-hyped “eleven-vs-eleven” online experiment next year. It’s initially arse and it’ll admittedly be tricky convincing some poor sap to go in nets, but persevere and there’s a glint of something potentially exciting here. After ten minutes of swearing, you’ll finally stop charging around like a head-less chicken and it’s a magnificent feeling when you’ve chased back 30 yards to put in a vital intercepting tackle. No, really - trust us, it is.
