For many years, EA and Konami have fought a battle for video game football supremacy with their respective FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer series. EA used to win the battle at retail, but Konami was always the critical darling. Things have changed in recent times, however, with Konami’s development team struggling to take advantage of the power of new console hardware and adding little in the way of new features, while EA’s brand of football has improved dramatically. FIFA 09 continues this recent trend – and may well be the best football game EA has made to date.

FIFA 08 and UEFA Euro 2008 each made changes to the style of EA’s football that made it far more realistic than ever before. What FIFA 09 does is take those changes and refines and builds on them further, making for a more polished game. As a result, some of FIFA 09’s improvements may be a little more subtle than players are used to, but they make a good game of football even better.

Most of FIFA 09’s improvements have been made on the pitch. The pace of a match is now much faster thanks to more dynamic player movement and the more advanced pass system from Euro 2008, which has been tweaked and optimised. Pass timing is now a vital part of the game, and usually results in many of your games focusing on midfield tactics. The players feel like they are more realistically weighted, so their weight and speed needs to be taken into account when planning your strategies and plays. It also eliminates some of that floaty feeling that made FIFA 08 feel a bit off.


One of the main things that separated the PES and FIFA games in the past was the quality of AI, but EA have done a lot to narrow the gap this year. The AI is now much more aggressive and proactive, and never stops trying to strip the ball or intercept your passes. Their use of tactics is admirable, though a little limited; CPU teams tend to rely on the same plays (particularly the offside trap), making them rather predictable after a few matches. There are still a few issues with regards to AI, particularly to do with difficulty balancing. On the higher difficulties, the CPU players seem to get an innate stats boost, and are unburdened by factors like momentum – it seems like a cheap cop out to avoid the effort of developing decent opposition. Other factors such as penalties and offside calls are judged much more harshly, but are never quite consistent. During playtesting, the referees seemed tougher on offside calls on Pro difficulty, but rather lax on them in the Legend difficulty, which just seems weird.

EA has decided to mix the play modes up a bit this year. The challenge mode has been dropped, but the manager mode and lounge play mode are still in, and just as good as ever. The interactive leagues are an expansion of the Battle of the Nations mode from Euro 2008, but now cater for club football. You pick the club of your choice and play against other football fans online, and your club is ranked based on the aggregate of your performances along with those of everyone else who plays as that club online. There’s also all of the fun of custom online leagues as well.

The “Be a Pro” mode, which debuted in FIFA 08, has been expanded considerably. A new mode, entitled “Be a Pro Seasons”, lets you take control of a player (either existing or created) over the course of four seasons. You’ll focus on building your player’s career through good and consistent performances in league games and international matches. Depending on the position you decide to play, there will be different expectations and performance goals for your player. As a striker, you might be expected to have a certain amount of shots on goal in a match, while a defender would have to complete a certain number of tackles. Good match performance and completion of these goals earn you experience points, which you can use to increase your player’s attributes. If you get sick of controlling just the one player, you can deactivate solo control and take over the whole team while earning experience for your player. Progression can be a little slow at times; you’ll be stuck in the reserves at the start of the mode, and impressing the coaches enough to earn a spot in the first team can take a long time.


Be a Pro’s influence has spread over to the online multiplayer component of the game, where players can partake in matches where each player on the field is represented by a real person with the same rules as the single player mode. That said, the idea is a lot more sound on paper, as players have a tendency to all go after the ball, regardless of their position, which makes it look a bit like an under 8’s match in action. Finding 19 other people to play against is a challenge, and the lag that comes from playing with that many other people without any form of dedicated server is a little too much for my tastes. If you manage to get into the whole real players deal, you can even gather up 10 of your buddies to create a club in the Clubs mode, and go head to head against other teams at regular intervals.

FIFA 09’s other major new features are pitched towards die-hard football fans, and may be lost on someone without a deeper knowledge of the game. The new custom tactics feature allows players to manage and tweak eleven different factors for their team (positioning, passing tendency, etc.) and assign them to the D-Pad for on-the-fly strategy changes. Existing teams have tactics that match pretty closely to their real life strategies, which is pretty cool. On top of that, players can share and rate each others’ custom tactics through the FIFA Locker. The other major new feature EA is touting is the Adidas Live Season, which sends weekly stats updates to your console based on a league of your choice. In other words, if a player is doing well on the pitch in real life, those stats will be reflected in the game – likewise if he’s rubbish. While it sounds handy, it’s not particularly useful, especially given that it costs a couple of bucks to subscribe to the feed for each league – the game comes with one complimentary league subscription, so you’ll at least get to have live data for one competition (until May, anyway).


EA has always prided itself on delivering top notch presentation in its FIFA titles, and the 2009 does not disappoint. Those who played the 2008 game should be relieved to know that the players no longer look like they’re made from plastic – instead we have more realistic looking players that animate with amazing fluidity. Many players even have signature animations for that extra dash of realism. Play by play commentary is once again provided by the Sky Sports team of Martin Tyler and Andy Gray, who do a phenomenal job; it’s just a pity that EA hasn’t put any effort into producing a more dynamic commentary system to prevent overuse of the same lines. Replays and in-game snapshots are now able to be saved and uploaded to EA Sportsworld to share with the world – a handy little feature for those freak goals. ESPN integration is also back to provide a news feed to keep you up to date with the happenings in the real world leagues.

With FIFA 09, EA has provided a deep, satisfying game of football with some serious long term value. On paper, it might not seem like a lot has changed from EA’s most recent football games, but once you start playing, you really begin to see the difference. There are still a few AI issues to work out and the lag during online matches is inexcusable given how heavily EA has advertised the feature, but FIFA 09 should prove to be the perfect companion for this year’s football season.