I admit to being the kind of gamer that usually prefers to spend time with Football Manager rather than directly control players in the FIFA series. However, the 2012 installment of the game, which I first played at E3 2011 and then reviewed during the fall, has really managed to grab my imagination and keep me interested.
After the review process, I have mainly played it in head-to-head multiplayer with either my brother at home or a colleague at work, and we’ve been having a lot of fun, developing rivalries, creating new tactics, trying to spring surprises on each other.
When one of us learned something new (the mechanics of spot kick parrying are surprisingly arcane), the other instantly tried to counter the move in order to preserve a fighting chance in the head-to-head matches and often we’ve seen matches decided by more than 3 goals when one side managed too big of a tactical advantage.
But lately something a little strange has happened: me and all those I play with hit a wall in terms of ability development.
We have our basic plays down, we know how to best exploit our players, we know which moves are the best to use in which situations.
There’s clearly more to learn about
FIFA 12 and its mechanics, as seen by taking just a quick look at the possible moves and the button combination a player can perform, but we seem to be unwilling to learn them because the marginal benefit would be small compared to the required effort.
It might be just another instance of the well-known 80/20 rule, but the series seems to have included quite a bit of content that only appeals to very competitive gamers while putting a kind of brick wall in the face of those who just play for the friendly rivalries FIFA 12 can create.
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