FIFA 09 Official Patch Out Now
OK lads it seems that the official patch has been released into the wild this evening. When I turned my game today I received an update and looking around the official forums it seems many other 360 users have also. PS3 users are still waiting it seems but with the PSN usually slower to update I'm sure it will be along soon. Let us know if you are pleased with the update or if any more problems surface themselves.
EA celebrates as FIFA 09 smashes records
Title hits one million UK sales after enjoying most successful opening week ever for a football game...
EA is celebrating one of the most successful months in its history – after FIFA 09 hit one million UK sales in record time, and over 60,000 people attended the publisher's landmark Be The One consumer event in London.
The title hit a million after just five weeks on the UK market according to EA, beating the franchise's previous record by a full month.
The achievement means that the FIFA franchise has now sold 10 million units in the UK over the past five years.
The news comes after the game enjoyed the biggest-selling debut week ever for a football title. At last count, the game had reached 1.15 million unit sales in just six weeks. It took FIFA 08 11 weeks to achieve the same feat.
FIFA 09 has also achieved the highest Metacritic average rating the series has ever seen – levelling out at 88 per cent on 360 and PS3.
"We are delighted with the success of FIFA 09," said Dan Holman, marketing manager for EA Sports. "We have continued to listen to gamers and football fans and the result has been the fastest-selling FIFA game in franchise history."
There's one thing that's more important than anything else when it comes to playing games online: There has to be someone else to play against. So the news that more than a million Brits have picked up FIFA 09 is very good indeed. That's one copy for every 60 people! Blimey.
FIFA 09 Clubs Information [attachmentid=678130]
®GT Review® : 8.7 Stars
The Art of Defence in FIFA 09
Truth be told I love defending more than attacking. I love tackles, ball winning, blocks and interceptions. Now we’ll talk about how do we defend in FIFA 09. This is one area which gamers have complained a lot about this FIFA. The common complaint is that the defence pushes up. Of course it does but not more than it happens in real football. Well, that’s my opinion.
We’ll talk about how I learnt defending in FIFA and if that can work for you. In defence, you have some key areas such as (a) formation setting (b) misuse of defenders © pressure (d) aggression (d) read the passing lanes (f) player select. If you get these right, you’ll see a sea change in your defending.
Formation settings: Before we complain about the defensive AI, we should check if all the settings are in place properly in your custom tactics and in your formation. If written quite a bit about custom tactics, so you know what are the important things there. In a nutshell, set pressure to 20 or something, set aggression to 70, set team width at 30 to 40 and let defender line be cover. In formation settings, you will be able to set the defensive and attacking mentality of each and every player. If you want your defence to stay back, just do this. Pick one centre back. Mark his attacking movement backwards, that is towards our own goal. This means when the ball is in your possession, he would be running behind and not forward.
In workrate, set his attacking work rate to low and defensive work rate to high. Most probably that’s how it would have been set. Now, if you wish, you can even edit the formation to place these defenders closer to the goal keeper. And now the full backs. The settings would depend on how you want to use them. If you just want regular full backs, set the attacking runs to neutral, that is neither forward nor backward, as opposed to centre backs whose attacking runs are set by us now to backwards. Also set the attack word rate to low and defensive work rate to medium. If you want Carlos-like wing backs, set their attacking runs to forward, attacking work rate to medium and also defensive work rate to medium.
Okay now, we’re all set. Having set all our defenders in the right place with right instructions, it’s left to us to use them properly. Now we’ll look at the principles of defending. There are certain very fundamentals that we should know and practice.
Misuse of defenders: This is one of the very common problems. John Terry has the ball and you keep dribbling forward because you’ve got space. So you’ve created a hole in your central defence and if you lose the ball now, you know where your opponent would run. We should learn to use defenders as defenders. Especially when you play multiplayer co-op games, you and your mate would be dragging your defenders everywhere leaving huge spaces in your defence. So, don’t roam around too much with your defenders. They should pass to midfielders and wait for their further involvement in the game, instead of trying dictate the attacks themselves. Try not to step nto the opponent half as any of your defenders. If you think you might touch the half line, pass it on. Maintain the discipline and organisation yourselves, before blaming it on the defensive AI.
Use midfielders: Back in PES days, I remember screaming to my mates (co-op multiplayer), “defend with midfielders”. That’s a great tactic. Don’t disturb your defensive organisation. Chase down the opponents with your midfielders and tackle them, if need be. In worst case, it’s you midfielder who might get sent off and not a defender which is a more specialist position. In other words, use your defenders as the last resort. This would also mean trying to nip the attacks in the bud, instead of preparing for a head-on collision as a defender. Especially when you want to apply pressure, don’t do it with the defenders, because just one quick piece of skill would leave your defender biting the grass and your opponent could be straight on goal. The mantra is “defend with midfielders”.
Pressure: In custom tactics, we have already set the pressure to 20 which means our defensive AI will wait until their zone is attacked by the opponent. In other words, they won’t pressure, they’d wait. Now that means, if you want to pressure, you have to take that effort with the player that you control. Applying pressure is not the same as tackling and ball winning. They could be the results of applying pressure. By the term pressure, what we need to understand is that to make the ball carrier’s life as difficult as possible. You run closer to him, run along side him, jockey him, disturb him or simply make him uncomfortable. Remember, you need to decide whether you need to apply pressure or not. Unfortunately, applying pressure is the default way of defending for most of us. Whenever the opponent has the ball, you keep running towards him, behind him and along side him.
Think for a moment. Do you need to pressurise him now or you can let him do his stuff. Sometimes you can let him do his stuff and snatch the ball when it matters and where it matters. So what you can also try is not to chase the ball carrier instead of that, run your man to a place where you want him to be, may be to the penalty box, because that’s where the attack has to culminate. So basically, you need to judge whether to pressure or not. When you don’t pressure, make an intelligent movement which would turn out to be much more useful than a 50-50 pressure tactic. Know who you’re defending with. If you’re controlling a big, strong defender, you have a great chance of winning the ball. So know who you’re defending as.
Penalty box defending is an art. This is where your common sense and street-smartness will come to the fore. Having gotten so close to the goal, your only target should be to prevent the goal. To prevent the goal, you don’t always have to make a tackle at the risk of conceding a penalty. Primarily, you have to get in the way for the attacker. Don’t give him a good angle to shoot. Position yourself in such a way that even if he shoots, you would be able to block it. Blocking is a very useful method of goal prevention but in order to do that you have to “get in the way”.
Aggression: Saying enough’s enough in footballing terms. Hard tackles are not that hard to pull off. It’s just like shooting. If you get the timing and direction right, you got it. Mostly you perform a hard tackle in two occasions (a) you’re very confident that you’ll nick the ball (b) you’re fed up with your opponents running around or skills moves. If it’s the former, you’re fine. if it’s the latter, control your temper. Just let him run around in circles but remember whatever trick he pulls off in the middle of the park, for him to score he should come towards the penalty box. As I said before, if you want to tackle hard, just for a moment see if that’s a midfielder or a defender or a forward. To the extent possible, avoid hard tackling with a defender. Use the midfielders to do this dirty job.
Read the passing lanes: Study the game and the opponent as you play. Anticipate. Look for the passing lanes. As in, just try to guess what would be his next probable move. Where could he pass? Do I have someone covered there? Can I intercept that pass? Anticipate. Anticipate. Anticipate. That’s the name of the game in defending. It might go wrong sometimes but with experience and practice, you’d mostly get it right. If you have difficulty in reading the passing lane, just watch a AI vs AI match. In exhibition mode, you can set the controller symbol right in the middle (not on either teams) and that would bring up an AI vs AI match. While you’re watching constantly try to guess the next move by AI, where would he pass, would he shoot or not, would he dribble or not . . it would surely help.
Player Select: You can be rather smart in deciding which player to control and when exactly to control him. If in your custom tactics, the pressure is set beyond 70, you can rather watch the AI defender (of your team) take on the attackers and only when it really matters, you can jump in and control that player for the no-nonsense ending. I normally play on manual player select setting. So when I’m a midfielder and the opponent AI is making an attack, I would quickly decide whether to leave the matter with our AI defenders or I should take control there. If decide to let the AI defenders handle the attack, what I would be doing is to drag the midfielder I’m controlling, to the zone of action and finally if required, control the defender. Also, if you can anticipate the opponent’s moves and manoeuvres, if you can see those possible passing lanes, you can do player select accordingly and get that extra time on the ball carrier. As we all know, player select does not happen instantly. So if you choose to do player select at the very last moment, you should be ready for that delay. I’d suggest that you follow and understand the game to anticipate possible attacks.
All this does not mean I’m a defence guru or something. I still let in goals cheaply. One thing is about knowing and other is about executing it. It’s easy to say ‘get the timing right’ but it’s rather difficult to in fact get the timing right. So I’m sharing this with you because I thought I can share with you what I’ve learnt in this game the hard way. Hope it’s useful to you.
