A Tale of Two Demos: PES 2009 vs. FIFA 09

...or, why can't either of these be a graphical update to Winning Eleven 9?...


Wayne Rooney, FIFA 09 signature athlete, Shrek impersonator. Screenshot from ps3turkiye.org

The two big competitors in the lucrative and heated (at least, outside of the U.S.) battle for soccer video game supremacy both have demos available on Xbox Live and PSN right now. FIFA 09, which has just landed in the PAL territories (though that might be broken street dates), is the much-improved up-and-comer. Pro Evo Soccer 2009 (formerly known in the US by its Japanese name, Winning Eleven), is the shaken champion who is trying to re-gain it's previous-generation form.

Who comes out looking better so far? Let's take a look...

FIFA 09 is continuing the strong recent revitalization of the franchise that started with 08 and the Euro 2008 edition. The gameplay has the same sort of speed that Euro had, has even smoother passing controls, and great graphics, attention to detail, and interface.

Compared to our soccer game reference point - Winning Eleven 9, a game we've poured far too many hours into - FIFA 09 is very close in gameplay fluidity and feeling like real soccer, and not like foosball, which older FIFA games felt like. This one is getting very close to that ideal, and with all the features available - including 10-on-10 Be A Pro online, ala EA Sports' NHL 09 - it will be a solid improvement on 08 and a great game. We may just have to go buy it.



PES 2009 has the exclusive Champions League license and rights, but will it make good use of it?

However, PES 2009 is looking a little questionable right now. Man, this is like watching your favorite athlete get into his late 30s and try to play one more year, trying to drag his bones around the court or field beyond his prime. The demo feels terrible. Its as if they're trying to slow the game down by giving the players unrealistically bad first touches and robotic capabilities on the ball.

It feels vaguely like the PES I know and love, but with all sorts of wrong changes. The passing isn't crisp, players don't respond, and movement off the ball - though still excellent and the level that FIFA aspires to - just doesn't matter too much.

PES 2009 might pull through - I've heard rumor that the final version is much, much better than the demo, and it'd be folly to correlate the demos directly to the final product. However, at this stage, FIFA 09 looks a lot more complete. We've been big PES fans in the past, but the team at Konami just hasn't gotten a hold of the current-gen systems like they did with the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of the series. Their inabilities could allow EA Sports' product to take even more market share.

The Classroom: Football Gaming 101, Offensive Basics

Welcome to the lecture hall. Please bring out notebooks or laptops to take notes with; this will be on the test.

We used to suck at football games - it's true. Other soon-to-be contributors to Dynasty Mode can contribute to this, but I was terrible - Charles Barkley would say we were "turrible." But with learning some things about football, learning how to manage the game a bit better, and getting more seat time with NCAA and Madden, now we're capable - dominating the computer, and competitive online. We might not be a hardcore offensive genius, but we're definitely good, and you can be too.

So we kick off The Classroom, a series of articles on how to be a better sports gamer. This first issue starts with the basics of running a successful offense in football games, namely the NCAA and Madden series.

The biggest piece of advice we can give right now: Play it like real life. Since picking up some tips and thinking about how successful offensive coordinators call games, we're doing much, much better in both NCAA 09 and Madden 09. This applies to both sides of the ball, but we're focusing on offense, so keep some of these keys in mind:

1. If you can, run on first and second down. This is especially true offline in Madden, where the pro-style offenses are better suited to running the ball then the college spread. You can still run out of the spread, but most NCAA 09 playbooks contain just sweeps and speed options.

Sure, if you can connect for 8-12 yard pass plays all day long, keep your offense rolling; however, sooner or later, an online player is going to drop into a dime prevent package and limit your pass game. Lining up to run the ball and give yourself options on second and third downs is much better than skying a home-run ball on first down.

2. Play within yourself and your team. Don't try to go for the deep, home-run ball if you don't have a big play wide receiver or a quarterback with a huge, accurate arm. Same goes for running - don't try and press the issue if your offensive line isn't great, or you're reduced to a second or third-string running back. Know your team's strengths.

Also, don't try and do too much. You don't win or lose the game on the first play; move your offense and get points on the board.

3. Use your passing "safety valves". Most every route has a tight end or running back on a short route; if you can't go to one of your receivers, these guys will often be open. Shorter yards, perhaps, but a completion still moves your team.

4. Don't game the game, game your opponent. Don't try and find a money play; very few plays work over and over again by now in NCAA or Madden, and using them repeatedly makes you overly predictable. However, whether it's the computer or a human, you want to bait and switch and read your opponent.

A classic, tried-and-true example: You're in the middle of a long drive and you've run the ball on first down three or four times. They might not have been successful, but they've all been runs. This is where you dial up one of the run formations and go for the play-action pass. CPU and human opponents both expect the run; this is where you fake 'em out.

Same with passing: If you establish that you're passing out of 3- or 4-wide receiver sets, throw a draw on second down into the mix. Which leads me to the next point:

5. Use your damn head. If you line up to pass with a 4-wide shotgun set, and see the defense lined up in a dime package with just three down linemen and the safeties and linebackers deep, audible to a run. It works the other way, too: Audible to a pass or play-action play out of your running set if you see there are seven or eight men tight on the line of scrimmage.

Take a second to read the defense and learn how to make quick adjustments on the line. In a game yesterday, we converted on a 4th and short; it was a play-action pass out of a goal line set, and the pass went to a tight end who we hot-routed to an out route and who was wide freaking open. It's not luck, it's skill, and you, too, can learn that skill.

Close your books for now, class. We'll return with more - not only more on football game strategies and suggestions, but also on success at soccer, basketball, racing, and more.

Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve? Tips, tricks, suggestions? Get in touch with the editor, send an e-mail. We'd love to hear from you.

Excessive celebration: why the fuck do NCAA and Madden need multiple celebration achievements?

Okay, so we know Madden and NCAA both have new celebrations available. Users can control what they do to celebrate their touchdowns, including going over to celebrate with mascots in NCAA 09.

Great. Cool. Put that on the back of the box, why don't you? But why in the hell are there three achievements in each game for celebrations? Three in NCAA for celebrating with the Texas, Florida and Tennessee mascots, and three in Madden for celebrating in the endzone, dunking on the goal posts, and stealing another team's signature move.

I don't see the need for three freaking achievements in each game for celebrating. Make it just one for celebrating with a mascot in NCAA, and maybe one in Madden - and, don't forget, while NCAA has 49 achievements, Madden has just 25. A serious quotient of gamer-score is doled out for Madden for celebrating.

At least it's easy points, and not *quite* as stupid as the achievement you get in Soul Calibur IV for turning the game on.

Our Virtual Lord and Savior: Tecmo Bo

In both Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl on the NES, Bo Jackson - a freak athlete in real life - was so untouchable, his legend lives on.

It might not have been the first sports game ever - that accolade surely belongs to Pong - and it wasn't the first football game, either. But the one that stands the test of time, resides in our memory banks, and is remembered fondly is Tecmo Bowl.

And one of the biggest reasons for that - and the cheapest player in the entire game - was Bo Jackson, aka "Tecmo Bo."


Bo Jackson as a Raider in that game against Seattle. Photo courtesy thekingdome.com.

Now, "Tecmo Bo" wasn't a fluke. The real-life Bo Jackson is up there in the pantheon of the best athletes of the 20th century, an amazing football and baseball player who would be a hall-of-famer in each sport if he hadn't succumbed to a nasty hip injury just six years into his pro football career. He won the Heisman Trophy his senior year at Auburn, formed an insane backfield with Marcus Allen with the Los Angeles Raiders, and became a scary-good outfielder for the Kansas City Royals.

He was big and fast and strong and insanely good. He ran straight through former star college linebacker Brian Bosworth on Monday Night Football in Seattle. He is the Chuck Norris of pro and college football - with his own hip being the only thing that could stop him.

So naturally, if you're going to make a sports video game, a guy like Jackson has to be an incredible player - but "Tecmo Bo" was insane. That video at the top of the post is one of many on YouTube that highlight the fastest player in the game at his best. Another video shows a player scoring 10 touchdowns in a game with Bo.

Bo Knows, indeed.



It's not just about how good Bo was; it's about how good he was, in those sports games, in the context of all of sports games. Sure, there were other crazy players in Tecmo Bowl - Christian Okoye, Lawrence Taylor, and Jerry Rice all spring to mind - but Bo was the best. There have been many ridiculous athletes in sports games since then - Mike Modano was in NHL 94 or 95, if our memory serves correctly, and so was Ken Griffey Jr. in the Nintendo baseball games when he was still in Seattle.

The quick and simple yet addictive gameplay of Tecmo Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl set the table for games like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz, and Tecmo Super Bowl - being the first game to marry the NFL and NFL Players' Association licenses in the same game - set the standard for most any sports game worth its salt now.

And Tecmo Bo was the one to thank for all of it. You can, indeed, get a Tecmo Bo T-shirt; that's a sign of how important his virtual representation was to sports video game and general sports culture.

Madden takes top three spots in NPD numbers, prints money for EA

Brett Favre, wishing he'd signed for a sales-based royalty instead of a flat fee. Image courtesy Player1.ca.

The August NPD video game sales figures have dropped, and further substantiate our previous post on Madden's beastly first month of sales.

1up has the sales figures, and Madden takes the top three spots. The Xbox 360 version leads the way with an even million units sold, the PlayStation 3 version comes next with 643,000 units, and the PS2 version comes in a very respectable third with over 424,000 copies sold. The Nintendo Wii "All Play" version comes in a solid ninth in the top ten, with almost 116,000 units sold - that's a lot of waggle.

So now we can see how Madden earned $135 million. Yikes.

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In site-specific news, we are working on the first of our regular Friday features. While articles throughout the week may range in size from quick tidbits to full features, we would like to offer you, the viewer, something to rely on: a marquee feature, each and every Friday. The first of these is, appropriately enough, coming tomorrow, and we are working on the necessary research right now.

And by research, we mean playing some sports games, so we will get right back to it here shortly.

Madden moves $135 million in sales in first month

Imagine how well it'd sell if Favre wore the right jersey on the cover. Photo courtesy ESPN.com

Holy smokes. According to a report posted on Gamasutra, EA Sports' Peter Moore is claiming that Madden 09 has sold $135 million in its first month. In the news story, Moore says that part of this is due to the Madden franchise reaching new players, especially through EA Sports' new All-Play feature set and adaptive AI.

Moore says that the Madden franchise is an "industry bellwether," and its strong sales point to downright virility in the video game industry right now. In comparison to some of the top grossing movies of last month, including Tropic Thunder at $83.9 million and Pineapple Express at $79.9, EA Sports' flagship smokes them.

We recently threw down our duckets to acquire Madden but haven't explored its waters too deeply as of yet. Anyone down for some online play?

Setting the ground rules: What makes a good sports game?

Would you play a game if you didn't know the rules? No. Calvinball is, of course, excepted. So why try and jabber on about sports video games without defining what makes a good one?

We've got to set down the criteria, and here's what's proposed: A good sports video game has both good controls and good atmosphere. Both categories encompass a wide range of aspects to a very good video game, and when trying to decide on the criteria to set down in this post, we seriously could not think of a good sports video game that didn't have both in spades.

Control covers not only how players react and handle when playing a game, but how much sense the menu system makes, and how intuitive it is to make changes and have them register. We take slight offense to the byzantine menu system in some of 2K Sports' games, NBA 2K8 and MLB 2K8 from this past year standing out as games that try to pick a fight with a user who just wants to change the damn roster. EA Sports' products have been guilty of this in the past, too, in all fairness, but we cannot remember ever being more frustrated by a player being injured than in our NBA 2K8 franchise - not only was a player out, but it meant we had to wrestle against the retarded computer to craft a lineup.

Good in-game control should be pretty self explanatory - the on-screen players do not fight against the wishes of the user or suffer from any sort of input lag. The move queue doesn't stack up too greatly and give the game a mind of its own. In short, you press X, and the game does what it should. The controls are laid out sensibly, and when you run, it feels like it's on grass, not through a mud pit - unless that's what the conditions call for. If you go up for a slam dunk playing basketball, you feel it; if you connect on a 60-yard touchdown pass, or get score a screaming 25-yard free kick, you just know it before it goes in. Sports works this way in real life; the best sports games replicate this feel.

Atmosphere covers the visuals, audio, and non-tactile feel of the game. Are there cardboard cutouts watching your title match, or is there an actual crowd? Does that crowd sound deader than an NBA arena, or is there passion? Do the menus present the game well and help you reach your goal - whether that's changing lineups, options, or selecting a play? Does the game look good - sharp graphics, realistic animations? Does your game of football look like an NFL Network re-run, or a muddy web cam? Do the players have canned animations, or do they move like they should?

Atmosphere is how much you feel like you're in the game; control is how well you can control it. Combine these two factors, and you've got most superb sports video games:

-EA Sports' NCAA 09? An example of a game that *does* work, in our opinion. College anthems blare from the menus, the play calling and in-game controls work wonderfully, and the animations have improved from years past. This is a good sports game.

-EA Sports' FIFA 08? It certainly looks better, has better audio than it's competitor from Konami, and has decent presentation; however, the game still doesn't animate as well as the Pro Evo Soccer/Winning Eleven series, and we don't get the feeling of a real game of soccer, but instead a virtual game of foosball. Whereas the AI and plays happening in games like Madden or NCAA are getting more and more realistic, FIFA still stays bland. It's not a horrible sports game, but it's not excellent.

Sure, there are other factors - online play, licenses, modes and features available, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. However, if we were to sit down and start a quick match against the CPU or an opponent, the elements that matter are control and atmosphere. It encompasses most everything needed, and anything it doesn't is ancillary.