Pros and Cons of EA Sports FIFA-08

EA is one of the most popular gaming companies in the world. They make all sorts of games for PC, MAC and other Game Consoles. Their PC version of FIFA has been famous since 1998. It gained huge popularity when FIFA-06 got released. But in recent times EA has lost the credibility and dominance which once they enjoyed in the gaming market.

Konami抯 version of PC Soccer named Pro Evolution Soccer [PES] has gained immense popularity among soccer fans all over the world. They have a much better game play and graphics compared to EA. The competition between Electronic Arts and Konami reached it抯 peak when FIFA-07 and PES-05 got released. PES easily overtook FIFA as the number one game for PC soccer. FIFA-07 was a total failure in their own fans as there were no new features.

But FIFA-08 was launched with some great new and innovative features which changed the game play totally and kindled the interest of its fans to use play. The newly improved game play features have 3 options namely classic, pro and zonal. Other notable new feature is the single man development in the career or manager mode which remained the same for few years now.

The Classic option is same as the previous version you control the full team. You get control over the player who has the ball or who is near the ball. The automatic passing option is the only new feature in the classic game play option. There are no much differences in it.

The Pro option game play is my favorite in the newly released game. Here you can control and play a single man game. You have control over only one player whom you select at the start of the match. All other players in your team are CPU controlled. Consider you play for Manchester United and choose C.Ronaldo as your player. Then you control and play with only C.Ronaldo. You have no control over other Manchester united players like Rooney, Tevez or Giggs, etc.

The Zonal version is an interesting new feature where you can control only a part of the field. Here too you cannot control all your team players as like the classic version. Here you can control only a selected area like Defence, Mid-field or Forward. If you choose forward then you can control and play with only Rooney and Tevez. Mid-filed players and defenders are automatically played the CPU.

Manager Mode is a much improved one with single player career option, In this way you groom a single player all throughout a season or even for your full term contract of 15 years or so. In this way we get more addicted towards a player who we already love. The real challenge is to select a ordinary player and make him into a superstar.

Only problem with FIFA-08 is its strict hardware requirements. The game does not support MX version of GeForce Graphics cards and so it requires more investment. Another problem is the transfer centre in the manager mode. Its extremely difficult to buy good players.