Another year gone and now it’s time for FIFA 09. Not many changes from last year’s installment of FIFA 08, however we do see better control over the ball and players. Start with the game play, the players are more responsive to you when you tell them to do something, the speed of the game play is much better and faster, you can now do your own celebrations using the controller once you’ve scored a goal.

There is one let down for me which has repeated in FIFA games over the years and I was hoping they would have sorted it for 09 but it turns out they haven’t. The problem is the offside rule! It still doesn’t make sense and is completely messed up. A number of times when I have passed or crossed a ball to a player up field and realizing that I’m offside, I would leave the ball and select a player that was onside at the time the ball was played, however once again the rule on FIFA is it’s offside no matter who touches it or doesn’t even touch it.

Besides the offside rule I cannot see anymore let downs. Online play is the same but can now support up to 20 players so you could be in a 10 v 10 online match. A nice new touch to the game is the ‘Adidas Live Season’ This is a feature where you can pick a league and get live updates from the teams in that league plus individual player stats from each week and it will compare the player from last week’s performance. With this feature enable it will also affect the players on the game. For example if a players performance is 90 and then the following week he has a bad game and goes down to 80 it will be added to the player on the game thus reducing he’s performance. When you purchase the game you will receive a code with it to enable one of the leagues for free, if you want to unlock the other leagues you will have to pay for them.

Overall FIFA 09 is a great game and is definitely worth picking up.

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