Patreon button  Steam curated reviews  Discord button  Facebook button  Twitter button 
3DS | PC | PS4 | PS5 | SWITCH | VITA | XB1 | XSX | All

FIFA Soccer 09 (Xbox 360) artwork

FIFA Soccer 09 (Xbox 360) review


"For me, FIFA '09 is a multiplayer game. One so aggressively combative it's become a potential friendship breaker."

It's all too easy to fall into the expected FIFA vs. ISS rant you've probably heard at least once a year since forever, so I'll condense it and pretend that makes me slightly less of a hack. ISS was by far the better of the two football franchises but has stagnated in recent years, allowing FIFA the chance to close the gap.

EA keeps itself busy giving their game the expected annual graphical updates and renewing licenses so their version of Manchester United's veteran Welsh winger is known as Ryan Giggs and not R. Goggs like their rivals. There's a tidy managerial option that allows you be in total control on and off the pitch or just laze it up in the technical area and bark out orders. And there's the welcome return of the interesting career mode where you control none but a single, solitary player, fresh from its power buffing at the hands of the previous title, UEFA Euro 2008. You can even create a player in your likeness, shoehorn him into your chosen club’s reserve team and climb him up through the ranks until he's pulling on his country's shirt and looking very smug.

I appreciate every feature. I really do; they've been included with great detail, forethought and care, giving you, the consumer, just about every option imaginable with a virtual football and a 360 pad. I hardly touch them.

For me, FIFA '09 is a multiplayer game. One so aggressively combative it's become a potential friendship breaker.

Two pads, a crate of beer, the game in question and a wide-screen TV is all you need to create a small localised war zone and very colourful language.

When we first squared off, these one-on-one matches were clumsy. We spent all our time with the sprint trigger depressed, running our squads into the ground needlessly and damning precise control of our players. The delicate shooting method was ignored in favour of overpowered slices and spoons, seeing 95% of every strike sail casually over the goal and often out of the stadium. Every defensive stand-off was rife with vicious and ill-timed sliding tackles, back-dropped to the constant waving of yellow and red cards. Sometimes, the winner of the game wasn't so much who played the better football but who managed to keep the most players on the pitch for the longest.

But we learnt. My opponent developed a patient passing style designed to draw my team out before sliding in balls that would see strikers appear in holes no longer covered by my dishevelled defensive line. I leant the other way; my clumsy charges upfield slowly evolved into a blitzkrieg offence, chaining lightning breakaways with one-touch passes, sharp turns and blistering long-range shots. He countered by stuffing his defence, making me fight through a quagmire of opposing players. I countered by playing a high back line, ready to counterattack should I regain possession and ready to step forward and nullify his attacks with a wave of the offside flag.

We continued to evolve. He’d make pointed attacks down one wing, draw my defence in, then play a floated high pass to the opposite wing where an unguarded midfielder would be waiting. I would draw on the knowledge that he’d like to bring his ‘keeper out early at any sign of danger and develop an almost perfect lob that would loop the ball serenely over his head and into the awaiting net. He learnt how to stand off my encroaching forwards, making it hard for me to pass by without at least being able to hack me down. I learnt how to turn the corresponding free kicks into a series of sharp, short passes until the chance to smash the ball in the direction of the goal presented itself. We both learnt to swear and yell at the computerised referee like complaining to a digital representation loudly and angrily enough would reverse that awful decision he’d just made.

We’re one dodgy penalty decision away from trading blows. Perhaps when we started playing FIFA ‘09 together, it was just an innocent game between two friends. I think in how it’s ended up is perhaps the biggest compliment I can begrudgingly bestow upon EA; in mimicking football so brilliantly, in creating a template of the game so open to interpretation and so easy to mould to your desired tactics and quirks, it’s made us as impassioned about winning as we would when we step out on the grass to actually kick a ball around ourselves. Winning is everything, and if I have to break Robbie Keane’s digital legs to do it, then you can expected to see a hobbling Irishman in the immediate future.



EmP's avatar
Staff review by Gary Hartley (July 06, 2009)

Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.

More Reviews by Gary Hartley [+]
Heavy Rain (PC) artwork
Heavy Rain (PC)

Experimental Interactive Fiction isn’t without its drawbacks – but nothing ventured, nothing rained.
Post Mortem (PC) artwork
Post Mortem (PC)

As a dated adventure game you could suggest that Post Mortem is a dying practice.
Murdered: Soul Suspect (PC) artwork
Murdered: Soul Suspect (PC)

The Thin Boo Line

Feedback

If you enjoyed this FIFA Soccer 09 review, you're encouraged to discuss it with the author and with other members of the site's community. If you don't already have an HonestGamers account, you can sign up for one in a snap. Thank you for reading!

board icon
honestgamer posted July 06, 2009:

Nice. Fix a few grammatical rough spots and this is one of the best of your reviews this year. You painted the perfect picture of playing this game with a friend by providing key details that also highlighted the options the game provides. I'll see if I can find some screenshots to go with it. :-)
board icon
EmP posted July 06, 2009:

You and your grammer fixes... It should be enough that I'm often somewhat coherent.

I'm surprised at the glowing reaction. This was pretty much an old-school write-the-review-in-the-sub-box that I threw up after having the idea of how to structure the review -- which is the opposite to how I usually do things (think up and intro, ramble until I can tie it back up again at the end), so thanks for the comments. I'll pretend it wasn't just a way to nice up the "Stop typoing like a monkey!" for the sake of my ego.
board icon
randxian posted July 06, 2009:

Yeah, like how your little narrative about you and your friend playing the game was entertaining, yet incorporated important aspects in the game.
board icon
EmP posted July 08, 2009:

At least know you know if I ever go missing it's because I've scored another match-winning header in the 92nd minute and my best friend of fifteen years has bludgoened me to death with a shovel.
board icon
Masters posted July 08, 2009:

Nice review, champ.
board icon
overdrive posted July 08, 2009:

That was an interesting review. It's funny, with EA's American football NCAA and Madden series', I've always been completely focused on the franchise mode, building up a blah/average team into a juggernaut and never really cared about the multiplayer stuff. You tackled this game in the exact opposite manner and did so in an engaging way I really liked. It's essentially looking at a sports title, but from the exact opposite way in which I'd do so.

You must be signed into an HonestGamers user account to leave feedback on this review.

User Help | Contact | Ethics | Sponsor Guide | Links

eXTReMe Tracker
© 1998 - 2024 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. FIFA Soccer 09 is a registered trademark of its copyright holder. This site makes no claim to FIFA Soccer 09, its characters, screenshots, artwork, music, or any intellectual property contained within. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors. Staff and freelance reviews are typically written based on time spent with a retail review copy or review key for the game that is provided by its publisher.