FIFA 12 @ iOS

Our 1st game review, perhaps?

The Game

The FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is an international association and governing body for Football, Soccer, whatever you call it. No stranger to the football fans, that is. The association governs 208 association bodies, that includes some of those who manages the Barclays, Bundesliga and so forth.

Anyway, not everyone who loves football can play the sport, but the least that they could do is to play the game.

Speaking of playing the game, EA  (Electronic Arts Inc) has recently (maybe, not so recent) released the 12th installament of it’s FIFA franchise, namely FIFA 12 on Sept 29th, 2011 for the iOS. So as the name says it all, it’s a game that depicts the entire FIFA Scene, be it to select any team to play in their respective league or just a friendly match between two teams of different leagues, you’ve got it all.

What’s New?

If you are thinking that this is just another boring FIFA installment from EA for the iOS just to fill the 12th slot, well think again.

This new installment comes with some pretty cool features:-

1. Origin Account
   Similar to some new EA-derived games, you’ll now need an Origin account to play the Career Mode. And similar to Apple’s Game Center, this account would store your bragging rights of your game achievements and so forth, competing them with your friends or showing’em off your achievements on your social media network (if you want to). Most importantly, it’s free to sign up.

   

2. Daily Challenge
   Unlike the the previous installment that features only Friendly / Exhibition Match or Career Mode, the new one offers a Daily Challenge, where users will be randomly given a daily challenge scenario, be it a penalty kick, 20 min before-end-game scoring, corner kicks and so forth. Having to successfully win 7 daily challenges would earn you an achievement.

   

3. Manager Mode
   Now you can play and manage your team at the same time, also not forgetting keeping the team up to the directors expectations and ultimatums. You can even search and transfer players at a managed budget. Also, you’ll notice that things are getting more realistic, with players getting fatigue and your management skills comes into play to ensure your team’s performance is not jeopardized.

   

4. Achievements and Trophies
   Unlike the previous installments, now for every unique and excellent action / winning, you’ll be awarded some achievement.
   While winning every league, would win you a trophy. Believe us, there’s a lot to achieve in this one.

   

5. Improved Graphics
   The graphical display and game display has definitely improved from the previous installment. For that you get crispier images and better attributed players too. We notice that that lag we found from the previous games is not available on this one, which possibly means, things have been optimized. Good Job.

However, though, we still notice the some bits that could be improve:-

1. Control/Navigational Pad
   Be it floating or not, it’s not exactly the most user friendly feature. Especially when you are playing the Home team, with the thumb in the way blocking the entire pad (we will be pushing players to the right), it’s rather difficult to navigate the players properly as we can’t see where our thumb is pointing them to and for that some crucial points were loss there. Maybe it’s just us.

   

Otherwise, this is a great game to check out if you are on any iOS Devices.