2010 FIFA World Cup: South Africa

The Good
* No more cheap chipping
* No more goalie out.
* Less ping-pong passing
* Graphics, sound and overall presentation
* Penalties
* More variety in scoring

The Bad
* Ping-pong passing still exists
* Virtually no one plays a 3 or lower star team online
* Manual player selection (right analogue stick) doesn't seem to always work
* Goalkeeper bugs (pass back bug and other annoying bugs such as letting easy goals in)

The Ugly
* Defensive play is far worse than FIFA 10. In every match you get 1on1 with GK dozens of times. This is not realistic.
* Referee is an absolute joke, 1 out of 3 times you charge your goalie out the ref shows the penalty spot no matter how clean your tackle or catch is. Same applies to sliding tackles from defenders. Worse is when you're show red cards for that as well!

Verdict: Overall, a good game, but not worth the full price imo unless you are a die-hard fan. I would stick with FIFA 10 until FIFA 11 comes out.

There is an obvious improvement in this game from fifa 10, in both gameplay and graphics. The captain your country feature is one of the best new additions. If this game is only a preview of fifa 11, i cant wait to see what EA are going to do next. 10/10

This is a dramatic improvement from previous run of the mill tournament games such as FIFA World Cup 06 and Euro 2008, it only improves slightly on FIFA 10, but it was enough of an improvement to buy it because for me personally, I wasn't a fan of the changes to FIFA 10 from FIFA 09.
The best thing about this game is the options available such as Online FIFA World Cup mode which allows you to play as your favourite nation against others online, resulting in an overall table depending on how successful fans are of each country (at the moment Mexico top it by a long way, somehow). This gives you a sense of pride in playing your home country against another players home country online, making victory all the more sweeter if you're English and beat a German player.

Graphics are generally the same, and play has been slightly changed, only slightly, to make life easier for beginners - which is a good call by EA as they clearly knew that casual gamers would be buying this for the World Cup hype.

Penalties have changed whereas you can hesitate as you run up to the ball, confusing the goalkeeper, but this has generally been made too difficult, it's a lot harder to score a penalty than previous FIFA's.
The only gripe I have is in reference to the non existant Online co-op - unfortunatley it's only 2-player vs. - it would have been SO much better if a 4-player co-op etc could have been incorporated, whereas 2 mates online could play England, and 2 other mates online could play Germany - for example.

Overall though, quality game, it'll keep you going until FIFA 11, sure the price could of been a tenner of at least, but the game in it's own right is packed full of options for it not to run stale.

Good follow on from where fifa 10 left off, some nice opening scenes, great football licence- just missing out on having the official world cup song on it which would have made the menu screens better to surf through. Overall a good fill in slot before fifa 11 is released. Plus you can make England a much better team than they really are!

Well, I'm new to the Xbox, but something I'm not new to... Football games. There is one weird sound I can use to describe football games...

Meh..

But that isn't the case this time, this is the one truly absorbing Football game out there, the one that makes you cheer when you score, and moan when you conceed.

Graphics: 91%

Gameplay: 90%

Lifespan: 80%

It's a good game, honestly, just try it and love it...