FIFA 09 All-Play

Another year passes; the summer’s nights end and FIFA announce their latest Football season to the world. With this new season comes hordes of rabid fans, each supporting their favourite teams, and all players of the top teams have multi-million pound contract, for kicking a ball around a field. With this new season comes the latest EA football game: FIFA 09 All-Play for the Nintendo Wii. EA are often blasted for their sports games, as each year it seems like they just tack on a few more players, a few more scenarios and very little else.

FIFA 09 All-Play for the Nintendo Wii is an entirely different experience to previous football games. There’s little premise to the title: the player just follows the international football scene and they choose a team to be and play that team to the top of the league table. However, the Wii version makes use of the Wii Controller in an entirely new way. The player navigates the players around the screen with the Nunchuck, and then they have to move the Wii Remote’s cursor around the screen to select the area where they want to the ball to go.

This may sound uninteresting and awkward but it’s really not. There’s an astounding accuracy to this; however, it does depend upon how hard the player waves the Wii Remote around, as a sharp movement can cause the ball to go flying across the screen -- in the direction where the player selected. The option of simply passing to the closest player on the pitch it also still around, and that’s at the tap of the A Button. Something that many previous iterations of the series suffered from badly was poor player and ball control, and this mechanic has been entirely corrected with the Wii Controller. The option of using the Gamecube Controller exists and unfortunately, the poor ball control still exists to a degree. In some respects it’s easier to control the players, but the ball work is simply lacking after playing with the Wii Controllers.

FIFA 09 All-Play has also developed brilliant player physics. Unlike older versions of the game where players were able to run through each other, if two players collide they really do collide and the recoil is clear to see. The movements of the players are fluid, fast and look entirely natural. There’s no random jerking around the screen -- it looks like real humans running around the screen. As there is a new level of motion capture of the players, no two goals look similar, which is a great feeling.

The graphics and player animations are excellent. The players all look as close to human as is possible on the Wii, and everything is incredibly distinct with clear definitions between different textures and players. It's a disappointment that when the camera pans out the graphics do slip a bit and it goes out of focus a little, however. This is likely to be a way of countering the slowdown from the amount of players on the screen – something this game does not suffer from at all.

FIFA 09 All-Play also has a plethora of teams from around the world: most of the major clubs from England, Germany, France and Spain are on there, as well as the smaller clubs from across the globe with a few national teams thrown in for good measure. This gives the player ample choice as to who’s going to make it and who isn’t.

However, there isn’t just serious football being played on FIFA 09 All-Play, there’s also the option of casual party game football, which takes full use of the Mii Characters. It’s like playing Eight Aside with a few friends, but the option of putting some famous footballer in the wrong position and then just kicking balls at them exits. This is fun in itself, but also seeing supersized Mii heads running around the screen in a light-hearted kick-around is also fun. For the more serious gamers there’s a good degree of online support and the online games have minimal lag and play really well.

The Footii match and the Mii options that make the game feel more casual are a great addition for people who don’t enjoy football and the casual audience, but to people who’ve been playing the series for over a decade it will simply be an area that’s ignored.

As with all sports games there’s still the annoying commentary -- for many that adds to the game and for others it’s infuriating. Luckily, the option still exists to turn it off for those of us who fall into the latter category.

Final Verdict - 9/10
Hating football and playing football games isn’t the best thing to do. After being forced to play this genre of games for ten years, FIFA 09 All-Play is easily the best sports game I’ve ever played. With a strong single player mode for serious gamers and a light-hearted and purely fun multiplayer casual side, it makes it an all rounder and a great game to play.