Game review: Fifa 10 football - Sony PSP

The Fifa footy series from EA Sports reminds me of Ryan Giggs – it just keeps going, and gets better with every season.

I’ve played many of the annually upgraded versions of it over the past 16 years and consider it to be the most reliable and realistic football sim on the market.

In recent years I’ve concentrated on playing footy in portable form and found Fifa to be the number one conversion of the beautiful game on the PSP.

There are pretenders to its throne, most notably Pro Evolution Soccer, but the Fifa game is always the first name on my team sheet each year.

As with previous seasons the 2010 edition features thousands of true-to-life teams and players, including clubs from all the major leagues around the world as well as international teams.

Though it does contain an increasing number of management elements, the core gameplay remains focused on providing a fully-fledged, immersive match experience.

It’s 11 v 11 action in authentic looking stadiums, with your choice of friendly, league or cup match-ups against computer or human opponents.

Every kick of the ball and every tackle are down to you. Victory or defeat rests on your finger skills and tactical nous.

The vast majority of games-playing footy fans will already be familiar with the high-quality graphics and TV-style presentation in EA Fifa.

With its various camera angles and broadcast commentary (provided by Clive Tyldesley and Andy Gray) the game looks and sounds like the real deal. Where handheld versions of multi-platform games are usually the poor relation of the family, the PSP version of Fifa 10 holds up pretty well against its console counterparts.

By PSP standards the game’s visuals and audio are top-notch, serving up a very believable game of footy.

This year there have as usual been numerous enhancements to the player animations and behaviour. For example, player collisions are slightly more robust and goalkeepers are a bit more intelligent. None of the improvements are huge individually but they all combine to help create an even more refined experience.

Even being a veteran of the Fifa series, I must admit to still having the occasional jaw-dropping moment when I can’t believe how smooth the game runs or how good a goal looks in replay.

Controls in the game are as slick and intuitive as in previous years. Very little has changed in the easy-to-grasp button pushes and combos required to perform the various actions.

While controlling the players is virtually unchanged, it does feel like the players themselves are a little more responsive, with slightly more fluid movement, than before.

Off the pitch, Fifa 10 doesn’t take any huge strides forward but the latest version continues the year-on-year expansion of the game.

Most things in the game will be immediately recognisable to anyone who has played any of the other recent versions.

New features this time include pre-match scouting reports and more detailed tactics relating to teams’ playing style.

The ‘be a pro’ mode is back, giving you the chance to control the destiny of just one player through his career, minus the glamour model girlfriends, sportscars and unseemly nightclub incidents. The mode has been expanded this time to include international football, so you can go to the 2010 World Cup.

A new season mode lets you play an entire domestic and European year as your favourite club. The more in-depth manager mode has been retained, allowing you to work through a 15-season career of playing matches and managing club affairs.

While they do add substance, the managements aspects of the game are still lacking compared to say, Football Manager. Fifa 10 is good but it’s not so good as to provide the dream ticket of full-on management game mixed with first-class action. Fifa remains first and foremost a match simulation.

Overall, Fifa 10 isn’t a good game. It’s a great game. Easily the best football game I’ve played on the PSP so far.

Ordinarily a great game would earn a recommendation as a must-have purchase. However, in Fifa 10’s case it’s a little more complicated.

The thing is, it’s an EA Sports game. This means you don’t get an all-new game for your money. Instead what you get is a slightly freshened up version of last year’s game.

You’re paying for updated team and player line-ups, as well as a few extra bells and whistles.

There is nothing wrong with this of course, because if you’re into football then you’re going to want to play the latest and greatest football game.

A lot changes in football over 12 months and it’s only natural to want to play as your favourite team in their new kit with their new players. It’s the same as fans clamouring to own their teams’ new strips, even though not much changes from one season to the next.

This said, the vast majority of PSP-owning football fans will already own at least once version of EA Fifa.

Therefore, purchasing Fifa 10, as with any EA Sports title, involves a judgement call on whether it’s worth paying for the annual roster of small additions and gameplay tweaks.

Some people may say EA exploits a captive audience by making minimal changes to its sports titles. That may be true to a certain extent some years with some games but not with Fifa 10.

The series has evolved just about enough for 2010 to make it worthwhile trading in your previous versions and picking up the latest edition.

Whatever your thoughts on EA’s yearly updates, there is no denying Fifa 10 is a top-class game.

Football is of course a game of two halves, and the 2010 version of Pro Evolution Soccer is yet to take to the field.

However, unless Konami has come up with something incredible for PES 10 it looks likely EA Fifa will be topping the league table for another season, at least in the handheld championship.

Verdict: 9 out of 10 – At the end of the day, the boys have done good here, they’ve run their socks off and given 110 per cent. You’ll be over the moon if you pick this game up and sick as a parrot if you miss out.