![]() The Impact Engine has been tidied up slightly - not so much to completely eliminate the physical comedy, but enough that it isn't a constant companion - although Tactical Defending seems much the same. The basics of last year's overhaul are intact - Tactical Defending still forces you to think about containment and positioning rather than direct pressing, while the Impact Engine means you have to worry about the physical side of the game as well as speed and passing accuracy. When those matches do load, it's clear that FIFA 13 hasn't lost its way when you're playing full-fat football either. There are plenty of Skill Games to master - some more elegant than others - and they're also randomly selected to act as a diversion while you're waiting for proper matches to load. ![]() And again and again until well past midnight. The scenarios come thick and fast, with barely a second to catch your breath, and big points are awarded for successful strikes, while beating players and drawing impressive saves hands down smaller rewards. ![]() Playing against the AI is still a bit torturous, but most of the core modes now have online components you can use instead. There are always two burly defenders chasing you down and a goalkeeper to beat, but sometimes you're racing onto a through ball to chip the goalie, sometimes the ball is fired into you in the box for a bicycle kick, sometimes you're on the halfway line with the keeper retreating into his area, sometimes you're about to receive a header 12 yards out, and so on and so forth, and you can react however you want. My current favourite Skill Game is the Advanced Shooting Skill Challenge, where you get two and a half minutes to score as many goals as possible in a revolving range of scenarios. The new Skill Games mode in FIFA 13 is exactly the sort of bite-size football challenge that makes smartphone treasures like Flick Kick Football so compulsive - except that it's built on one of the best football gameplay engines around, with all the pomp and connectivity you'd expect from a modern sports game. Through my long hours playing it, I often thought that Konami and EA Sports could learn a thing or two from its success and that of games like it. By breaking football down into short bursts of its most exciting and rewarding elements, like long-range shots and Hollywood passes, and tying that into a shallow but addictive management sim, New Star Soccer completely took over my free time. ![]() Weirdly though, this unexpected interloper wasn't PES 2013, although Konami's latest is a fantastic football game. If you had told me at the start of the year that I would spend more time in 2012 playing a football game not made by EA Canada than I did in the grip of its imperious FIFA series, then I guess I would have told you there was more chance of Robin Van Persie signing for Manchester United. ![]()
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