![]() ![]() Fixtures against juggernauts are nerve-racking and often dispiriting, just as they are in real life. The feeling of helplessness that frequently accompanies competing against superior talent is palpable in FIFA 12. The gamer, in concert with his team of overmatched footballers, frowns dejectedly. The ball is being knocked around midfield as Chicharito starts a diagonal run, and, before the Swansea midfield can close down Tom Cleverley, he chips the ball about five yards beyond the speedy Mexican, who catches up to it and slots a low drive into the corner of the net. In FIFA’s case, Old Trafford is subdued as Swansea are holding the scoreline, admirably, at 1-1 in the 81st minute. There are moments within matches in which, as with every great videogame, the gamer is pulled through the television screen and walks among the little character models darting around the game world. The EA employees who develop the FIFA series intermittently brush up against the edges of reality. ![]() Even if they were, practically no one would know, since military conflict is not a spectator sport broadcast to millions the world over. I’m sure the developers of Black Ops labored to ensure that the correct bullet-y whizzes and pangs rattle through a gamer’s television speakers as they work their way through a corridor, but the faces and tendencies of one’s fellow soldiers are not the faces and tendencies of Cold War Era special ops agents. Even games allegedly based on actual events (say, Call of Duty: Black Ops) use fact as a spool around which they weave fictions. In no other game genre do developers toil to create what already exists. The goal of sports videogames is literally unachievable: they seek to replicate reality. ![]() This type of cartography is the hobby of self-flagellators.ĭesigning a sports title might not be a fool’s errand, but it’s impossible to do perfectly. As soon as one has ostensibly sketched out every tunnel, eight more have been constructed. Trying to recreate soccer-not something very similar to soccer, but the game itself-is like attempting to photorealistically map an ever-expanding mole colony. Or weather effects, or referee tendencies, or crowd chants, or any of the other features FIFA has added over the years. Minutiae is sometimes just the yellow hue beneath the rim of a fingernail, but it’s also something with which one becomes concerned when one discovers that realism isn’t composed solely of ball physics and player models. The game designers at EA Canada, like ambitious cartographers, want to recreate professional soccer down to the flecks of mud that fly up on a slide tackle in the rain. These moments are both silly and frustrating-chunks of absurdity spliced into a world that has a Pinocchio-like desire to be real. Or a defender will intercept a pass, scuff the ball some four yards upfield, and right as the ball is settling onto an attacker’s foot, the commentators will praise the fullback’s clearance. This means, when set up for a corner kick, one might hear Tyler mutter “Not a good corner!” before the kick-taker has even struck the ball. Two or three times per match, the AI that selects lines of commentary misreads a play and provides the wrong cue to the recorded voices of Martin Tyler and Alan Smith. It’s not broken so much as temperamental. The glitchy sound design in the most recent installment of FIFA is a nuisance. The above sequence has never happened in an actual soccer match, but it happens too often in EA Sports’s latest approximation of actual soccer, FIFA 12. Cristiano Ronaldo shakes his head in frustration the keeper retrieves the ball, and sets up for a goal kick. ![]() “The goal stands!” exclaims Martin Tyler as the crowd at the Santiago Bernabéu rains exaltations of joy over the pitch. ![]()
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