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FIFA 09: You Only Sing When You're Trading
FIFA 09: You Only Sing When You're Trading
Posted by Dekko on Mar 30th 2009 22:53
EA are a clever bunch, their devious little minds know exactly how to squeeze the pennies out of our collective coffers and the latest effort to this effect is the new add-on for FIFA 09, a game mode known simply as... FIFA: Ultimate Team.
Ultimate delves in to our deepest football childhood memories, namely those long summers collecting stickers, swapping two John Barnes for a Paul Merson, hoping to get the England 'silver' to complete a set, those hours spent pouring over a Panini sticker album and getting that warm, fuzzy feeling when you gaze lovingly at a near complete section.
I remember my World Cup Italia 90 Panini sticker album, I remember all of my friends at school swapping and trading stickers, hoardig doubles, the excitment of a good trade, I even remember the yellow Panini logo which had on it something that looked like a squashed and stretched knight.
Ultimate hopes to tap in to these old sticky backed ways with a game mode that is such a simple idea you wonder why it hasn't been done before; an online sticker book no less with stickers available by two means:
- coins earned in game through dilligence & hard work and/or
- paying with Microsoft Points (i.e. real cash designed as play money) for packets of stickers
The sticker packs come in three varitiies; bronze, silver and gold. Gold are naturally the best with you finding the top cards inside (they go for 80 MS Points a packet or 5,000 in game coins). See what I mean about those boffins at EA? Oh yeah, very shrewd, for they know that we'll need to buy those stickers and sharpish.
But Ultimate Team is more than this and as the name suggests is an opportunity to build your own 'super team' rather than just a simple buy and paste sticker album. The stickers you purchase also act as unlockable players to use and place into your squad allowing you to over time build your own dream squad that you can name whatever you wish, my super squad is known (and feared) as FC Oyo.
Naturally what stickers you receive in a packet are random so you'll have to beg, borrow and trade to get the players you want and the online trading system is pretty cool, abit like a Panini e-bay with cards being put up for auction with a starting price, bids being made, even a 'buy now' price.
This trade system is addictive and takes some thinking to be utilised well and to the advantage of your team especially when you take into account the other stickers/cards (whatever term you'd prefer) that can be found, such as gameplay cards, one time only deals that allow you to use a 'special move' in game via the d-pad such as a morale boost for the team if things aren't going your way or a shooting boost which as the name suggests ups your chosen players chances of hitting a good shot and so on and so forth.
As for the sticker album you even get one of those, an on-screen one that is which is accesilble via the Ultimate Team main menu and which you can fill with stickers, any of them that you wish can be put into the book but once they're stuck in that's it, they're there for good, baby and although you do get a coin bounty for placing stickers in the book you are far more likely to make better money in the trading auction.
There are a few teething problems with Ultimate Team and they can be summed up in two words; EA servers. Yes, those renowned elastic band and cotton wool servers from money bags EA which have been known to fold under pressure and faint on warm days are up to their old tricks, this time FIFA suffers, weirdly they seem to shut down around 6pm and thus you cannot play Ultimate Team, very frustrating if you've just downloaded it.
Also I've noticed an odd little gltch where if you've been buying and trading for a few hours all of a sudden the game wll decide that you have't bought the add-on and need to buy it again to access all the options. I've found that the best (maybe only?) way to combat this is to sign out and reboot your system. I'd be interested to know if this has happened to anyone else.
All in all Ultimate Team is a worth while addition to the sterling package of FIFA 09 and is an addicitve and fun game mode which will see you spend a small fortune on virtual stickers but you won't mind and this is part of EA's diabolicaly evil genius; you spend but you do not care and you'll consider buying more.
If you're in to FIFA then I highly recommend you download this and become fresh meat for FC Oyo to devour.
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Digger_ said: (Mar 31 2009 at 11:46:32 BST)
Nice review dekko!
About the glitch it happened to one of my members, only when he rebooted it still said he hadn't bought it, after many hours on the phone to xbox, he decided to buy it again, which still didn't register.
Hes had to buy a new HD and the UT addon again :D
Dekko said: (Apr 01 2009 at 11:59:52 BST)
Cheers Digger :)
And the glitch thing, it's weird, I know other people are saying that their Dash lags when playing UT and it takes ages for the game to load after dropping from Dash, that weird Fifa highlighted loading circle appears and you can't press or do anything until it's gone, so jumping to Dash to answer a message while playing UT is damned annoying.
As for having to buy a new HD and the game again, my God, someone should compensate him as surely his transaction history would show he's re-bought it?
It's a problem that will be brought up in magazines & the internet more over the coming months as more people download it, I reckon.
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