EA HAVE SPONSORED TWO COPIES FOR GIVEAWAY, SO LEAVE A COMMENT AFTER THE REVIEW AND I’LL ANNOUNCE WINNER TOMORROW!

It’s here. Let’s not waste no time.

New game modes
There are a bunch of new features on the home menu, so get ready to make a few wrong turns.

The most obvious for seasoned FIFA players will be Ultimate Team in which you create your own team from a collection of players who you assumably know something about and get going in the league with.

Career mode is nice to see and it’s a proper season if you’re going to get in to it. You choose a player and follow their career though a season. Note that you can also take on the role of a manger instead of a player and really make your life painfully boring.

You can either play as them or as the entire team when a match does come around, but this seems to be few and far between. What I mean is that you’ll have to sit and wait while the computer simulates and entire calendar until your match day shows up. No doubt there’s a way to skip this, I didn’t have the time to learn.

What this means is the you really need to be in to the management side of things to play a career. It’s basically a bunch of sitting around and reading reviews and reports on injuries in between matches. Fun if you have a team you’re actually following in the real life season.

Speaking of which, if you’re connected to Xbox Live, the game and commentators will download and include current, real-life stats for the match day. Thus, expect commentary to actually contain content on events that have actually happened to the teams you’re playing with. This is truly awesome, but lost on anyone who doesn’t really follow a real-life league.

Before I end off on the new features, please take note: I’m the kind of player who wants to start a game and play. If I can only play with one man, give me the guy who is the best on the team. I don’t want to choose myself. Just to put things in perspective.

New gameplay
There are truly so many settings to toggle in this game; it would take me numerous pages to tell you about them all. But here are the main changes to the gameplay.

They’ve done something insanely clever here with the defensive play. In the old versions, you’d keep your finger on the hassle button while defending, and your player would do everything he could to dive in and tackle the player with the ball. Not so in 13. Now, you keep your finger down, and your player follows the guys with the ball. But the onus is on you when to jump in and tackle the player. This means for much fewer free kicks, much smoother play but also much more frustration. It’s not a bad thing, it just takes some getting used to.

Get ready to take a lot more responsibility for your defensive slip ups and errors then. You have the control to save goals off the line, you have the control to cut off through balls. This feature makes the game much more exciting and within 10 games of playing FIFA 13, I already felt like a better player.

Warning, they’ve made attacking a little harder too. The First Touch feature means that controlling a ball off your players shin might be needed at some point. Again, it’s only gonna make you a better player.

AI is at the next level too. Not only from the players who can now anticipate the ball off yourself better and make more intelligent runs for you, but the commentating is next level zef. There’s more than just two commentators, and much, much more than just 4 or 5 anecdotal stories that the commentators will get in to during a lull in the game. This is definitely the most realistic game of the Barclays Premiere League that I have ever myself competed in.

New experiences
This may sound nit-picky, but a lot of titles really let me down when it comes to the set up menus, the cut scenes and the journey to actually playing the game.

FIFA 11 was a perfect example with their newspaper clippings on one generic background throughout the entire game. You’ve spent months developing each character, put some effort in to the menus.

EA get 10 out of 10 for FIFA 13 though. The set up menus and logo animations are proper and well thought out. Players are well represented with headshots and stats and the detail that they go in to during the career mode is nauseating for a non-soccer-fan like myself.

I don’t care that Danny Welbak has threatened to leave the team and sign off somewhere else. But that’s me, and I don’t have a team I follow in the Premiere League or PSL. Fanboys who do though will love it and will also disagree with me on the “player representation” comment. Sorry in advance!

Load times are filled with awesome little skill games that EA have dreamt up or I’m certain even stolen from real training grounds. Cross the ball and hit each of the targets, lob pass the ball and get it in to a series of buckets, penalty shots and hit the target. You’ll find yourself playing the games long after your fixture is ready to be contested.

Right. That’s it. And the answer to your question is: YES! You will regret not buying this one and sticking with FIFA 12.

REVIEWED ON XBOX 360.

Get it: R600
From: www.cna.co.za