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UK REVIEW–It has been a busy 12 months for EA Sports and football games. FIFA 08 was a genuine revolution for the series, with a more realistic pace and improved AI adding some much-needed depth to the gameplay. UEFA Euro 2008 came six months later, further refining this groundwork while expanding the features list with more unique game modes. With FIFA 09–the third EA Sports football game in a bit more than a year–the developers have honed the core gameplay even further and added even more features, game modes, and online elements to the mix. It amounts to an incredibly deep and varied package, and despite a few niggling bugs and performance issues, FIFA 09 is the pinnacle of the series so far.

Given the six-month period of time between Euro 2008 and FIFA 09, it’s no surprise that the two games play similarly. However, the pace has quickened slightly, passes need to be directed with even greater accuracy, and the referees seem even more eager to dish out cards. The most noticeable improvement is in the physical quality of the players. Attackers point to where they want the ball, defenders direct offside violations to the linesmen, and everyone has lost that plastic look from FIFA 08 that was so off-putting. Although you can still spot individual animation routines during replays, the players now feel as if they’re interacting with one another and the ball. As a result, player weight and speed are now a vital part of overall tactics, and combining runs with perfectly timed passes has become the only way to succeed.

With opponent AI that absolutely will not stop until it gets the ball from you, FIFA 09 is now firmly rooted in simulation territory. Experienced players can still use the left-trigger-enabled trick system to run around players, but unless you’re passing the ball around effectively, you have little hope of keeping possession. The result is a game that’s heavy on midfield battles–even the commentators remark on how often possession moves between teams. The AI is particularly good even on the easier settings, not only moving in to take the ball off you, but springing offside traps and adapting their tactics throughout each match. This punishing difficulty forces you to up your game, and you soon start to develop a rhythm and accuracy that can cut through defenses to score some spectacular goals. Only the odd AI mistake from your own team conspires against you, with goalkeepers running to punch a ball that’s flying well wide of the goal or the computer selecting the wrong defender for you when the other team is on a break.

Adding to the deep and rewarding gameplay is a wealth of new and existing game modes. The new cover feature is Be a Pro: Seasons, which expands last year’s BAP mode to cover a full four seasons. In Be a Pro, you control a single real-world player or a custom character instead of an entire team and then craft the career of that player for both club and country over four years. You still have to focus on winning games, but each match carries additional criteria, such as making a certain number of passes, tackles, or goals, which add to your overall experience points. If you’re a fan of a certain player, it’s great to step into his boots, but Be a Pro is most addictive when you spend time customising your own footballer and putting your name on the back of a shirt. With tactical changes and substitutions happening automatically, the emphasis is on your being the player, and your ultimate aim across the four-year career is to stay in the A-squad and earn the captaincy of your national team. If you get bored of playing as just one player or want to mix things up a bit, then you can opt to control the entire team, and friends can jump in and out as other players if you want support. Be a Pro is worth checking out if you want to see the game in a different light, but even in attacking positions, you’ll spend a lot of time waiting for some action.

Be a Pro really comes into its own when played online. Up to 20 people can join in a single game, and the same passing/tackling/position/goal reward system means you’re encouraged to play as part of a team. Be a Pro online is technically well implemented too, with a diplomatic lobby system that lets people jump in and select the position they want to play; the first people to ready up are awarded the captaincy and thus can control the tactics and options for the entire team. The lag is less of a problem on the PS3 than it is on the Xbox 360, but it’s still prone to some slowdown on occasion. The number of shouting voices can sometimes make it difficult to communicate, but on the whole it’s well implemented and is a huge amount of fun to play.

New online features aren’t limited to 10-vs-10 in FIFA 09. The game also incorporates the Adidas Live Season–similar to a feature in this year’s NBA Live–whereby real-world stats updates are sent to your console on a weekly basis. The game comes bundled with an access code for one free English, German, Spanish, French, Mexican, or Italian premier league, whereas additional leagues can be purchased either individually or as a set. The stats updates change the ratings of players in the game, so if someone is doing well in real life, he’ll become better in the game. However, it also works the other way round, and injuries lower the stats considerably for the period of time that the player’s not playing in real life. It’s an expensive feature if you want updates to all of the leagues, and it expires in May 2009, but if you’re a fan, it definitely adds a bit of drama to your FIFA season.

The final major addition to the game is the new custom-tactics feature, which lets you get in-depth with the behaviour of individual teams. You can adjust 11 different factors for each team, including positioning and aggressiveness, and then map your tactics to the D pad to activate during a game. What’s more, you can upload these tactics to your online FIFA 09 Locker, which lets other people download and rate what you’ve come up with. There are 28 slots in total, and you can download other users’ data and save it to your storage device. That said, the standard configurations that EA has programmed already mirror the playing style of most major teams; Arsenal have a characteristically offensive style, whereas Manchester United tend to push up from the midfield.

Although FIFA 09 offers a lot of new features, the game is still full of existing content from previous games. There are lots of offline game types, such as the Manager mode, which concerns you with transfers and training, and the Lounge mode, which lets you and your friends mess around to create scenarios and challenges. Then there are the online modes, which are comprehensive to say the least. The Interactive League lets you represent your favourite club online against supporters of other teams, with overall rankings tracking each team’s progress around the world. There’s also a new FIFA 09 Clubs mode where you create your own team and try to recruit your friends to play alongside you. In addition to the standard ranked and unranked games, you can join lobbies to chat with other people before taking games at your leisure, or you can create custom leagues for up to 31 other players to play against. The only sore point is the slowdown that permeates some games, especially since quitting out of a particularly laggy match results in your conceding it.

EA Sports rarely disappoints when it comes to presentation, and FIFA 09 reflects the usual attention to detail. The soundtrack is as large as it is varied, with 42 songs from well-known artists, such as Black Kids, CSS, and Damien Marley. There’s also an option to stream podcasts from EA, TalkSport, and ESPN, among others, directly to your console. The commentary is once again provided by Andy Gray and Martin Tyler, who provide great camaraderie with comments such as “That’s a great example of what you used to do as a player.” Although they occasionally repeat themselves or say the wrong line, there are lots of team- and player-specific sound bites that are delivered in an enthusiastic and authoritative manner. The ESPN news integration is also back, delivering live ticker feeds on your favourite teams and leagues, and even other sports, such as F1 and NBA. Then there’s the link to EA Sports Football World, which lets you send videos and photos from the game to share with friends online. Uploading videos is a long process because they’re converted to Flash in-game, and www.eafootballworld.com is confusing to navigate and link to your EA and Xbox profiles. However, the number of features here means that you keep discovering new things the more you play and delve into the menus.

With FIFA 09, EA Sports has created the deepest, most realistic and feature-packed football game yet. The gameplay hasn’t changed a lot since UEFA Euro 2008, but the tweaks and refinements have produced an incredibly rewarding game. There’s an almost bewildering number of modes to play through, and the amount of online functionality means that the game should have a good deal of longevity. There’s still room for improvement, considering the high amount of lag in certain online matches and some AI blunders in single-player, but if you’re a football fan looking for something to last you the entire season, you can’t go wrong with FIFA 09.

In Far Cry 2’s chaotic world of mercenaries, gunrunners, and armed militias, you’ll find yourself dropped into a dizzying web of shady clients and paper-thin alliances. All manner of names and faces are introduced during the course of the storyline, but the real star isn’t anyone brandishing a smuggled weapon in search of blood diamonds; it’s the daunting and awe-inspiring 50-square kilometers of African landscape that make up the game’s open-world setting. Aside from providing the opportunity to soak up an amazing sunset, Far Cry 2’s free-roaming terrain brilliantly harmonizes with the first-person combat. The diverse landscape and myriad environmental factors work alongside a wide assortment of weaponry to give you tremendous freedom to approach each mission. Combined with solid multiplayer, Far Cry 2’s sheer breadth of action provides you with plenty of reason to stay lost in the African wilderness despite an underwhelming plot and the occasional sense of tedium in navigating from one location to another on the gargantuan map.

Far Cry 2’s story is filled with potential. You’re a mercenary working for a client who’s sent you to an unnamed African nation engulfed in civil war, and your job is to take out a notorious arms dealer known as “The Jackal.” He quickly proves to be an elusive figure, so you’ll need to begin working for various warring factions that the Jackal has armed so you can trace the supply line back to your target. The two primary organizations at the heart of all this bloodshed are the militaristic UFLL and the revolutionary APR. You’ll spend the bulk of the story working for these two groups, getting to know their power structures, and taking on all of the violent tasks they throw your way. Complicating things is the fact that your character has malaria, which means you’ll need to occasionally play nice with the more ragtag Underground, the only group with the medical connections necessary to keep your potentially life-threatening symptoms at bay.

Each story mission can be played in multiple ways. There are 12 potential buddies randomly scattered throughout the storyline who you can befriend (nine of whom are available to choose as your silent protagonist), and they’re often keen to tack on their own interests to the quests handed out by the UFLL and APR. Instead of just taking out a target, you have the option to earn extra reputation points by working alongside your buddy to first squeeze any remaining assets from the soon-to-be-deceased. This also earns you the ability to increase your level of companionship with that buddy. It’s a neat reward, but it doesn’t shed much light on their backgrounds. But that’s par for the course; the main story is delivered in such a rushed, quick-and-dirty way that you never feel very involved in the game’s overarching conflicts. The plot is less Blood Diamond than it is early Grand Theft Auto, a long roster of changing faces that scroll by far too quickly to capitalize on the politically charged setting.

Although disappointing for a single-player campaign that could easily drain more than 30 hours of your time, any shortcomings in the plot are mostly forgivable thanks to Far Cry 2’s overall structure. The game is organized in a way that provides a daunting amount of freedom to explore, earn currency, and wreak havoc on the game’s landscape and its denizens. It’s all laid out in a manner typical of sandbox action games. Pulling out your map reveals a collection of icons that signify available missions and points of interest that you can meander toward at your own leisure. Among these are dozens of side missions that you can take on, with various forms of rewards. Delivering transit papers to trapped refugees earns you malaria medication, destroying rival convoys for gun merchants unlocks new weapons for purchase, and performing assassinations for mysterious voices at the other end of your cell phone rewards you with diamonds. You can also rough up militias stationed in small camps and turn their dwellings into your own safe houses. The side missions can feel a bit repetitive when played through in rapid succession, but they offer a great change of tempo when sprinkled throughout the main narrative. But what’s most clever is how their differing rewards intermingle so wonderfully with your needs in progressing through the story: Malaria pills keep your HP and stamina up, diamonds buy you new weapons and ability upgrades, and safe houses provide temporary shelter to stock up and save your game.

Overall, Far Cry 2 is a game in which you can quite literally get lost for hours at a time. But that feeling of exploration is precisely what makes the game so much fun; your creativity never feels stifled when approaching a mission, and the game’s overall structure of side tasks, friends, rewards, and upgrades is a diverse ecosystem rivaling the landscape itself. No matter whether you’re a PC fan whose played through the similarly structured Crysis or a console owner new to the world of open-ended first-person shooters, you won’t be disappointed by Far Cry 2.

  System Requirements:

Minimum requirements

• CPU: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better
• RAM: 1 GB
• Video card: NVidia 6800 or ATI X1650 or better (Shader Model 3 required, 256 Mb of graphic memory)

Recommended

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Family, AMD 64 X2 5200+, AMD Phenom or better
• RAM: 2 GB
• Video card: NVidia 8600 GTS or better, ATI X1900 or better (512 Mb of graphic memory)
• Sound: 5.1 sound card recommended

Supported Video Cards:

NVidia 6800, NVidia 7000 series, 8000 series, 9000 series, 200 series. 8800M and 8700M supported for laptops. ATI X1650 – 1950 series , HD2000 series , HD3000 series , HD4000 series.

Based on what we’ve seen of the game so far, the minimum requirements look a tad optimistic but any reasonaly modern gaming PC should have no troubles.

Stepping off a boat in the shoes of illegal immigrant Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City at the start of Grand Theft Auto IV, you can tell immediately that Rockstar North’s latest offering is something quite special. Yes, this is another GTA game in which you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time stealing cars and gunning down cops and criminals, but it’s also much more than that. GTAIV is a game with a compelling and nonlinear storyline, a great protagonist who you can’t help but like, and a plethora of online multiplayer features in addition to its lengthy story mode. The PC version adds a customizable radio station and a video editor to the package, and also ups the multiplayer count from 16 to 32 players. It’s not all good news, though; the game suffers from some noticeable performance issues even on rigs that far exceed the unreasonably high recommended system specifications, and you need to be signed in to Windows Live to save your progress in the single-player game. This should have been the best GTA game yet, but it’s inferior to its console counterparts.

One of the many things that set GTAIV apart from its predecessors is Liberty City, which is more convincing as a living, breathing urban environment than anything you’ve seen in a game before, and which bears little resemblance to its namesake in 2001’s GTAIII. Liberty’s diverse population believably attempts to go about its daily business, seemingly unaware that several criminal factions are at war in the city. Niko has no such luck. He’s compelled to start working for one of the factions shortly after arriving, when he learns that his cousin Roman has some potentially fatal gambling debts. Niko’s military experience makes him a useful freelancer for employers in the business of killing, and though his reluctance to carry out their orders is often apparent, he does whatever is asked of him in the hope that completing missions for other people will ultimately give him the means to complete his own.

But Niko doesn’t have to do everything that’s asked of him. On several occasions as you play through his story, you’ll be presented with decisions that afford you the option of doing what you think is right rather than blindly following instructions. You don’t necessarily have to kill a target if he or she promises to disappear, but you have to weigh the risk of your employer finding out against the possibility that the person whose life you spare might prove useful later in the game, or even have work for you in the form of bonus missions. To say anything more specific on this subject would be to risk spoiling one of GTAIV’s most interesting new features, but suffice it to say that every decision you make has consequences, and you’ll likely want to play through the game at least twice to see how the alternatives unfold.

Grand Theft Auto IV’s story mode can be beaten in less than 30 hours, and there are so many optional activities and side missions to take part in along the way that you can comfortably double that number if you’re in no hurry. The majority of the story missions task you with making deliveries and/or killing people, and play out in much the same way as those in previous games. With that said, most of the missions are a lot easier this time around, partly because Niko is a more agile and efficient killer than any of his predecessors, and partly because the LCPD seemingly has better things to do than hunt down an illegal immigrant who’s gunning down undesirables all over the city. Some of the more imaginative missions sprinkled throughout the story include a kidnapping, a bank heist, and a job interview. The cinematic cutscenes associated with story missions are superbly presented and are the sequences in which the game’s characters really shine. Without exception, the characters you encounter benefit from great animation, great voice work, and superbly expressive faces. They’re not always so impressive when they join you on a mission and refuse to do what they’re supposed to (for example, not following you on an escort mission, or failing to negotiate a doorway). Nevertheless, these problems are few and far between, and they’re made less painful by the new “replay mission” option that you’re presented with whenever you fail.

Given the amount of trouble that you get into as you play through the story mode, it’s inevitable that the police are going to get involved from time to time, even when their presence isn’t a scripted feature of your mission. Liberty City’s boys in blue are quick to respond when you get flagged with a wanted level of between one and six stars, but they’re not nearly as tough to deal with as their counterparts in previous GTA games. They don’t drive as quickly when pursuing you, they rarely bother to set up roadblocks, and you’ll need to blow up practically an entire city block before the FIB (that’s not a typo) show up. Furthermore, you’re given an unfair advantage in the form of your GPS system; when you’re not using it to plot a valid route to any waypoint of your choosing, it doubles as a kind of police scanner. Any time you have a brush with the law, the GPS shows you the exact locations of patrol cars and cops on foot in your area, and highlights the circular area (centered on your last-known whereabouts) where they’re concentrating their search. To escape, all you need to do is move outside the circle and then avoid being seen for 10 seconds or so, which is often best achieved by finding a safe spot and just sitting there. It’s not a bad system in theory, but in practice it makes dodging the law a little too easy, especially when your wanted level is low and the search area is small.

When you’re not running missions for criminals, taking part in street races, stealing cars to order, or randomly causing trouble, you’ll find that there are plenty of opportunities to unwind in Liberty City. Some of these optional activities offer tangible rewards that can prove useful in missions later on, whereas others are just a fun way to kill time and take in more of GTAIV’s superb humor. For example, you can watch television, listen to numerous radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet.

GTAIV’s Internet is filled with spoofs of all the kinds of Web sites that you’d only ever look at accidentally or when you know there’s no danger of getting caught. Some of them can be found only by clicking on links in spam e-mails, whereas others are advertised prominently on the search page. There’s plenty of amusing stuff to find if you spend some time in one of the “TW@” Internet cafes, but the most interesting site by far is an online dating agency through which you can meet women who, if they like your profile, will agree to go on dates with you. Dating and socializing with friends is something you can spend as much or as little of your time doing as you like, and though the people you meet can occasionally be demanding to the point that they become irritating, keeping them happy invariably benefits you in some way.

Keeping friends and dates happy means spending time with them and doing things that they enjoy, and all of them have different personalities. Some friends like to join you for minigames such as tenpin bowling, pool, or darts, whereas others prefer to go out for a meal, get drunk, or take in a show. Of course, dates are much fussier than regular friends, and their opinions of you are influenced not only by whether you pick them up on time, where you take them, and whether you try your luck when dropping them at home, but also by a number of much more subtle factors. Dates will comment on things like the car you drive, how you drive it, and the clothes you wear. They’ll even notice if you wear the same outfit two dates in a row, though not all of them will be bothered by it. The rewards that you get when another character likes you enough vary depending on who it is. Without wishing to give away specifics, befriending a lawyer can prove useful if you’re having trouble with the cops, for example, and having a nurse on your friends list can literally be a lifesaver.

You’ll keep in touch with your dates, friends, and some of your enemies using another of GTAIV’s great new features: a cell phone. It’s hard to believe that something as simple as a cell phone could add so much to a game like this, but it’s implemented so well that it’s hard to imagine leaving any of Niko’s safe houses without it. If you’ve ever used a cell phone in real life, you’ll have no problem operating this one and, given that it’s controlled using only the arrow and Enter keys or your controller’s D pad and a single button, it’s easy to call up acquaintances and take calls even while driving. There’s no unwieldy conversation system to deal with; you simply choose which friend you want to call, what you want to talk about (it could be work, a fun activity, or asking for a favor) and then, assuming that he or she answers the phone, the conversation plays out. Incoming calls are even easier, though they occasionally come at inopportune (or amusing) times; hearing your cell phone’s signal interfere with your car radio is the least of your worries when you consider the possibility of a date calling you while you’re with a prostitute or embroiled in a gunfight with the Mafia. Incidentally, new ringtones and visual themes for your phone can be purchased via the in-game Internet, which is typical of the incredible attention to detail that you’ll come to take for granted as you play.

Most of the vehicles in GTAIV, like those in previous games, have very loose handling that makes it easy for you to perform Hollywood-style U-turns, skids around corners, and the like. You can play through most of the missions without ever violating a traffic law if you really want to, but you can get away with (and will have a lot more fun) driving like a lunatic, provided that you don’t collide with any police vehicles or mow down too many pedestrians. A neat touch when driving with the default camera view is that the camera, which is positioned a few feet behind the rear bumper of the car, centers on you rather than on the vehicle, effectively offering the vehicular equivalent of an over-the-shoulder view. When you take the control of something sporty, the camera also positions itself much closer to the ground, which adds to the sensation of speed.

With an Xbox 360 controller, the vehicle handling is difficult to fault, regardless of whether you’re in a sports car, a garbage truck, a motorcycle, a speedboat, or a helicopter. The mouse-and-keyboard combo doesn’t work nearly as well as the controller when you’re at the controls of a vehicle and, while it’s still possible to win races and such, the WASD keys are no substitute for an analog stick and two analog triggers. Regardless of which control setup you opt for, you might notice one odd quirk that has been a constant ever since GTAIII: When taking the controls of certain vehicles, you’ll suddenly notice a lot more of the same vehicle on the roads. It’s not a big deal, and it isn’t detrimental to the gameplay, but it’s a little jarring if you get into one of the more unusual vehicles in the game–for example, the equivalent of either a Ferrari or a pickup truck–and suddenly find that the city is filled with them. That particular quirk is pretty common in some of the multiplayer modes as well, though you’ll likely be too busy keeping an eye out for other players to take any notice when you venture online.

Getting online in Grand Theft Auto IV couldn’t be easier, though you need to have both Windows Live and the Rockstar Social Club application running in the background to do so. You simply select the multiplayer option on your cell phone, choose which type of game you want to host or join, and then enter a lobby and wait for the game to start. The PC game supports 32 players where the console versions supported 16, but even games with as many as 16 players can be difficult to find depending on which mode you’re looking to play. There are more than a dozen different multiplayer modes to choose from, and although some of them are variations on similar themes, there’s certainly no shortage of variety. As the host of a multiplayer session, you also have the freedom to greatly customize all of the game types with variables such as friendly fire, police presence, weapons sets, traffic levels, radar functionality, and many more. You can choose where you’d like your game to take place as well, considering that many gameplay modes can be played either on a specific Liberty City island or across the entire map.

The audio in the PC version of GTAIV is every bit as impressive as that in the console games, and can take a lot of the credit for why Liberty City feels so alive. True to form, GTAIV’s soundtrack has plenty of great licensed songs and, unlike other games we could mention, it doesn’t force the artist and track information down your throat with pop-up windows that detract from gameplay. However, if you want that information, you can simply dial up a song-recognition service on your cell phone and, after a few seconds, receive it in a text message. Genius. New for the PC version is the Independence FM radio station, which, in between the usual assortment of commercials and such, will play tracks from your own music collection. The other radio stations’ playlists will be hard to beat, but the option to try is a great addition.

Another new feature for GTAIV on the PC is a Video Editor mode that, provided you’re willing to spend some time with it, is a great way to get creative with and share some of your most memorable moments in Liberty City. With it, you can edit multiple clips together as well as add custom music, camera filters, and onscreen text to your movie before uploading it to the Rockstar Social Club. Capturing raw gameplay footage is as easy as hitting a single button to start and finish recording, and when you’re ready to watch it back or start editing, the Video Editor mode can be accessed via your in-game cell phone.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a game that, in spite of its technical shortcomings on the PC, you simply have to play. The single-player game, which you can still play long after you complete the story, is the series’ best by far, and the multiplayer features are good enough that you’ll likely have no problem finding people to play with for many months to come. The minor flaws that you’ll experience are no more difficult to overlook than those in previous GTA games, and they’re greatly outnumbered by the features that will impress and surprise you anytime you think you’ve already seen everything that the game has to offer. There’s lots to see in Liberty City, so you’d best get started.

So without anymore waiting here they are:

System Requirements:

OS: Windows XP SP2
Processor: Dual core processor (Intel Pentium D or better)
RAM: 2GB
Hard Drive: 18GB free hard disk space
Video Card: 512MB Direct3D 10 compatible video card or Direct3D 9 card compatible with Shader
Drive: DVD-ROM dual-layer drive.

UK REVIEW–It’s been a busy 12 months for EA Sports and football games. FIFA 08 was a genuine revolution for the series, with a more realistic pace and improved AI adding some much-needed depth to the gameplay. UEFA Euro 2008 came six months later, further refining this ground work while expanding the features list with more unique game modes. With FIFA 09–the third EA Sports football game in a bit more than a year–they’ve honed the core gameplay even further, and added even more features, game modes, and online elements to the mix. It amounts to an incredibly deep and varied package, and despite a few niggling bugs and performance issues, FIFA 09 is the pinnacle of the series so far.

Given the six-month period of time between Euro 2008 and FIFA 09, it’s no surprise that the two games play very similarly. The pace has quickened slightly, passes need to be directed with even greater accuracy, and the referees seem even more eager to dish out cards. The most noticeable improvement is in the physical quality of the players themselves. Attackers point to where they want the ball, defenders direct offside violations to the linesmen, and everyone’s lost that plastic look from FIFA 08 that was so off-putting. Although you can still spot individual animation routines during replays, the players now genuinely feel as if they’re interacting with each other and the ball. As a result, player weight and speed are now a vital part of overall tactics, and combining runs with perfectly timed passes has become the only real way to succeed.

With opponent AI that absolutely will not stop until it gets the ball from you, FIFA 09 is now firmly rooted in simulation territory. Experienced players can still use the left-trigger-enabled trick system to run around players, but unless you’re passing the ball around effectively, you have little hope of keeping possession. The result is a game that’s heavy on midfield battles–even the commentators remark on how often possession moves between teams. The AI is particularly good even on the easier settings, not only moving in to take the ball off you, but springing off-side traps and adapting their tactics throughout each match. This punishing difficulty forces you to up your game, and you soon start to develop a rhythm and accuracy that can cut through defenses to score some spectacular goals. Only the odd AI mistake from your own team conspires against you, with goalkeepers running to punch a ball that’s flying well wide of the goal, or the computer selecting entirely the wrong defender for you when the other team is on a break.

Adding to the deep and rewarding gameplay is a wealth of new and existing game modes. The new cover feature is Be a Pro: Seasons, which expands last year’s BAP mode to cover a full four seasons. In Be a Pro, you control a single real-world player or a custom character instead of an entire team, and then craft the career of that player for both club and country over four years. You still have to focus on winning games, but each match carries additional criteria such as making a certain number of passes, tackles, or goals, which add to your overall experience points. If you’re a real fan of a certain player then it’s great to step into his boots, but Be A Pro is most addictive when you spend time customising your own footballer and putting your name on the back of a shirt. With tactical changes and substitutions happening automatically, the emphasis is on you being the player, and your ultimate aim across the four-year career is to stay in the A-squad and earn the captaincy of your national team. If you get bored of playing as just one player or want to mix things up a bit, then you can opt to control the entire team, and friends can jump in and out as other players if you want support. Be a Pro is worth checking out if you want to see the game in a different light, but even in attacking positions, you’ll spend a lot of time waiting for some action.

Where Be a Pro really comes into its own when played online. Up to 20 people can join in a single game, and the same passing/tackling/position/goal reward system means you’re encouraged to play as part of a team. Be a Pro online is technically well implemented too, with a diplomatic lobby system that lets people jump in and select the position they want to play; the first people to ready up are awarded the captaincy and thus control of the tactics and options for the entire team. The amount of lag in Be A Pro was higher than in standard online games, which isn’t surprising given the volume of people in the game. The number of shouting voices can sometimes make it difficult to communicate too, but on the whole it’s well implemented and is a huge amount of fun to play.

New online features aren’t limited to just 10-vs-10 in FIFA 09. The game also incorporates the Adidas Live Season–similar to a feature in this year’s NBA Live–whereby real-world stats updates are sent to your console on a weekly basis. The game comes bundled with an access code for one free English, German, Spanish, French, Mexican, or Italian premier league, whereas additional leagues cost 560 Microsoft Points or 1,600 points for the complete set. The stats updates change the ratings of players in the game, so if someone is doing well in real life, he’ll become better in the game. However, it also works the other way round, and injuries lower the stats considerably for the period of time that the player’s not playing in real-life. It’s an expensive feature if you want updates to all of the leagues, and it expires in May 2009, but if you’re a fan then it definitely adds a bit of drama to your FIFA season.

The final major addition to the game is the new custom-tactics feature, which lets you get in-depth with the behaviour of individual teams. You can adjust 11 different factors for each team, including positioning and aggressiveness, and then map your tactics to the D pad to activate during a game. What’s more, you can upload these tactics to your online FIFA 09 Locker, which lets other people download and rate what you’ve come up with. There are 28 slots in total, and you can download other users’ data and save it to your storage device. That said, the standard configurations that EA has programmed already mirror the playing style of most major teams; Arsenal have a characteristically offensive style, whereas Manchester United tend to push-up from the midfield.

Although FIFA 09 offers a lot of new features, the game is still full of existing content from previous games. There’s a wealth of offline game types, such as the Manager mode that concerns you with transfers and training, and the lounge mode that lets you and your friends mess around to create scenarios and challenges. Then there are the online modes, which are comprehensive to say the least. The interactive league lets you represent your favourite club online against supporters of other teams, with overall rankings tracking each team’s progress around the world. There’s also a new FIFA 09 Clubs mode where you create your own team and try to recruit your friends to play alongside you. In addition to the standard ranked and unranked games, you can join lobbies to chat with other people before taking games at your leisure, or create custom leagues for up to 31 other players to play against. The only sore point is the slowdown that permeates some games, especially since quitting out of a particularly laggy match results in you conceding it.

EA Sports rarely disappoints when it comes to presentation, and FIFA 09 features the usual attention to detail. The soundtrack is as large as it is varied, with 42 songs from well-known artists such as Black Kids, CSS, and Damien Marley. There’s also an option to stream podcasts from EA, TalkSport, and ESPN, among others, directly to your console. The commentary is once again provided by Andy Gray and Martin Tyler, who provide great camaraderie with comments such as “That’s a great example of what you used to do as a player.” Although they occasionally repeat themselves or say the wrong line, there’s a wealth of team- and player-specific sound bites that are delivered in an enthusiastic and authoritative manner. The ESPN news integration is also back, delivering live ticker feeds on your favourite teams and leagues, and even other sports such as F1 and NBA. Then there’s the link to EA Sports Football World, which lets you send video and photos from the game to share with friends online. Uploading video is a long process because it’s converted to Flash in-game, and www.eafootballworld.com is confusing to navigate and link to your EA and Xbox profiles. However, the wealth of features here means that you keep discovering new things the more you play and delve through the menus.

With FIFA 09, EA Sports has created the deepest, most realistic and feature-packed football game yet. The gameplay hasn’t changed a lot since UEFA Euro 2008, but the tweaks and refinements have produced an incredibly rewarding game to play. There’s an almost bewildering amount of modes to play through, and the amount of online functionality means that the game should have a good deal of longevity throughout the year. There’s still room for improvement, with a high amount of lag in certain online matches and some AI blunders in single-player, but if you’re a football fan looking for something to last you the entire season, you can’t go wrong with FIFA 09.

The original Gears of War became an action genre classic thanks to its incredible graphics, cinematic presentation, and solid cover system. The sequel repeats this formula, and though it introduces new weapons, enemies, and environments, it remains an incredible yet familiar experience. The 10-hour campaign is rambunctiously entertaining, with clever set pieces and epic confrontations that punctuate the exhilarating stop-and-pop gunplay. The multiplayer offers more significant upgrades, with four new modes, 10 new maps, and support for up to 10 players instead of eight. These things make for a package with significant longevity, and though Gears of War 2 ultimately refines more than it innovates, it still deserves a place in any action fan’s collection.

Gears of War 2 picks up the story six months after the end of the first game. The Locust are so powerful that they can sink entire cities from below, whereas the humans are becoming even more desperate thanks to the spread of a disease called rust lung. With fears that the last city of Jacinto might fall, it’s down to Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago to take the fight to the Locust in a desperate last stand against their alien foes. Survival is at the centre of Gears 2, but there’s also personal drama, with themes such as family, death, and even love interwoven into the grand plot. This sheds some light on the characters and the universe, and though it ultimately uncovers more questions than it answers, the game has a much grander premise than its predecessor.

In terms of gameplay, Gears 2 is fundamentally the same as the original game, but fans of the series should be able to spot some key refinements. The cover system has been honed so that you cling more accurately to surfaces, and the weapons have received subtle alterations to make them even more balanced than before. The revival system has also been tweaked considerably. Not only can your AI teammates heal you if you’re injured, but now you can also tap A to crawl toward them more quickly when you’re injured. This makes the game a lot fairer in terms of difficulty and allows for some heart-pounding moments as you race to your teammates to avoid a fatal curb-stomping from the opposition.

Although the assault rifle is still the go-to firearm for the duration of the campaign, there are plenty of other weapons to play with. New to the Gears universe is the flamethrower, which doesn’t have a great range but is excellent for dealing with groups of enemies that get a little too close for comfort. Then there are the heavy weapons, which stop you from being able to roadie run but make up for this with their immense power. The mulcher is a high-calibre chain gun that can cut through even the biggest enemies in a single burst, whereas the mortar rains down a shower of explosives from afar. Grenades have also seen improvements; you can stick them to surfaces so they become proximity mines, there’s a new model that gives off noxious gas, and the smoke grenade delivers a concussive blast that knocks surrounding players off of their feet. All of these new weapons are great fun to use, and crucially, they’re well balanced for use in multiplayer.

The first Gears of War was brutally over-the-top in its violence, and the sequel manages to take this even further. You now have four ways of executing your enemies, all of which are mapped onto the face buttons of the joypad. X performs the standard curb-stomp, B delivers a quicker blow to the back of the head, and Y flips your foe over for repeated punches to the face. Finally, the A button lets you grab the wounded enemy to use as a meat shield, affording you some protection until you decide to finish it off with a neck-break. The signature chainsaw move has been adapted so you cut upward from the crotch if you approach from the rear, and if two players ready their saws, they enter a duel that’s won by whoever taps the B button the fastest. These new additions improve on the already gritty and satisfying melee combat of the original Gears of War and make close-quarters combat even more gruesomely rewarding.

Gears of War 2 is best when played with friends, and the entire campaign now features drop-in support and independent difficulty levels for two players. The competitive multiplayer has also been substantially improved and now offers more players, maps, and game modes to select. Warzone, Execution, Assassination, and Annex modes all make a return, along with King of the Hill, which was introduced in the PC version of the game. There are also three new standard multiplayer modes called Submission, Guardian, and Wingman. Submission is a variation on Capture the Flag, but here the flag is a civilian who you carry to the checkpoint using the meat-shield technique. The hostage also carries a gun and is hostile to anyone who comes close, making for a really great twist on the traditional CTF game mode. Guardian is a team-based game with a designated leader; keep the leader alive and everyone else can respawn, but if the leader dies then that privilege is over. Finally, Wingman splits players into teams of two, with the emphasis on working together to kill and revive. You’ve probably seen these game modes before in other games, but they fit perfectly into Gears of War 2 and add even more variety and longevity to online play. Thankfully, the benefits of being the host online have also been lessened, making the online experience much fairer across the board.

The final multiplayer mode is called Horde, and it’s the most addictive and challenging take on Gears yet. It could be described as a cross between single- and multiplayer, in which a team of five COGs take on wave after wave of Locust enemies. As long as one player stays alive at the end of each round, the entire team respawns and the game keeps going, with progressively bigger and more difficult enemies. It’s an incredibly tense and exciting game mode, and despite the steep difficulty curve, it’s highly rewarding to play with friends. Gears 2 is also accommodating to new players and those without Internet connections, with five training missions and bot support for every multiplayer mode except Horde. The bots are surprisingly good at replicating human players, and they make great practice for people who have never played the game online.

Gears of War 2 includes a total of 10 new multiplayer maps, plus a code to download five remastered maps from the original game. The new maps take inspiration from the locations in the campaign, whereas new environmental effects change some of the maps as you’re playing. For example, Hail features razor-sharp rain that gradually kills anyone out in the open. Furthermore, Day One has a huge emergence hole in which a beast can take swipes at any surrounding players. Finally, Avalanche is completely transformed when a snowstorm hits, turning it from a multitiered level into one flat plane. These environmental effects don’t feature in every map and game mode, but they definitely liven up standard deathmatch-style multiplayer game types such as Warzone.

Gears of War 2 has a lot in common with its predecessor, but the new environments, darker storyline, and epic scale certainly have a lot to offer fans. The new weapons, melee attacks, and co-op options make for a campaign that you’ll want to complete a number of times, and the new multiplayer modes give the game variety and longevity. Simply put, Gears of War 2 is a superior shooter that no action fan will want to miss out on.