With EA's "All-Play" initiative, it's really driving home the fact that it wants to make its titles as accessible as possible. Whether it's tweaking the gameplay to better suit the Wii control scheme or just using big, friendly visuals that are easier to keep track of, it's slowly becoming apparent that EA's onto something. With FIFA Soccer 09 All-Play, even though it's a casual game, EA isn't really focused on creating something for the kids. Rather, EA is focused on making something fun, and from what we saw, the game is just that. In fact, we were fairly impressed.
The developers are focused on making things simple, so the first thing you'll notice with the All-Play control scheme is that the controls have been reduced to two buttons, allowing most anyone to play. Almost everything will be automated, which will leave you free to worry only about passing and shooting. However, if this isn't your cup of tea and you were hoping for a little more control, you'll still be able to control exactly where your character is running by pointing at the screen. When you do this, this will bring up an arrow that shows your running path, and also let you kick the ball precisely to where you want it. This arrow will show the flight path of the ball, so there's some great precision when rushing and passing up the pitch, and this level of precision is found in no other version, making it a rather slick bonus.
The All-Play mode is also tweaked so the speed of the game is faster, with a pitch that is far smaller than usual, allowing you to take shots from far out and with exaggerated animations that help convey the kinetic action happening on the green. Along with this style of play comes a momentum meter, which is affected by good passes or tackles, allowing you to build up energy for an unstoppable super shot. This approach makes it a bit more like the NBA Street series, as it's fairly arcade-y, but that's hardly a bad thing. On the other hand, if you're worried about the depth you'd find in a more realistic soccer title being lost, there's still a "Manager Mode," allowing you to participate in realistic games that should hold more appeal to the hardcore fans.
The meat of the game lies in the eight on eight Footii Match mode, which is basically a season mode that uses the All-Play controls. In this mode, a star player for each team is designated as a captain, and as you progress, star players from other teams will become available to join your own team, allowing you to potentially build an all-star team. Another nice touch comes with the fact that the character models in these casual modes use what are more or less Miis, which means that you could easily import Miis of your own and have them interact with these international athletes.
There's still a slew of party games too. This includes games like Juggle, a timing-based mini-game that has players bounce a soccer ball for as long as they can, Boot It, a multiplayer shooting game where you simply need to gesture in the direction you want the ball to go, and Soccer Academy, which challenges players in order to teach them how to play the game in the different control schemes. There's also an online mode, though we've yet to see how well it works. EA promises that the connectivity issues from last year's game are being addressed this time around, so we'll still have to wait and see how well things work when the final game is released.
With everything that EA is plugging into this initial FIFA All-Play outing, it's shaping up to be promising. From what we've seen, it still offers a deep game in its manager mode as well as a good amount of casual modes, holding a lot of appeal to both old and new fans alike. Whether or not FIFA Soccer 09 All-Play can deliver on all of its potential remains to be seen, but considering the new approaches and solid gameplay, we're optimistic of what the end result will be.