Just two years ago it seemed as if EA Sports had turned its back completely on the PC. With big franchises like NHL and Madden being stripped altogether, it was only FIFA that was left to stumble onwards.
And stumble it did; whereas on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 FIFA has established itself as the finest football game available, on the PC it's been less convincing of. There have been a few wayward attempts at innovation – such as FIFA 09's introduction of mouse and keyboard play – but it's been lagging behind its console counterparts in almost every regard, the PC version of FIFA 10 a pale imitation of its full-blooded brethren. With the introduction of FIFA Superstars and FIFA Online, it's tempting to think that, for the core FIFA experience, EA Sports has indeed abandoned the PC – or at the very least wilfully neglected it. It's an approach that's acknowledged by the talk surrounding the reveal of FIFA 11 on the PC – in the past, PC has suffered, but this year EA Sports is keen to make amends.
It's doing that by using, for the very first time, the engine that's propelled the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions to such success. Confusingly EA insists on calling it the next-generation engine, and while it's not as good as what we're expecting from whatever Microsoft and Sony's hardware divisions have lined up for us in the future it's certainly impressive.
The added grunt is used to paint the sparkling animations and bold character models we've come accustomed to with eye-blistering clarity, and all it asks for in return is a dual core processor with 1Gb of RAM and a fairly basic graphics card.
FIFA 11 on PC is also acknowledging the hardware in other ways too; there's LAN play, support for up to 35 different game pads with fully mappable controls as well as the capacity for VOIP. After all these years in the wilderness it sounds too good to be true.
That's because in some regards it is. FIFA 11's play is last year's console iteration sprinkled with some of the learnings of the FIFA World Cup 2010 game. That's no catastrophe, and at its core it's still the same muscular and graceful brand of football that wowed us last year with some of the niggles – the often absent-minded keepers and cheap chip shots to name but two – ironed out. But it's lacking several of this year's big new features – there's no Personality Plus, for example, nor is there the Pro Passing that's helped to refine the play of the other HD versions of FIFA 11, and while EA touts this as the next-gen experience it feels remarkably like playing last year's game.
There are more PC-specific features to be revealed at a later date that may quell our early scepticism, but for now we're left thinking that with other versions looking like the best yet and so many other ways to engage with FIFA on the PC that EA Sports could be set to score an own goal
FIFA 11 Recommended System:
OS: XP SP3/ Vista Sp2 / Windows 7
CPU: Intel Processor Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz or
AMD Processor - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+
Video: 256 MB VRAM – (NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or better / ATI Radeon X1600 or better) **
Memory: 1 GB RAM (2 GB required for Windows Vista / Windows 7)
Hard Disk: 6.5 GB of free Hard Drive space
Direct X: 9.0c
Controls: Keyboard & Mouse | Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller | PS2 Controller With Converter
Installation: DVD-ROM Drive
Download and more information here
