FIFA 12 Career Mode Preview

As part of our continued, in depth coverage of all things FIFA 12, we headed to EA’s Guildford fortress to try out the Career Mode, during a community day for FIFA enthusiasts from all over the country. It is these enthusiasts that have influenced some of the changes to the Career Mode this year, thanks to EA Sports being so open to community interaction and discussion.

The Career Mode in FIFA 11 was pretty standard. It offered the tactics, transfers and newspaper trimmings, but not a great deal in terms of depth. FIFA 12 Lead Producer, David Rutter, went as far as to say it was slightly “flat” during his presentation. So what changes have EA Montreal made to the Career mode to add a few extra layers? Quite a few, actually!

One of the first notable changes is the influence of the media in the Career Mode. We were shown an example of a key player becoming injured during pre-season. The media pick up on this quickly, and question whether the side will be able to cope without the injured player. This makes users think a lot more because when the media is on your back, you will be forced to make a decision as to start the key player or not, regardless of the player being 100% fit. Get it right, and the press will hail you as a genius, get it wrong however, and the media will question your managerial attributes.

It’s not just injuries that will see stories break on the back page, either. There are plenty of situations that will arise over the period of a season, including player morale, transfer speculation and players talking about retiring. This all creates a busier environment for the manager, and one that reflects the job of a real manager in the sport today, especially when players are demanding more wages or a spot in the starting eleven.

This year, finding new talent will also require decision making and risk taking. Managers will have to hire a scout and send them to the continent of their choice. Finding a good scout will not come cheap, and if you are manager of a club without hefty financial backing, you can spend half your budget on a scout alone. The scouts will report back with potential talent, but depending on the quality of the scout, it may not be clear if that player is as good as he looks on paper. Here, you can send the scout back out to look at the player in question again, but the more you do this, the bigger the risk is of another club coming in and signing your teenage sensation. Because of this, the onus is put on you, the manager, to either let the player pass by, or take a gamble that may not pay off.

Once you do find some new talent, or put some of your own on the market, you will enter transfer negotiations. While the transfer window is open, the news stories come in thick and fast and it intentionally feels like being glued to a sports news channel, not wanting to blink just in case you miss a story that could lead to you signing a new player. The heat is turned up even further on transfer deadline day. In FIFA 12’s Career Mode, transfer deadline day is just as big as it is in Europe in August or January. Instead of advancing by the day, on transfer deadline day, FIFA 12 advances by the hour, where deals will be made and broken, and some of the signings of the season will be pulled off in the final hour. On the top right of the screen, players see how much money has been spent in total in that day, with the hourly updates providing plenty of news of divulge. It adds another level of excitement to the Career Mode which was lacking in past iterations of FIFA. One area of concern was the amount of painstaking low offers for a key player. It is almost as if the game is trying to be cheeky, and sign a player on sheer luck. See through it though, and you can often say “no” or “stall” on negotiations and watch the offers gradually rise. Push your luck too much, and the club will lose interest in signing your player, which is what happened to me when I got a bit greedy while negotiating the sale of Blackpool’s D.J. Campbell.

In the limited time we had with the revamped Career Mode, it was clear that EA has worked very hard on making this about being involved in as many aspects of management as possible with the game. “Rather than being just you interacting with the mode, the mode is going to throw curveballs at you and do stuff that you don’t expect”, Rutter said during his presentation. He’s right too; the Career Mode in FIFA 12 certainly makes players think and interact a lot more, and we are sure managerial careers will be made or broken because of those curveballs.

This whole experience will culminate in the EA Sports Football Club, which will be “the heart of FIFA” according to Rutter. There will be a hub for this in the game, where players will be able to see real world football news, online friends and the experience points they have accumulated throughout the game. In addition to this, players will pledge their allegiance to the club they support, and there will be a league table to reflect how skilled and committed fans of different clubs are within FIFA 12. While the hub in the game will only show leagues of the same platform, there will be an online version where players will be able to compare how good they are against their friends who play on other platforms.

There’s plenty more features that we will learn about as time goes on. David Rutter said that by the time Gamescom comes around, the game will see its full reveal. From what we saw of the Career Mode, it is clear that this has been improved, though it won’t be hurting Championship Manger sales just yet. Along with the improved gameplay elements, FIFA 12 may not be shaping up to be the most groundbreaking of all the Football games, but it is looking like a really solid title that will deliver continued value to see fans through the 2011/2012 football season.

FIFA 12 is set to be released September 30th for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC.