If you ask any American gamer what EA’s flagship sports franchise is, you will surely get a response something like this: “Uh, Madden?” While technically correct, the worldwide football fever is the pictured above. FIFA has been an EA staple almost as long as Madden, but in the past few years has really stepped up its game. The past few offerings, FIFA 10 and FIFA: World Cup 2010 were almost as good as you can expect a soccer/football game to be. Then FIFA 2011 came our way and set the bar even higher.

Any fan of FIFA will be able to pick this up and just play. The controls remain largely unchanged from this summer, but there are small gameplay tweaks that make the experience that much more satisfying as well as realistic. Scoring goals in FIFA are not easy, but once you get the hang of the sensitivity of the shooting mechanic, you will score. Defense has been given a minor overhaul. Tackling is improved in both functionality as well as animations. Players are more physical and for 50/50 balls, you will have a chance in winning if your timing is correct. Expect realistic pushing and elbows as opposed to just overstepping and clean takeaways. The most well known players can dazzle the field with right stick moves which are true to their style. The well integrated Personality Plus feature allows the best players to play at their best. Identifying with the superstars is what makes soccer/football so fan friendly and in FIFA 11, you will know when you have Ronaldo, Kaka, Rooney, etc.

FIFA 11 is not bulletproof to the criticisms that many of EA’s sports franchises gets. Is this year more than a glorified roster update? FIFA 11 plays better than FIFA 10, that much is certain. It does look very similar. People expect graphics to improve every year and in some cases they do, but here it is not noticeably better. The AI of your team is getting better but not as intuitive as you would like in crucial moments. Sometimes a simple cross would be the perfect play but sometimes your player tries to pass through defenders, not around/over them. Player awareness could be fixed. Too often scoring chances are lost because a player run just stops in his tracks and the ball rolls on bye out of bounds.

FIFA 11 is an awesome game and actually better than the World Cup version I enjoyed so much over the summer. Dropping out are the National sides and filling in are the much more competitive club sides. In FIFA World Cup, there are a handful of good teams to play with. With the Club teams, you have dozens to pick from. Returning is your Be a Pro mode with a new Be a Goalie mode. You can be a Manager and lead your team to the UEFA Champions League or be an overweight American from New Jersey and restore Real Madrid to dominance. The choice is yours and you will not be disappointed.

The Wii version unfortunately is not what I expected. Playing with motion controls was a huge pain. Mapping the pass button as the same button as the crossing button is just plain absurd. The street soccer 5v5 is not fun. It feels tacked on and too “arcadey”. You really need to play the game with a classic controller, which for me makes it almost pointless to own the Wii version unless you have no other console. The PS3/360 is superior in every way. Graphically is understandable, but game play is not. The game is not bad, but a distant choice to its true next gen cousins.

PS3/Xbox 360 Score:

Wii Score:

[Copies of the game for PS3 and Wii were provided by the publisher for review purposes.]