FIFA 10 Ultimate Team – Impressions

Posted by Andrew On February - 26 - 2010

Yesterday, EA Sports dropped a new game mode on FIFA 10: Ultimate Team. The mode, which allows players to build their own club from the ground up, first debuted around this time last year on FIFA 09. Players buy packs which contain cards: players, coaches, training bonuses, home and away jerseys, home grounds, and more. The player uses these to build out his squad and must make sure to pay close attention to his team’s chemistry, a major tenant of the Ultimate Team game mode. By placing players in their preferred positions, playing them in their preferred formations, and playing them adjacent to peers of the same nationality, league, or club, a team’s chemistry rating is boosted.

Ultimate Team is a welcome addition to FIFA, especially this far past the game’s launch. Is it much different than last year’s version? Is it little more than a money grab on EA’s part? These are valid questions, and I’ve got answers:

They ain’t lying – When the opening tutorial video extols the virtues of a good chemistry rating, Martin Tyler is not lying. A club’s chemistry weighs very heavily on the team’s performance. I ignored chemistry with last year’s edition, instead opting to just play my favorite players. The result was 11 world class players on a god-awful team. With FIFA 10 Ultimate Team, I started from the outset with an eye on my team’s chemistry. The result: I haven’t lost a match yet.

A better crowd - I ended up shelving my Ultimate Team club last year after a month or so for one real reason: it seemed that every other team out there was stacked and impossible to beat. I think there were two factors at work there, my lack of team chemistry (as mentioned above) and a system that made it just a bit too easy to pull together a World XI team. Teams I’ve matched up against so far are more balanced, showing that most managers are having to strike a delicate balance between player quality and chemistry.

I just want to kick Dustin’s ass - I still can’t play a friend in FIFA Ultimate Team. This option was a glaring omission in last year’s edition – apparently not glaring enough, however, as EA has yet to implement this simple and straightforward piece of functionality. I just want to show Dustin how much better I am at building a a team than he is. Is that too much to ask?

Like learning a new OS - The Ultimate Team menu can be a bit confusing and I imagine new users will struggle to wrap their heads around it at first. I know FIFA like the back of my hand, having played it way too much for way too long, but even I found myself scratching my head trying to find my training cards.

I see how it is - Especially as you start to build your Ultimate Team, you may get the sense that EA has balanced this game mode so that you are forced to buy packs of cards with Microsoft Points or PlayStation Network bucks. Packs can also be purchased with the coins you build up by playing UT games, but you’d have to play at least 10 games without spending any money to save up for 1 gold pack. Chances are the majority of your contracts would run out before you hit the 8th game, too. It pains me to say it, because I’m such a hopeless FIFA addict, but this makes Ultimate Team feel just a bit like a money grab.

FIFA 10 Ultimate Team is a more polished and more well rounded older brother to last year’s edition of the mode. Core functions like team chemistry, team training, and squad management have all been improved and balanced more efficiently. In the end, Ultimate Team is a game mode that delivers a ton of fun, the potential for hours of customization, and, of course, the joy of pwning some Euro snob Brit with a team of Americans. Okay, that last part is just me. But to each his own.

It has to be said that you will spend some cash on this mode, not just the initial couple bucks it takes to download it, but in the price of packs for cards. As I said, the game is tilted so that you’ll have to spend cash on cards, there’s no real way around it. It can feel like a cash grab at times. But FIFA is my favorite game on the shelf, hands down. Splashing out a couple bucks here and there for more than just new content, for a new game mode, is something I’ll gladly do.