It’s been a bit of a tatty couple of years when it comes to the big ol’ debate as to which football game is the better out of Pro Evo and FIFA, mainly due to the former’s developers Konami getting themselves tied up in knots and chucking out some pretty sub par efforts. This year, however, it seems like Konami might have sorted themselves out, so it was upon EA’s shoulders that the mantel of being the reigning champion trying to stave off a resurgent rival fell.

FIFA 09 comes packaged in a lovely box with Goofy and Mr. Potato Head on the cover, and features the kind of presentation and graphical splendour you’d probably now take for granted in an EA Sports title. Things that most football fans dreamt of years ago – i.e. proper fabric effects on the kits, Martin Tyler and Andy ‘Oooooh you beauty!’ Gray on commentary duty and fluid, realistic player animation are all loaded in here to savour, but we’ll get to that lot later as it was always going to be the footy behind all of this that made or broke how 09 was going to do. Thankfully, it’s much more a case of the former.

See, FIFA 09 is a thinking man’s game, following on from 08 which both started heading down the slower, more tactical avenue (I personally found Euro 2008 rather quicker). You can still make the odd run through players before smashing it into the top corner and running off screaming like a tit, but chances are that if you’re not controlling Torres, Kaka or Ronaldo (the thin one) then you’re going to either see you shot zipping hilariously wide or you’ll get caught by a trailing defender. C’est la vie I guess.

So, the onus falls upon pinging the ball about into space and creating your own space in which to work. The AI marking on 09 is rather tight and hence you’ll often find yourself often passing the ball back and across from midfield and defence whilst you wait for your moment to slice a decent effort between to marking players or such. It’s enjoyable, and it’s made more realistic this season by the players having their own weighting that affects collisions more realistically. Run into celebrated fatboy Frank Lampard whilst controlling Jermain Defoe, for example, and more often than not (though not always) you will come off worse.

Other small changes don’t have quite as big an impact, but change the game nonetheless. Players feel more responsive and can ping off one-touch passes much more fluidly than before, although by the same token crossing still feels a bit of an inexact science and will see you aiming, tapping the cross button and hoping that the ball will go in the correct general area. The general blurb that preceded the game promised improved ‘keeper intelligence too, but to be honest they weren’t all that bad in 08 so any differences are barely noticeable.

The classic mode is, thus, great fun to play matches with, and pretty quickly you get used to the little touches and tactics that can help (but won’t guarantee) more goal scoring opportunities. Flicking the right analogue stick around a little whilst tapping a shoulder button gets your selected player to perform a couple of neat tricks such as dragging the ball back and then flicking it off to a team mate, and it’s plenty enjoyable. Goal scoring is much more rewarding too, and the odd 30-yard curler will find its way in if all the stars are aligned. Oh, and should you wish to, you can assign various tactical settings to the D-pad and have them kick in at various stages of the game when you see fit. Neat.

There are a couple of niggly little issues with the game, mind, so it would only be proper of me to mention them. For some reason unbeknownst to myself, players occasionally see fit to give up their runs and instead turn sideways and scuttle rather like a crab, which is amusing once but bloody annoying if it stops you chasing a perfectly-timed through ball. On another more tactical note, wing play is rather tricky due to the crossing being, as already mentioned, somewhat inexact, so passing it into the middle seems to be a much better tactic even if you do have a couple of handy wingers. They are niggles rather than major flaws, but they’re still frustrating.

Of course, 08 also saw the debut of the Be A Pro mode, which took what Libero Grande did back in the late 1990s and allow you to control one player during a match whilst the camera follows at an zoomed-out over-the-shoulder view. This season it’s been expanded to cover four years in career form, and again it’s fun for the most part. It isn’t, however, without its faults.

Take my career as a central midfielder as example. Now, central midfield is a pretty tricky place to ply your trade, granted, and you do have to pelt around pretty much everywhere tackling, passing and crossing (even shooting if you get a rare chance), but there are times when you find yourself out of position (denoted by little yellow arrows at your player’s feet) with very little you can do unless you have the running pace of Usain Bolt. You thus find yourself getting marked down for positional play even if there is sod all you can do, and even though getting used to your role can alleviate it slightly, it never really eases up.

Another issue that affects the single player form of Be A Pro is that your AI team mates are, rather depressingly often, a little on the stupid side. In my first couple of games for Liverpool reserves I managed to slot Voronin clean through about half a dozen times, only for the big goon to then go and miss. You could argue that this is entirely realistic given that it was Voronin, but it still frustrates. You can also call your players to pass to you if you think that you are in a decent position, but if the buffoon dinks it straight to an opposing player you get marked down, even if it wasn’t your fault.

Still, the pleasing thing about the mode is the progressive nature of it, and that you can create yourself as a player and then upgrade your stats with attribute points earned through good performances. Your player starts off in the reserves and, should you do well enough, works his way up to the first team and then possibly even on to international duty. Something that harms the sense of progression a little is that, even from early doors in the reserves, you play in front of large packed stadiums anyway, but hey, it’s a minor issue.

The big thing about Be A Pro for 09, though, is that you can take it online with up to 19 other players in huge 10-on-10 games. A bit of play testing found lag issues to infrequently occur and also made it clear that, at this early stage, very few teams of 10 actually exist, but gathering together a group of mates on one team and taking on other squads from around the world is great fun. It’s safe to say given the competitive nature of the sport that you do team up with some mates, though – misplaced passes and idiotic shots are the nature of the mode, so if you are with randoms then you’ll have to live with the stick you get. There’s also the option to set up online leagues for you and your buddies, and a lounge option where you play off against other players in handicap games (starting a goal to the good, for example) in order to earn points and badges for the overall leaderboard.

Other options do exist of course, including tournament and league offerings, as well as a manager mode in which you tinker with spending limits and such to avoid getting the sack. The game pretty much throws everything into the mixture and allows you to do whatever you want, be it a Premier League season, a one-off Plymouth vs. France friendly or a random national team tournament. The selection of teams is, as you’d have guessed, vast, and the squad lists are pleasingly up-to-date, so you’ll have Robinho at City, Riera at Liverpool and The Incredible Sulk moving from Spurs to Man Utd.

On top of this, EA have introduced something called Adidas Live Season, which sees player stats and form being tweaked around by EA as the real life season takes place. You get a league of your choice free until the end of this current season whilst extra ones (including Spain, Germany and Italy) cost a one-off fee (about £5), and it’s a pleasing addition to have if you’re particularly keen on keeping your game updated. Hopefully this means that at some point Dirk Kuyt will come good in real life and I’ll get a decent right winger to play with, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Tracking back to presentation, the one thing you can say about FIFA 09 is that it’s rather lavish. All the important players sport a good likeness (including Torres, who is made to look like a mad human/frog hybrid on Pro Evo games), whilst the pitchside scenery and even the pitch itself look the part. You really notice the detail in replay mode with the ball spinning and swerving about in mid-air and the new rippling authentically when you hit it, and it really absorbs you into what you’re doing. The commentary is provided, as said earlier, by Sky Sports’ Martin Tyler and Andy Gray, and during quieter moments of play they’ll ramble on about the clubs involved and generally provide an excellent audio accompaniment to the action.

All added up, it certainly feels as if EA have gone and taken a first-half lead against Konami with 09. Whether the Japanese footy nutters can step up to the plate and nod in an equaliser on release next Friday remains to be seen (let’s hope so – competition drives improvement after all), but for the time being we’re left what is a tip-top footy title for fans to delve into, tinker with and play with others whether it be local or online. It’s not perfect, sure, but with a couple of tweaks and some much welcome improvements and additions to the modes on offer, EA have certainly done more than merely tread water, and that’s something to celebrate in itself.