2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Developer Tips

by Santiago Jaramillo

With the World Cup kicking off soon, players around the globe are gearing up for it with virtual tournaments, courtesy of EA's 2010 FIFA World Cup. It's quite a different game from FIFA 10, however, so if you're having trouble taking your chosen team to victory, a few pieces of sage advice from the team may make all the difference. We recently sat down with Santiago Jaramillo, lead gameplay producer for 2010 FIFA World Cup, and asked him to hit us with some must-know tips. Here's what he had to say.

Taking Penalties

Santiago Jaramillo: "Probably the most important new thing to learn in World Cup is penalties, because it's a brand new system, and taking them is more difficult. The first step would be to learn the timing of the aim, so go into practice mode, toggle the aim on and get familiar with it, so that you know how long to hold it in a particular direction to keep it on net."

Saving Penalties

Santiago Jaramillo: "For saving penalty kicks, a good tip is to keep in mind that for the first time you now have to choose whether you dive early—or rather, you commit to a save direction - or you react to the shot. That's something we'd never had. And one thing to keep in mind is that when you commit early, it helps you get all the way to the post, but it's also going to decrease the coverage you get for shots that go closer to the middle of the goal, so unless you think that the kick-taker is going to really try and hit something very near the post, you should try and do a reaction dive instead, because the keeper's going to be more likely to save shots with their legs and you'll have more coverage around the middle of the goal."

The crazy new penalty mechanics replaced the ball with a watermelon and the goal with a rainbow. It took players a while to adjust.

The Right Man for the Job

Santiago Jaramillo: "For the game in general, but especially for set pieces—get the right guy in the right situations. Don't try free kicks with your defensive mid-fielder that doesn't have a lot of free kick accuracy. Don't try fancy chip shots and Panenka-type penalties with John Terry or something like that. Use the right guys in the right situations. World Cup is a lot more personality-based than FIFA 10 is, so if you start taking free kicks with bad guys it's most likely never going to go on target, or it's just going to be much more challenging. It's the same thing with penalties."

Finesse Shots

Santiago Jaramillo: "We completely retuned the finesse shot, so there's a lot more variety in the trajectories and again it's a lot more attribute-driven, so you have to be composed when you're trying finesse shots. It's no longer as easy to get that top corner goal with any guy from the top of the D outside the box. There's more error, but there's more variety in the trajectories. It's more based on how much you power up... and there was less variety in outcomes in FIFA 10. The tip in the finesse shot is—if you're close to the goalie and the goalie's coming out, power up as little as you can so that you keep it low on the ground—that's a type of finesse shot that you just didn't have in FIFA 10, but we have it in World Cup. So keep it on the ground because for keepers it's harder to get low fast when they're rushing out. That will help you slot the ball bottom corner and score more goals."

Finesse it! *shakes fist*

Chip Shots

Santiago Jaramillo: "The chip shot is completely retuned as well, so again, use the right player for it—don't try chip shots with players who have bad finishing attributes, because you're probably going to miss. You want to power up about 40-ish percent if you're inside the box. If the keeper's out of position and you want to do it from outside, then you want to do a little bit more than that, maybe 50 - 60-something. That was trying to solve the problem in FIFA 10 where you could almost score a chip shot every time the keeper came out. Now it really matters how much weight you put on the ball and who you're doing it with."

Penalty Chip Shots

Santiago Jaramillo: "For penalties, you'll notice that the composure bar has a green area to it. You really want to make sure that you hit that whenever you're going to try a chip shot because if it's anywhere outside of that the error goes up exponentially, and the animation that the kick taker uses changes to a bit of a stutter, which gives away the fact that it's going to be a chip shot. If you want to completely hide the fact that that's what you want to do - which is what a successful player would do, like Zidane in the last World Cup, when he scored against Italy, before he got sent off - you really need to master it. You need to use the right player, so that you have a big enough composed region, and time it right so it hits that green region, and don't power up too much, because the [probability of] error is higher on the chip shots."

Switching Wings

Santiago Jaramillo: "We have the driven lob in World Cup, and what that allows you to do, more so than in FIFA 10, is to switch the play from wing to wing, so it's no longer just a lob pass, and you do that by powering up X."

Centre. Passes to wing. Passes to centre. Centre holds it, HOLDS IT, HOOOOLLLDS IT!

Contextual Skill Moves

Santiago Jaramillo: "We have a bunch of new skill moves, but something that we wanted to do was make skill move controls so that they were contextual, outside of using the right stick and the trigger, so with high skill players—players that have five star skill moves—you can do the Ronaldo chop, not with the right stick, but just by doing a fake shot and holding the left trigger and exiting 90 degrees, 45 degrees. That's going to give you that same move, and it just feels more responsive, because you don't have to do all the right stick movements, so if you have players that are really good on the ball, such as David Villa or Robinho, you can really beat defenders that way."

Crossing the Ball

Santiago Jaramillo: "We adjusted the crossing trajectories for World Cup, compared to all the FIFAs before. It's a lot more attribute-driven, so if you have a good crossing attribute—someone like Beckham, even though he's not going to play in the World Cup, but [the point is that] people with high crossing attributes are going to get different trajectories on the ball so they're more driven, and they try to put the ball at a speed and trajectory that only your guy can get to. Obviously there's error involved—it's not just an on/off switch, but as you're being the manager and putting the players in different positions, keep in mind the crossing attributes for those wingers and for those fullbacks so that you're more successful at crossing the ball in."

Open wide for some SOCCER!

Context Matters

Santiago Jaramillo: "There's probably no other event in the world where penalties mean as much as they do in the World Cup, and where people have cracked under pressure, so keep in mind that having the right players taking the crucial penalties pays off because you're going to have more of a sweet spot - because of their penalties attribute. Also keep in mind that the speed of the needle that you have to stop depends on the circumstance, so if you're going to take a penalty in the final of the World Cup it's going to be a lot more difficult than if you're taking one in the group stage, or if you're already winning the match, so all these little subtleties and details add up to you, as the manager of your team, really making the right decisions on who you ask to step up in the crucial circumstances."

Winning the Online World Cup

Santiago Jaramillo: "This is a game where we've tried to make it so you have to stay more composed. If you try to keep the ball and play the easy passes and take possession away from your opponents online, then they seem to get a lot more rattled when they have the ball and turn the ball over more often because they don't have it that often, so I think keeping possession is a big one, as it is in a real life World Cup. And then take your chances when you get those one on ones with goal keeper."

Why aren't they wearing Australian uniforms? I don't understand...