Owls vs. Blades - FIFA 08!

Vital SWFC forum member Paul Statham ('Placebo') was lucky enough to get his hands on a copy of EA Sports Fifa08, so he took the opportunity to play a Sheffield derby match! Here's his report..

Yesterday I went to GCA in Singapore to take a look at Fifa08 on the Xbox 360. I got talking to an EA producer there who challenged me to a match: he suggested Premiership teams but I was having none of that, I told him I wanted to (of course) be the mighty Owls, so he decided to be the not so mighty United to make it a proper derby.

The default starting line up for Wednesday is: Grant, Simek, Watson, Wood, Spurr, Johnson, Whelan, Lunt, Small, Burton, Jeffers. Unfortunately the roster isn't updated with Esajas and Sodje yet.

The match kicked off and I struggled to get the hang of the controls (not the configuration I'm used to) and I ended up giving away a penalty with Simek after only 3 minutes. Fortunately Grant saved it low and to his right, unfortunately I didn't clear the rebound and United ended up scoring anyway.

After 17 minutes it was 2-0 to the Blades, left footed daisy cutter into the bottom left corner of the goal, scored by Rob Hulse. It wasn't overly powerful but it was exactly in the bottom left corner and the sort of goal you think the keeper might have saved but in reality he just couldn't quite get down to it quickly enough. Hmm..

I pretty much dominated the rest of the match and put together some really nice attacking moves, swift short passing triangles and through balls on the wings, sadly just like real life lately, I had no end product and the closest I came was a Frannie Jeffers header crashing off the bar.

Lee Hendrie got sent off for a second yellow card after 74 minutes but the 10 men of Bramall Lane held on for the victory!

I noticed the lineup in Fifa08 includes a lot of the Wednesday youngsters such as Rocky Lekaj, Mark Beevers and Sean McAllister.

I ended up by using Yoann Folly in 'the arena' which is the part of Fifa where you can practice shooting and skill moves and stuff: as I was filming it with my mobile phone I was trying to pull off the tricks with just one hand on the controller so it was a little difficult!

I've posted an extensive hands on as well as doing a Q&A - more info here. There are some videos to look at too.

Sounds like Paul had a whale of a time - all you gamers out there, check it out. Shame about the result though, Paul, must try harder next time!

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