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The Beautiful Game
Football has often been called the beautiful game, but when it comes to FIFA ‘09 not everyone at bit-tech is perfectly convinced that that’s true. In fact, it was quite unusual to see the massively different reactions that people had to the game. While Hiren and Jamie thought it looked terrible, Harry and Tim were of a different opinion.As for Richard and I – well, we’d be more ambivalent if we weren’t so apathetic about the whole thing.
Undeniably there are some good graphical effects to see in the game. The physics we’ve already mentioned, but if you’ve got the fairly limited setting cranked all the way up then the benefit of the 3D grass for example can be perfectly tangible.
Background textures are an entirely different story and it’s a shame to see that the crowds which are so perfectly realised from an audio standpoint are visually unimpressive. Not only are the throngs apparently totally 2D, but they seem to be made predominantly of beard. Check out the rest of the graphics options below.
Level of Detail
Level of detail is the first option on the list and comes in the three usual flavours; Low, Medium and High.
FIFA ’09 Detail level on High (left), Medium (center) and Low (right), click to enlarge
At first, the effect of this setting seems to be obvious in that it purely controls the detail on the field. On the Low setting the pitch is perfectly normal, pristine and green. On the High setting it’s worn and well-trod. It’s worth saying however that this effect isn’t consistent, so it’s best to discount the amount of brown on the field as a result.
The problem though is that there effect of this setting is otherwise hard to pinpoint. Even after retaking these screenshots several times we were still struggling to establish what the effect was. As we’ll show you later though, few of the graphics settings in FIFA ‘09 show a dramatic effect – but cumulatively the result can be huge.
Post processing
In brief, post processing effects are all those filters and effects which are added to a scene once the bulk has been rendered. Typically it controls effects like motion blur, but let's see what it does in FIFA ‘09.
FIFA ’09 Post processing On (left) and Off (right), click to enlarge
It’s subtle, but there is a difference between these pictures and the best place to look is along the top of the goal and see how it blurs. With post processing on the top bar is slightly fuzzy and looks almost brighter than it should be, as if it’s out of focus and awash with HDR. The other picture however just shows a clear, definable line.
In the end, it’s a matter of personal preference as the setting doesn’t have a huge effect on performance or framerate. To us though, a crisp and more definite target is more important than having just the right amount of too-bright, inconsistent blur. Our suggestion is that you leave it off unless you’re compensating for something on the hardware front.
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