FIFA 13 certainly made their presence known at Gamescom today, lifting the lid off of some new, and often requested, features for the world’s best-selling sports franchise.
For Seasons mode:
- Trophy Cabinet to show off all the new hardware your club wins
- Ranked 2v2 online play
- Division Titles, which will give your club something to shoot for besides promotion
- Better star level matchmaking
For EA Sports Football Club:
- Match Day: What looks to be a spin-off on the “Live Season” mode seen in other sports titles like the NBA 2K series, Match Day looks to reflect real-world happenings in FIFA 13. Real-life injuries and suspensions will be reflected in-game, as well as player stat changes for footballers on actual hot streaks. These changes will also be reflected in-game through dynamic commentary. You’ll also see a “Games of the Week” feature in Kick-Off (exhibition mode).
For Online Clubs:
- Lots of tuning to balance players to be more realistic
- Player progress saved to EA’s servers instead of local storage, which EA hopes to use to get rid of hackers/boosters
For Football Ultimate Team:
- Special reward card packs for returning FUT players
- Re-designed main menu for FUT
- Forget tournaments, Football Ultimate Team will feature online and offline seasons (this sounds awesome!) with five different divisions (likely skill-based, I would think)
- Prizes will be given based on performance at the end of each season
- Unlock rewards can be bought, such as larger trade piles or more squads
- Fitness and morale adjusted to make them more important factors. Players now will start with neutral morale, and it’s your job to build up your club
- There will be a Team of the Week you can challenge for a big prize if you win
I’ve become a little absorbed into FIFA 12, and looking forward to the big improvements being made for 13, especially where Ultimate Team is concerned. FIFA 13 releases September 25, with the demo made available on September 11. The demo will feature 6 clubs for Kick-Off play, and will have Match Day and some of the Skill Games that are a new feature to FIFA 13.
