Dave wrote:I am getting tired of the CPU dominating the in-box play, particularly on set pieces. Any suggestions on how to at least get in the way of some of the CPU's headers? Another frustration is the stumbling animation my players always seem to go into every time I'm battling the CPU for a ball.
It seems in the 360 version, you have to switch players at the last moment to have a better chance of becoming the right guy. Other defenders don't seem to do as much when you hold the X-button as they used to in older versions. Even so, sometimes the defenders wait on the ball rather than attacking it, but I've had more success when I switch players while the ball is on its way. You can also move the player from his 'I'm in the right place for that ball' spot, super-cancel style, by holding the R-trigger, but personally I have more of a chance of screwing up when I do this. It could help in drastic situations, though. I don't know that the CPU has an advantage here as much as offensive players seem to, excepting maybe those defernders who have good jump and header ratings. Side backs, I find, tend to be very poor at muscling for and/ or attacking the ball in the air when defending.
The stumbling thing goes both ways, but I think the CPU reacts to it quicker and better. It drives me crazy that some button presses can be charged up like a week ago (eg. when I play a ball back to the keeper under pressure, I can hold the B-button but sometimes I must've hit an A-button in there, because he'll just pass it on the ground, and of course right to a striker), while some passes and shots are negated by a slight nudge at just the right time. Things like this indicate to me the degree to which this is a first effort of a new engine, and I'm sure we will see this tweaked and refined in future 360 and PS3 versions.
Overall, though, I am finding the degree of ball control (or lack thereof) and the influence of body position, body balance, body momentum, ball momentum, etc. to be much greater than in the old-gen version. This seems to result in bad players being much worse than they used to compared to good players. I didn't score a goal with my default ML stiffs in the first half of my season on Top Player, and proceded to get 6 new starters (at least) in the transfer period. Voila, first game after the break I win 3-0 and have now won two games on the trot with these better players. They aren't top players by any stretch, but they are at least competent, which I could not say for the default bozos. Game seems much harder to me than old-gen versions were, and as usual, the addition of decent (and soon to come good) players into my ML squad really shows off the quality of the gameplay engine.
