Sports Sunday: Hands on With FIFA 11’s Creation Centre

 

FIFA 11 doesn’t arrive in stores until the end of the month, but this week beta access to FIFA‘s Creation Centre opened up. The idea behind Creation Centre is that it will allow players to create football stars and their own unique teams to use in the game. 

 

One of the areas that the FIFA team determined they were still behind PES in was in the customization department, and Creation Centre is FIFA’s attempt to finally beat PES in that category as well, as they have literally surpassed the Konami offering in every other category. 

 

Creation Centre, which can be accessed online, is mostly great. The application, which can be used directly on any browser, enables a huge amount of customization and also offers some insight into what will determine player skill levels and personalities in FIFA 11. 

 

With my beta access I quickly created a new player to use in the upcoming game. The player, named after myself, was highly customizable in terms of statistics, but sadly not very customizable in terms of looks. Whereas the create a player option within the game allows players to adjust everything from nose length and shape to eyebrow thickness, the Creation Centre only allows for selection of a generic face paired with one of many hairstyles and several facial hair styles. While the player looks great, it would have been nice to have more customization on offer in terms of actual player looks. 

 

 

However, statistics are incredibly customizable, as mentioned earlier. I was able to easily pull and drag my statistics on everything from long passing to finishing to tackling. Furthermore, a second page of statistics enables players to control personality aspects, which will be reflected in FIFA‘s new Personality+ features. 

 

The Personality aspects range from “Does player argue frequently with referees?” to “Is he a playmaker?” It will be fantastic to see these aspects in use during the gameplay. Players known for being argumentative could see more yellow cards coming their way for pushing things too far, while other players will be suspect to increased attention from referees because of their penchant for diving. 

 

The Creation Centre also enables creation of teams, but that also leaves something to be desired in terms of customization. While you can easily choose a team name, a team stadium, and you can create an entire squad of players, you also are restricted to a generic team crest (there are a large handful to choose from). It would be great to have the ability to choose your own team logo to put on your kit. After all, NCAA Football 11‘s Create A Team feature allows players to virtually create logos, and offers huge amounts of customization through your web browser. 

 

For instance, in NCAA Football 11 I was able to recreate my alma mater Gettysburg College’s Division III college football jerseys and logos, while using Creation Centre I was unable to recreate the jersey I wore with my high school team. 

 

Creation Centre has a ton of potential, and it’s great to be able to finally create our own teams in FIFA 11, but greater customization will hopefully be integrated into the feature to allow for a more exciting range of teams, logos, and uniforms. 

 

Have you had a hand with the Creation Centre? If so, let us know what you think below.