FIFA 11 is one of the most realistic sport-simulation games to date; it provides a great amount of realism, which includes the physics, graphics, sounds, and animations of the gameplay. FIFA plays smoothly and has truly outdone its predecessors and its competition - EA seems to never fail at providing new games that are a vast improvement from the previous series. FIFA 11 provides you with almost every European club and any national team that has made it to the previous world cup. That being said, there are plenty of teams to play as and each one is unique in its own way, along with its own unique players.

FIFA 11’s graphics seem so realistic that you can even see the hairs on their arms. Even with the great performance with the graphics, the game still runs at tip-top shape without any lag or video problems. The only disappointment is that the crowd is still that old 2-d pixilated crowd they have always been. EA should definitely work on making the crowd more authentic looking to make the game seem like a true soccer game. After all, it’s the fans that make the game.

The stadium sounds are a great aspect that adds to the excitement of playing in a soccer game. You can hear the crowd cheering, the ball being kicked, and the commentators sounds crystal as well as being entertaining to listen to. Another surprising factor is that you can even hear the players shouting, which you didn’t see too often in the previous versions. One option allows you to pick other languages for the commentators to speak, which is entertaining to hear other voices and accents.

One of the best features though, is the ability to play as the goal keeper called Be A Goalkeeper. Although it’s highly entertaining, it requires a lot of patience, especially if you don’t have a strong defense. For the first time in any football videogame you'll be able feel what it's like to think and react as a keeper, making great saves, defending the net from a free kick and experience the pressure of an attack play. Don't get too nervous though; there are three levels of AI assistance to ease you into the position with fully assisted, semi-assisted and fully manual. If you're serious about being a keeper you can compete as the goalie in Career Mode for a 15 year career or create yourself in Virtual Pro 2.0 to learn the position, track stats, complete achievements and test themselves against the best players in the virtual world.

Since we’re playing 11 individual players and not stick-men in foosball, EA Sports have clearly gone out of their way to add personalities to players with an outstanding feature called “Personality+”. To achieve this they utilized a network of 1700 scouts, editors and reviewers positioned around the world to evaluate each player, created a database of each player’s skill-set, evaluating over 36 attributes and 57 traits and incorporated it into the gaming engine. You’ll quickly find that the personality of every player is just perfect, and a lot more enjoyable to play since certain players have qualities that other players don’t. Some of the antics are amusing as the players animate and play just as a real player would, such as if a player gets tackled and falls to the ground and the tackle seems like a foul, he’ll sit there and make a complaining gesture towards the referee for a couple seconds, then return to play. Some “Personality+” qualities also affect the players’ game, for example some players have the quality called “Poacher” which means they can make a header better then most players, and if a cross comes around, you will be confident that the player will make it.

FIFA 11 features Pro Passing, a system that forces the player to unleash his skill and yield the power of his players on the field. You must decide correctly how much power the pass should have and too much or too little will affect how the pass travels to the player and whether or not the player will reach it in time. Some players with great skill can even curve the pass around defenders with ease in order to effectively reach the player he’s passing to.

FIFA 11 truly has the most extensive gameplay for a sports game, whether it’s anything from “Be a Pro” to 11 on 11 Xbox live matches. It has endless playability and you’ll find a great FIFA 11 gaming community online with people always playing online that are helpful and hospitable.