Any excitement for Fifa 10?

It's really good, but it'd be better if bits of it weren't kind of broken.

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/10527888

They're an easy target from a bit closer in too, as demonstrated by my Virtual Pro, and lesson in why you should never name players after a few lagers, Krazi de la Horso:

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/10531127

You can do much the same thing from a straighter position, flighting the ball lower than that to clear a keeper diving at your feet.  Still not sold?  How about this from the always pronounceable Armann Bjornsson, knocking in an 89th minute winner against Leeds United (an idea we can all get behind, yes?) that I messed up a little but the Russian linesman gave anyway:

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/10526363

This doesn't count, really, but it's going in anyway.  David Foley against Leyton Orient:

http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/10529555

The point of interest here, one you'd see much more clearly from one of the many other cameras I viewed this replay from, isn't that I've accidentally scored straight from a corner, but that the ball has gone straight through the goalkeeper's hands.  Not straight through in an oh look, it's David James kind of way.  Straight through in a hologrammatic kind of way.

The chips are a sample of the goals I scored in one session of 7 or 8 games.  I'd already scored a few similar goals when the thought occurred to me that if I recorded them, you could see them instead of having to try to picture them from what I said.  Whenever you're clean in and the goalkeeper is advancing, he's ripe for chipping as long as you're not off balance or stretching to reach the ball - and sometimes if you are, as the Boyd video shows - and I haven't yet found a position on the pitch or a distance from goal that counts as an exception to that.

What I'm afraid I couldn't record for posterity was the moment in Manager mode when my new left-back, signed only two games before, disappeared.  Literally vanished from the squad.  He just isn't there.  I also can't quite fathom how my goalkeeper can keep a clean sheet, make crucial late saves to win me the match and suffer a loss in form and stats for the next match, but there we are.  Doubtless there's some logic to it.

I sound like I'm whining, and...well, I am, but to focus completely on that would be to ignore a few things.  The chipping goalkeepers issue isn't one you'll always see, because it relies on you being one-on-one with him and because you'll inevitably mess up the shot every so often (note also that sometimes you'll hit it perfectly and it'll still drift wide or hit the post.  Not often, but sometimes), and the game generally is the most fun I've had with any football game.  The way the players interact with each other, what feels like a better working of the advantage rule, the realisation that if I'm sliding to block a shot and catch the man after he shoots it's not a penalty, free kicks I can make some sense of (oh, and creating your own is fun though it's too early for me to tell if it makes any difference, or how it could be exploited), the tighter control - it's a step on from last year pretty much everywhere on the pitch.

I only pay attention to the basics, though, so I haven't noticed any great changes since the demo and may well be missing something gamebreaking that others will tidy up at some stage - there are things written in deep demo analysis elsewhere that I still can't spot, even now, even if I look for them, so consider yourselves fairly briefed...