Fifa 12 available to download

In The Telegraph

Fifa 12 will be downloadable from 5pm BST on 24th September for all EA Season Ticket holders 6 days before it's release to shops.

EA today announced that customers signed up to their Season Ticket initiative will be able to download Fifa 12 on Xbox Live and PSN as well as taking part in an exclusive EA Sports Football Club Challenge.

The challenge in question sees you thrust into the action, playing as Chelsea 3-1 down to Manchester United in their recent Premier League match. You job is to re-write history and claw back a win for the Londoners. Admittedly not a mouth watering prospect if you happen to be a United supporter. If you do succeed you will be generously rewarded with personal XP, giving you an early points bonus in the Support Your Club rankings. Fifa 12's first Football Club Challenge will only be available until the retail release of the game so get in there fast. Just one warning, Fifa 12 is a big download so it will take approximately 5 hours to download.

Having an EA Season Ticket will also get you free access to Creation Centre for Fifa 12, allowing you to create your own players, teams, leagues and for the first time, career mode. In addition to this, a Season Ticket gets you a 20% discount on all downloadable content for FIFA 12 as well as other EA SPORTS games.

EA Season Tickets cost 2100 Microsoft Points (around £17.13), here's how to get yours:

Step 1: Install the EA SPORTS App, then launch it by selecting “Play Game” from your Game Library.

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Step 2: The EA SPORTS App counts down to the Early Release availability in real-time, starting seven days before retail availability. Note that the exact day and time varies per region.

Step 3: When the countdown timer reaches zero, the menu will update with a “Download” option. You will need to confirm the download from the Xbox 360 Guide.

Step 4: If you have not already purchased an EA SPORTS Season Ticket you will be prompted to purchase before you can download an Early Release game.

Step 5: Once you have started the Early Release download, you can exit the EA SPORTS App without interrupting the download. Just don’t power off your Xbox 360 or disconnect from Xbox LIVE. Be aware that other actions (e.g. attempting to play a different game) might pause the download.

Step 6: Once the Early Release finishes downloading you can launch it from your Game Library.

Step 7: Once an Early Release has been made available for download, the EA SPORTS App menu updates to count down the time remaining before that Early Release becomes unavailable for download.

Fifa 12

In The Telegraph

Here's how the annual sports game cycle tends to work: A new title is announced, along with its 12,000 improvements or whatever arbitrary number they stick on it, along with a list of buzzword-heavy new features (super real-world tackle machine engine plus or something), then the game comes out, us reviewers call it "the best approximation of [insert sporting event here] ever" and the crowd goes wild.

But as the months pass by, the astute game playing audience starts to notice the cracks. Problems that aren't apparent in the short-term become ever more glaring. That's what happened with FIFA 11 to a certain extent. It was, is and always will be a fabulous football game, but the drawbacks were there. Animation could often be clumsy when two players came together, physical battles felt unnatural and players could easily exploit defending by just holding down a button and watching your player gravitate into a challenge and waltz off with the ball. Career mode wasn't much cop either.

To their eternal credit, however, the FIFA team are a perfectionist bunch, and no-one is more frustrated at these foibles than them. So they listen, refine and do their best to fix the flaws that you notice, and a whole bunch you don't. That's why FIFA should retain its crown as the best approximation of football ever. Oh, shoot, now I've gone and done it..

Sitting down to a final hands-on before the big release, it's immediately apparent that FIFA 12 is the most revamped version of the game in a good few years. EA's assertion that FIFA 12 is "revolution not evolution" might be stretching the point, as it's still a largely familiar kickabout. Just as it should be.