Brad Porteous explains Wii controls in FIFA 08

With its motion-sensing capabilities, the Wii has certainly opened up the videogame industry to an entirely new control scheme. And now, we see how it’s affected one of today’s biggest franchises, as lead producer and designer Brad Porteous gives us a crash course on the Wiimote-friendly controls of Electronic Arts‘ FIFA 08 (PS3, Xbox 360, PSP, PC, DS, Wii).

First off, Brad Porteous explains the two main control schemes in FIFA 08 – namely Advanced and Family Play. Advanced gives you the complete set of controls: motion, passing, shooting, the entire shebang. Family Play gives you a simpler one to work with, as it only requires you to pass and shoot with the wireless remote. All the player’s motion is handled by the CPU.

Pressing A passes the ball, gesturing up or down shoots the ball towards the goal. Easy? Very. And players can easily toggle between Family Play and Advanced by merely attaching or detaching the Nunchuk.

From there, Brad kicks it up a notch by talking about the more advanced tricks you can do in the game, such as chip passes, directional passing, and dribbles. These can all be learned at the game’s deep tutorial mode, called the Soccer Academy. Players looking to expand their arsenal of moves should not give this one a miss.

Finally, we get into the meat of the update – Offense Play and Defense Play. Offense involves passing and shooting, and there are many ways to do that in FIFA 08. For example, holding down A and then swinging the Wiimote to the direction of the player you want to pass to will execute a directional pass. The same can be said for shooting – as adding a curve to your goal-shot swing will apply that curve to the ball’s trajectory.

Defense is also very Wiimote-centric. The A button makes you switch between players, the B button makes your player perform a standing tackle, and a downward swing of the Wiimote translates to a sliding tackle. There’s also directional player switching, and works just the same as directional passing.

Brad Porteous ended the interview with a teaser for the more tricky of us. He mentions that holding down the C button and swinging the Wiimote in a certain way, while your character is in control of the ball, would result in that character performing some very advanced techniques. Awesome – we can’t wait to see what those moves are come the game’s October 9 release!

With its motion-sensing capabilities, the Wii has certainly opened up the videogame industry to an entirely new control scheme. And now, we see how it’s affected one of today’s biggest franchises, as lead producer and designer Brad Porteous gives us a crash course on the Wiimote-friendly controls of Electronic Arts‘ FIFA 08 (PS3, Xbox 360, PSP, PC, DS, Wii).

First off, Brad Porteous explains the two main control schemes in FIFA 08 – namely Advanced and Family Play. Advanced gives you the complete set of controls: motion, passing, shooting, the entire shebang. Family Play gives you a simpler one to work with, as it only requires you to pass and shoot with the wireless remote. All the player’s motion is handled by the CPU.

Pressing A passes the ball, gesturing up or down shoots the ball towards the goal. Easy? Very. And players can easily toggle between Family Play and Advanced by merely attaching or detaching the Nunchuk.

From there, Brad kicks it up a notch by talking about the more advanced tricks you can do in the game, such as chip passes, directional passing, and dribbles. These can all be learned at the game’s deep tutorial mode, called the Soccer Academy. Players looking to expand their arsenal of moves should not give this one a miss.

Finally, we get into the meat of the update – Offense Play and Defense Play. Offense involves passing and shooting, and there are many ways to do that in FIFA 08. For example, holding down A and then swinging the Wiimote to the direction of the player you want to pass to will execute a directional pass. The same can be said for shooting – as adding a curve to your goal-shot swing will apply that curve to the ball’s trajectory.

Defense is also very Wiimote-centric. The A button makes you switch between players, the B button makes your player perform a standing tackle, and a downward swing of the Wiimote translates to a sliding tackle. There’s also directional player switching, and works just the same as directional passing.

Brad Porteous ended the interview with a teaser for the more tricky of us. He mentions that holding down the C button and swinging the Wiimote in a certain way, while your character is in control of the ball, would result in that character performing some very advanced techniques. Awesome – we can’t wait to see what those moves are come the game’s October 9 release!