2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Preview

On the pitch the gameplay has seen some tweaks over FIFA 10

You'd imagine, though, that everyone and their dog will pick Spain, or, if they're patriotic, England. Why would anyone pick Honduras, for example? (We haven't got anything against them - Spurs' midfield bruiser Wilson Palacios hails from the Central American country after all). Well, like Euro 2008's Battle of the Nations feature, which tracked country performance across multiple game modes, World Cup's online mode will award points for winning games depending on the skill of the team you choose. So, you'll get loads of points for winning the World Cup with Honduras, or hardly any with Spain. The points you earn for winning matches with a country count towards the country's position on the overall leaderboard. Why care? Well, to find out which country has the best FIFA players in the world. Two years ago, with Euro 2008, it was France. The current FIFA Interactive World Cup champion is French. Get a move on lads.

Again, the cynics among you may think: so what? What about the gameplay, you know, the most important thing? Remember that? Well, here Humber has a problem. FIFA 10 managed an astonishing 90 review score average - deservedly so. How do you improve on that? Well, according to Humber, FIFA 10 "still had some problems". Indeed it did.

Humber lists shooting, passing, dribbling, trapping, control, positioning, the CPU AI, the physicality, the goalkeeper, the referee, set pieces and continuous play. "We've done something in every single area for World Cup," he says. Over a hundred enhancements have been made, but the one that will please fans most of all is the fix to the crazy goalkeepers. In FIFA 10, keepers would often steam off of their line, leaving them open to chip shots. That's been fixed. The chip shot itself has been made more difficult to execute. Thank goodness for that.

Other improvements focus on making play more fluid. In FIFA 10, if a player stopped to chest a lofted through ball, all of his momentum would be killed and the defender would be able to make a challenge. Now players preserve momentum through chest traps, and other moves, allowing them to keep running.

The hope is that World Cup will capture the feel of the event

Our own hands-on reveals a game that feels markedly similar to FIFA 10 - perhaps inevitably. The pitch looks great - it feels as if it has depth, as if the grass itself may impact on play. Other enhancements are less welcome. When the ball goes out, the camera often centres on a few fans in the brand new crowd. The novelty soon wears off - despite the silly haircuts and face paint - hopefully you can turn it off. In pure gameplay terms, we reckon the game feels weightier, perhaps more grounded than FIFA 10 - but it's almost impossible to notice. The game speed is exactly the same, but we did notice the new momentum system, and it improves matters. And yes, chip shots are harder, although the keepers still lose their mind on a few occasions.

The long and short of it is, World Cup 2010 will be a better game than FIFA 10 - and, ergo, there can be no doubt that it'll play a cracking game of football. And the online World Cup mode sounds the business. For us, there's something about the World Cup, the paraphernalia and blind fanaticism it brings out in us, that we just can't resist. The game surely has a place in among all of that, despite your opinion on its value. Mates, a few beers, sitting around the television watching the game - then, during half time: "Do you fancy a game?" "Sure, why not?" In our mind, that game is not FIFA 10, it's World Cup 2010.

2010 FIFA World Cup is due out on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PSP on April 30, 2010.