FIFA 13 Skill Games Day 1: Passing

FIFA 13 has 24 Skill Games that should perfect your shooting, improve your passing, and make you an all-round better player. If they don't, you might just be beyond help.

They're divided into 8 categories, including shooting, dribbling, and free kicks. In each one you'll be able to earn a bronze, silver, and gold level by fulfilling different challenges.

This week we're going to show you all of them on IGN, starting with that absolute fundamental: passing. The 6 videos below teach you how to play a variety of balls, from tiki-taka passes designed to eviscerate defences to lofted Beckham-esque balls that fall from the heavens.

Ground Pass

In this first drill, you simply need to pass the ball to several targets dotted around the pitch. You'll learn how to vary the amount of pace put on the ball to reach your desired target.

Increase your accuracy by threading passes between narrow gates towards targets.

Same as the last drill, but this time pesky defenders are lurking to intercept your laser passes.

Lob Pass

It's time to get out the bins. Dozens of them, in fact. In this first drill, you'll learn how to vary the length of lofted passes. Get into a big or small bin to net some extra points.

There's more to passing than simply hitting it as hard as you can. This skill game teaches you how to 'drive' a lob pass into a target and how to spread play left and right onto the flanks.

And to claim gold, you must take on the Crossbar Challenge! See how many times you can hit the bar as the clocks ticks down. If you hit it, you'll move further out. Can you hit it from the halfway line? We did.

FIFA 13 is out on all major platforms on September 25 in the UK and September 28 in the US.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. That's him in all the Skill Game videos above. Didn't he do well? Follow him on IGN and Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com

Defiance: Sticky Grenades and Alien Aides

Trion has shown off how you can quest and kill in the open world and take part in Defiance. For this particular round of previews, arena PvP combat was on display. Using your regular PvE character, you’ll be able to queue up for matches while running around in the overworld and then magically transport yourself into maps that can range from fights between small teams to bigger 32 player contests that allow for vehicle use.

Defiance’s weaponry includes the conventional and the strange. You can run around with shotguns and assault rifles, or switch to a grenade launcher that lobs up to five sticky explosives that can be detonated by reloading the gun. While this is great for setting traps around stages, the bombs also stick to players, which means it could be wise to time the detonation so it coincides with the moment the affected player runs into a group of his friends. Alternatively, if a player sees there’s a bomb stuck to his clothing, he could run at you, making it impossible to detonate the bomb without dealing damage to yourself as well.

By equipping a beam weapon you become a significant threat, as its damaging energy discharge rapidly drains the health of any enemy it touches. By using its alternate fire, you turn into a healer, and can serve your team most effectively by pairing up with others and scouring the map for enemies as part of a pack. The strangest weapon on display fired blobs of organic goo at enemies. The blobs stuck and grew on targets, and eventually burst, spilling Half-Life-like headcrab monsters onto the ground. These creatures then scurried around the map for a limited time and attacked any hostiles in range.

In addition to weapons, you’ll have special abilities like cloaking fields and speed bursts and decoys to help escape from and distract opponents. The map included in the demo had plenty of hiding spots and few wide open spaces, making it easy to escape around a corner and throw off a pursuing enemy by tossing out a decoy in the opposite direction. Near the map’s center was a raised platform that gave a view of most of the map; an excellent place for snipers to sit and pick off any down below. Getting up to the platform was risky, though, as it required you climb up an exposed ladder at a slow pace, making you an easy target for any in the area.

If you’d rather play on larger maps with vehicles, you’ll find many machines can accommodate multiple players at once. One could drive while another could operate a rocket turret, so it seems the flow of combat on each map could differ quite significantly. While on foot, the game played just like you’d expect a third-person shooter to, which perhaps didn’t really highlight what are Defiance’s most interesting aspects – the fact that it’s not only a third-person shooter, but also an MMO. Still, it’s yet another way to play, in case you’re looking for combat that’s a bit more structured than the chaos of the open world.

Source : ign[dot]com