The Backpage | FIFA 12 – IMPROVING YOUR PRO

In this week’s Backpage, football writer and FIFA fan Darren Cross reveals how to boost your Virtual Pro as quickly as possible…

I’m writing this week’s blog in a good mood as my Virtual Pro has just hit a half decent Overall Rating, or at least a significantly less crap one. Admittedly, 71 still isn’t great but it’s far better than the rating he started with and – despite being a right wing-back – he’s grown pretty quickly.

This week’s Backpage will hopefully be interesting to anyone who’s yet to create their Pro, or those of you that have a Pro but are not really sure what to do with him or how to improve him quickly.

The first thing you need to decide with your Pro is what kind of player you want him to be, and how you want him to look. This is more important than it sounds, as the playing position and body type of your player will affect his attributes.

For example, I wanted to create something as close to me as possible – a mini-me if you like – so I picked Defender for my Pro’s position with role set to Right and Playing style to Wing Back. I also went for an almost true-to-life height for my Pro (okay so I’m a virtual inch or two taller) by picking 5ft 5in.

All of these things affected my attributes.

In terms of position your ratings will be dictated by the position you choose, and so will the attributes displayed. So if you pick right wing-back like me you’ll start with higher stats for Standing Tackles, Sliding Tackles, Short Passing and Crossing than any of your other attributes. But changing your role from Right to Centre will see your Crossing and Short Passing starting stats decrease while your Marking and Heading stats will jump.

Changing your position from Defender to Midfielder will show you completely different starting stats – you’ll see ratings for Long Shots and Finishing instead of Sliding Tackle and Marking – and so on as you move through the different positions.

When you move to the next tab you’ll be able to change your Height, Weight, Body Type and Preferred Foot and, again, your choices will change your ability in certain areas.

As my player is a midget he started with 82 for Acceleration and pretty decent scores for Agility, Balance and Sprint Speed, but his Jumping was only 56 and his Strength just 55. How rude.

If I had given him a bit of extra height and weight then his Strength and Jumping stats would have increased, but this would have been at the cost of making him slower which wouldn’t really suit my playing style.

The other big thing that will influence your choices for position and appearance is how fast you want your Pro to improve.

If your goal is simply to grow a great player as quickly as you can then don’t choose a position like right-back, as you’ll see less of the ball than, say, a midfielder, so naturally you’ll have fewer opportunities to do something in a game that will boost your Pro.

Actually, for really quick growth make your Pro a midfielder or striker then change your game settings so that you get the maximum amount of assistance with your shots. This will only work for offline games, but it means you’ll score far more goals and still get the rewards even though you’re having help.

It’s a bit naughty, but I know some people do just want a world-class Pro as quickly as possible so they can join their friends online in Clubs, so the option is there.

For those of you like me that want to create a virtual version of yourself, read on because there are plenty of things you can do that will help your Pro improve even without the assistance I just mentioned.

So you’ve made your Pro and you’re in the Arena.

The first thing you’ll notice is that you’re rubbish.

The little guy can’t do anything very well right now, but what really stands out is the lack of Skill Moves. Here’s a very quick way to change that and make your Pro a 5* skills player in a short amount of time.

With the ball at your feet, start doing keepie-uppies by holding the skills modifier and pressing RB on 360 or R1 on PS3, depending on your controller settings.

After five, you’ll get a message saying you can now do 2* moves so bust out a few Stepovers plus two more 2* skill moves. The move list for all tricks is in the menus. Go to Customise FIFA, Settings, Controls, Button Help then Skill Moves to see them all.

This will unlock 3* moves, and doing two tricks like the Heel Flick and Roulette will make you a 4* skills player. You now need to do four 4* skills to get to the next level, and I found the easiest ones were the Rainbow Flick, Ball Hop, Heel To Heel Flick and Advanced Rainbow.

Congratulations, you are now a 5* player.

The bonus here is that, while doing that, you’ll have increased stats in other areas. Your Stamina is likely to have received a +1 boost, and scoring your first goal will increase your abilities too.

Next, go round the keeper with your new Elastico Chop move and score with your weak foot for a Balance increase of 2, then beat the keeper using finesse for a +1 to Finishing before tucking away your first penalty and free-kick to increase in those areas.

There are about another 20 things you can do in the Arena that will bump your Pro up, and you can check them all out by going to Accomplishments in the Virtual Pro menu. Cycle down to each accomplishment and some info at the bottom of the screen will pop up to tell you what to do to get the reward.

Now you need a club for your Pro. I wanted to start a Manager Mode Career with Malaga so I could spend some of that big chunk of cash they have, so I put my little Pro here.

He shouldn’t have got anywhere near the starting line-up as Malaga have much better options at full-back, but your Pro obviously won’t improve unless you give him games, so you’ll have to take the hit for a bit here.

I set mine to take every set piece, and he scored two pens on his debut with two assists from corners. That lot gave him a big boost. Again, have a look at the different sections in the Accomplishments book so you can see what you’re aiming for on the pitch – there are hundreds!

Personally I worked through as many of the accomplishments as quickly as I could so that I could unlock a decent pair of boots, but that may not be your priority!

Get started with your Pro and give that lot a go, oh and don’t forget to download your Gameface.

There’s something very funny about watching an exact replica of myself run off doing front flips after scoring.

Have a good week,
Darren
twitter: @Darren_Cross