FIFA 10 Ultimate Team Review: Should You Buy It?

Yay! FIFA 10 Ultimate team is here. I had to pleasure of downloading Ultimate Team for Xbox 360 and playing straight for hours. It is highly addictive just like last year’s edition. Without further ado, let’s check it out.

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Introduction to FIFA 10 Ultimate Team

FIFA 10 Ultimate Team enables players to manage one or multiple squads simultaneously, and compete against others in dynamically updated online tournaments. Featuring over 7,500 of the best soccer stars in the world, gamers can emulate the way real-world coaches and managers build the truly great soccer teams.

Choose how to manage your team by focusing on creating one formidable squad, or managing multiple squads to match dynamic requirements for tournaments and competitions. Buy, sell, trade and acquire the biggest stars to build your team. Be strategic and tactical in preparing your squads for the various in-game competitions. A redesigned chemistry system built around player relationships on the pitch means that managing teams and squads to their full potential is critical to success. (Source: Avault)

Buying FIFA 10 Ultimate Team

Unlike other FIFA 10 modes, I had to purchase Ultimate Team as a separate add-on. EA Sports cut the price of Ultimate Team in half to put it in the hands of more gamers.

Why Did EA Sports Cut the Price in Half?

It’s no accident that obtaining coins is MUCH different than FIFA 09 Ultimate Team. EA Sports made Ultimate team cheaper to hopefully get more gamers to download the add-on. They LOSE money on the front end, hoping to earn a ton of money on the backend as gamers purchase points using their credit cards. Brilliant EA! Maybe your streak of posting a profit loss for 12 consecutive quarters will end this year….Only kidding

Ultimate Team costs:

• 400 Microsoft Points (Approx $5 US Dollars)
• or $6 on the PSN Network.

I purchased 500 microsoft points using my credit card, and was given access to the FIFA 10 Ultimate Team Downloads. Ultimate team comes in 3 different language packs:

• Ultimate Team in English
• Ultimate Team in Spanish
• Ultimate Team in French

I downloaded the English pack which took about 10-15 minutes to download. The file was about 400+ MB in size. Perhaps my connection was low. Oh well…

FIFA 10 Ultimate Team First Impressions

The first thing you’ll notice is a much different interface. It’s much cleaner, and contains more content in the screen. FIFA Soccer blog does a good job of comparing and contrasting FUT 09 vs. FUT 10 in terms of looks:

The first change you will immediately notice is the new interface. Whilst the top level of the “tree system” is still in effect, you have a lot more control over things. For example, if you want to change out a player in your squad for a stored card (more on that later), you only need to press a few buttons and the player is replaced. Last year involved a lot of up/down scrolling, and in fairness with the amount of cards you hold and need to work through it will always be like this to a degree, but at least this year we get to scroll left/right instead. We also have a badge of honour which shows how long you have been playing Ultimate Team for, those of us who have been playing since day 1 on Fifa09 will be given a “founder” badge, whilst others will have to make do with the month and year they started. (Source: FIFA Soccer Blog)

My Collection Replaced with My Club

You can no longer store cards in your collection to earn coins. Instead, you place them in My Club, giving you access to any players in less than 3 clicks. Your players are stored and separated by Country, League, and Club. It makes sense to discard or trade extra cards, however you can store a ton of extra in My Clubs if you wish to build more than 1 squad.

Player Rating System is Very Different

Last year, it was very easy to apply training cards to boost a player’s rating. You could turn any player into 99 perfectly rated player, giving UT a very arcade feel. In ’10, training cards only benefit the player for the next game, adding a ton of realism.

Real Time Auction Bidding + Snipe Proof

The auction system is vastly different. You can no longer snipe an auction within the last 15 seconds. Any bids in the last 15 seconds automatically give other gamers another 15 seconds to bid higher than you. There’s also secondary controller feedback in the form of vibrations to reinforce the crucial auction ending time.

Playing a Match in Ultimate Team

I headed over to the Play Match tab and there are 3 different game modes:

• Tournaments: Enter tournaments to win coins and trophies. Tournaments have entry requirements and rules before entering. You have to win a Single Player tournament first to unlock online tourneys. When you win a tournament, you receive a trophy for your My Club along with a huge coin bonus depending on the tourney and difficulty.
• Single Player Match: Play offline against a random club to practice your skills and perfect your formations/lineups. Single player match is the most boring mode in my opinion. I rarely play it.
• Online Match: Play online against other gamers and compete against them.

The tournaments mode is the most fun because it adds the extra drama of a knock out round match to the story. Single Player matches are a waste of contracts in my opinion. Online matches are ok, but you have to be careful because you can burn contracts while losing in the process. If you quit, you receive a negative coin modifier.

Managing Your Ultimate Team Squad

You can now create multiple squads and manage more players than ever. Perhaps you want to create a 1st team and reserve lineup? I created a reserve team to train so I can scout prime talent that isn’t on my 1st squad. Cool, huh?

When you select a player, you can:

• Apply a training or healing card
• Swap with other players in your My Club book
• Send the player to the trade pile
• Bench players for good
• or Discard for a small sum of coins

New Team Chemistry Ratings

Another brand spanking new addition is the improved Team chemistry system. In ’09, you gained chemistry through sharing the same formation. Now several factors affect your team chemistry including:

• Preferred Player Position
• Preferred Player Formation
• Nationality
• Club Leagues
• and Linking

For Instance, let’s say Xavi prefers to play as a CM in a basic 4-4-2 formation. You want to surround Xavi with other 4-4-2 players and his country mates or other La liga players. When a player shares the same nationality or league as another, you create a green link between the players. This will boost your team chemistry rating greatly.

Hiring a Manager

Your manager adds Contract and Team talks ratings to your squad too. Hiring a manager that uses the same formation as your squad will boost your team chemistry as well.

Applying Items

Any items you receive via packs or trading can be used to boost moral, fitness, or various skills for the next game. You can add all these things within 2 clicks. Much improved.

Can You Use Your Virtual Pro?

No. Ultimate team is a completely separate gaming mode. It would be very cool if FIFA 11 allowed you to integrate your VP, but it sounds really difficult to program. Your virtual pro must turn into a trading card. So what if you ran out of coins or contracts? Would your VP be deleted? There are too many bag things that can happen when you mix them together.

Purchasing Items at the Ultimate Team Store

One of the best ways to obtain new cards is to purchase packs. Packs contain players, coaches, training bonuses, home and away jerseys, home grounds. Each pack contains 12 cards and there are 6 different pack levels:

• Bronze Packs: 500 coins
• Premium Bronze Packs: 750 coins
• Silver Packs: 2,500 coins
• Premium Silver Packs: 3,750 coins
• Gold Packs: 5,000 coins
• Premium Gold Packs: 7,500 coins

There are two ways to purchase packs: Use coins, or buy Microsoft points or PSN network points. Once you select a pack, you have your choice of 10 different packs to open. This new feature adds a bit of mystery to the process of buying packs. There’s a rumor going around the FIFA community about buying the 8th pack. Sounds like a bunch of BS to me. In my experience, getting a rare player is mostly luck with buying packs.

Which Packs Give You the Best Players?

If you want to add stars to your club, focus your attention on Gold and Premium Packs. They cost 5,000 & 7,500 coins respectively. However, the chances are obtaining a world class player are slim. I purchased over 20 Gold packs in 24 hours, and the best player I received was only a Guti CAM.

Ultimate Team Trading

Another great way to score some awesome cards is through the trading network. You can search for specific cards, trade your own cards for coins or other players, and add items to your watchlist. If you snipe the auctions ending within a few minutes, you can score some amazing cards for a very low cost.

My Club Feature

My club is basically where you store all the Ultimate Team items you have collected. Navigating your club is tedious and a pain in the butt. What are the chances of competing your full My Club? Assuming you have a life outside of Xbox 360 and Ps3? Zero.

MY FUT

Here, you can:

• View player stats for your clubs
• Watch FIFA 10 Ultimate Team Tutorials to help you improve
• View EA Sports credits
• or Delete Your Ultimate Team (yikes!)

Ultimate Team tutorials are fun to watch and helpful. Player stats feature shows who is contributing to your squad and who is burning coins without doing a damn thing.

3 Easy Ways to Get Coins in Ultimate Team

Some people think it’s harder to obtain coins in Ultimate Team 10. Yes, it’s no longer possible to sell 99 rated cards at 50k coins, but you still have plenty of opportunities to earn coins. The top 3 ways are:

• Pay for coins: If you have the cash, then come out of pocket to get your coins. However, I recommend buying xbox live points or PSN network points through Amazon. You will get more points for every dollar, plus you avoid any emotional Xbox Live purchases at 2am in the morning.
• Win Tournaments: Tourneys have the highest coin payout out of all matches
• Become a Salesmen: Find deals in the marketplace and exploit them. Search for a specific player whose selling WAY below market value. Buy him, then resell at a higher price for profit. It’s like running your own Ultimate Team business. With all the extra coins, you can buy your dream team, more packs, or just enjoying the rich FIFA 10 lifestyle.

Selling items will yield you the most coins for the smallest time investment. We all know how boring it is to play in those easy tournaments against the CPU. But you can still earn A TON of coins this way if you have the patience.

Greedy gamers bid SUPER HIGH prices just to get a brand name star. Be patience. Don’t buy cards for the sake of buying cards. Use the watch list feature to isolate good deals then wait for the auction to near the ending time. The patience will be rewarded with deals. The greedy will get slaughtered.

Hey, Where’s Play a Friend Mode?

Ea, We want to play our friends so we can kick the crap out of them. Get it? I could go on a rant, but why not let someone else take care of this. Andrew says:

I just want to kick Dustin’s ass – I still can’t play a friend in FIFA Ultimate Team. This option was a glaring omission in last year’s edition – apparently not glaring enough, however, as EA has yet to implement this simple and straightforward piece of functionality. I just want to show Dustin how much better I am at building a a team than he is. Is that too much to ask? (Source: MMOMFG)

EA Sports, please listen. We want Play a Friend feature in FIFA 11 Ultimate Team. You’re making millions of dollars off Ultimate Team, and I can’t even beat the hell out of my online friends.

Tips to Improve Your Ultimate Team Quickly

As I’m writing this, you guys are searching for tips to improve your Ultimate Team quickly and easily. I’m currently working on a FREE FIFA 10 Ultimate Team Strategy Guide that will contain a ton of good info, but give me a couple weeks to finish it. In the meantime, here’s a few good tips that you can apply now.

• Maximize your coins earned per game by understanding how the coins system works. FIFA tricks has an awesome Ultimate Team Calculator that does this in a snap!
• Pick 1 Formation and Stick to It. Then build a squad of players that like your default formation
• NEVER play Single Player matches. It wastes contracts, plus you can earn more coins by entering Single Player Tournaments because of Man of the Match and Tournament multipliers
• Snipe auctions in the last couple minutes to get bargains
• Hold on the players for as long as possible. You develop chemistry and can use training cards to get High Value players for much less than the trading marketplace

How to Get The Best Players in Ultimate Team

Let’s face it. Everybody wants Messi and C. Ronaldo on their squad. So how do you do it? There are 2 ways I can think of:

• Save a bunch of coins and buy them
• or Buy high demand players at a low price then flip them for profit

Either way, you need to earn A LOT of coins to afford the best players. You are wasting your coins if you hope to acquire them via packs. Packs are great for getting some trade bait to make coins. Otherwise, buying packs with your hard earned coins is inefficient.

Final Verdict on Ultimate Team

• Improved Trading Search
• No More 99 Player rating cheats
• Improved Team Chemistry
• More Realistic Team Training
• More Customization Options
• More Tournaments
• Live Auction Bidding

Warning! It’s highly addictive. I really like Ultimate Team, and I think it’s the most fun game mode in FIFA 10. It sucks that Ultimate Team always comes out so late because I only play it for around 6 months until FIFA 11 releases. Oh well, What are you waiting for? Get Ultimate Team Now!

If You Could Make The Perfect Ultimate Team, Who Would Be On It and Why?

My current Ultimate Team is above average at best. I believe in saving up coins to grab great auctions deal when they come by.

My Ultimate Team

• Formation: 4-4-2
• Defenders: Camara – Tasci – Distin – Seitardis
• Midfielders: Emmauelson – Caserta – Obodo – Saliham
• Forwards: Webo – Perea
• GK: Bruno

Reader Question: If You Could Make The Perfect Ultimate Team, Who Would Be On It and Why?