Fifa 08 Practical Tips – Part IV – Free kicks

If you are a football fan, and if you play computer games, you are almost sure to be a FIFA series admirer – that is unless you prefer the PES versions. But even if you are a PES devotee, you have probably tried FIFA 08 – as it is really a great and very realistic football simulator. The gameplay is well established, the computer opponent is hard to beat (sometimes even too hard). Scoring goals is not an easy task at all.

Mastering the offensive and defensive tactics (described in "Fifa08 tactical tips - Part I" and "Fifa08 tactical tips - Part II") is almost a must, experimenting with mentality (see "Fifa08 Tactics – Part IV") and kick – takers is important. But to make you life easier, there are some in-game tricks. Those will help you to get an edge over your computer or human opponent. Taking advantage of the throw-ins ("Fifa 08 Practical Tips – Part I") delivering a successful goal kicks (("Fifa 08 Practical Tips – Part II") and corners ("FIFA 08 Practical tips – Part III") have been covered in the previous articles. Now we deal with free kicks – a really powerful tool to score.

First of all, as said in article "Fifa08 Tactics – part III", you should decide on the player that is going to take the kick. While shot power and accuracy is important, you should also consider players preferred foot. It is a lot easier to score when choosing the player with the opposing leg to the free kick place (i.e. left-legged kicker for the free kick on the right side of the goal). You can alter you defined corner taker by pressing and holding the "Through ball" button. A name of the kicker (along with his abilities and preferred foot) will appear in the corner of the screen. By pressing the arrow keys you can change the corner taker.

Well, not too much can be said here. As in previous versions, you should master the kick power (too strong will go over the bar) and curve the ball (the best way is to aim for the upper corner). If the kicker is good, you can score goals even from 30 meter kicks.

Unlike in the goal kick and corner, you cannot "call a second player" for passing by pressing the (default) "C" button. But you can improve your shooting with a layoff man. If you press the (default) "Z" button, you will see the screen blink – and afterwards there will be 2 players beside the ball. Now you can take a kick by pressing the known "D" button, or pass the ball (either high (default "A") or low (default "S") buttons respectively). But if you hold the "Z" key, you will see that it is now the primary player taking the shot/pass, but the assisting one. It can confuse the defenses (especially against a human opponent) and sometimes the layoff man has better chances of scoring because of an angle to the goal.