Before we start debating about who is missing from the TOTY let us tell you which players were selected. Firstly Real Madrid’s Iker Casillas got the number 1 shirt and had his attributes boosted from 89 to 93. You can see his a full breakdown of his attributes below alongside the TOTY back four which is made up of Dani Alves, Gerard Pique, Nemanja Vidic and Sergio Ramos – all of these players now have a better overall attribute score of at least +5 compared to what they were previously.

The midfielders which were selected consist of Andres Iniesta, Xabi Alonso and Xavi Hernandez. Once again these players now have an overall attribute score of +5 compared to prior to the TOTY selection, you can see a full breakdown of attributes below. As you can see Xavi has amazing stats for passing, whilst Alonso is better at defending and Iniesta is a much better attacking option.

According to UltimateFifa.com it looks as if Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney will be the three attackers announced, currently these players have overall ratings of 92, 94 and 90 respectively, so perhaps these will also see a jump of +5, if that’s the case we could well see Messi hit an overall rating of 99/100 – how incredible is that!

If you are lucky enough to get any of these players in your packs you can rest assured knowing that they are worth a great deal in the transfer market, however we can’t help thinking that two or three players could have made the TOTY starting 11. These are Tottenham’s rapid winger Gareth Bale, Arsenal’s in-form striker Robin Van Persie and Man City’s Vincent Kompany – do you agree?

In the comments section below we would love to hear who you think should and shouldn’t have made the FIFA 12 Ultimate Team of the Year – it is thought that EA may soon announced some substitutes, when we hear more we will keep you posted.

An article over at CVG.com is reporting that EA Sports has announced it has signed probably the best player in the world. The Argentina and Barcelona star was once the face of fierce rival PES, but the publisher has revealed he is now “the global face of the EA SPORTS FIFA franchise.”

The company also said in a statement about the news “The biggest transfer deal this football season sees the FIFA Ballon d’Or 2010 winner transfer to EA SPORTS and make his debut in March, 2012 on the cover of FIFA Street”.

Barcelona’s star player will also become an EA Sports Football Ambassador and become “the cornerstone” of various advertising and marketing campaigns for the franchise. He will feature on packaging and used in social media activities around the world.

The publisher will also partner with the Leo Messi Foundation that supports educational, social, and health care initiatives for children from all over the world. Vice President and GM of Football at EA Sports, Matt Bibey, said “With Messi on our team we have the world’s best and most exciting player to help EA SPORTS maintain its global leadership in the years ahead.”

The star player said himself that he wanted to be part of the team responsible for the best football game available. He added “EA SPORTS is a brand that shares my values of creativity, excellence and social responsibility.”

At the bottom of this post we have embedded the debut trailer for the game, as you would expect the visuals aren’t as impressive as the version of the game which hit regular consoles, but that said things do look pretty smooth and the players are recognizable.

In the video EA highlight the game’s vibrant graphics, awesome animation, new control schemes and total touch mastery – we have to say that by the looks of thing this looks like it is by far the best-ever football game for a smartphone, in fact it looks a lot like the version of the game which came to the PSP. We were particularly impressed by the movement of the players (which suggests the Xperia Play’s controls are being fully utilized) and also the general speed of the gameplay.

Below we have embedded a screenshot from the video, we think you will agree that for a smartphone the players don’t look too bad, but why is an Arsenal player celebrating alongside Wayne Rooney, Patrice Evra and whoever that other Manchester United player is?

Currently there is still quite a lot we don’t know about this title, such as how much it will cost, when it will be released, what game modes there will be and whether there will be multiplayer capabilities, therefore we will have to keep you posted as we hear more.

How much do you expect to pay for FIFA 12 for Xperia Play?

The first thing which EA ask you to do is change you password immediately, also they ask you to ensure that you don’t share it with anyone, not even EA Support – the latter part of this suggests that they are aware of people falling for phishing scams. EA’s team have a list of things which they want you to respond with, firstly they need to know your FUT team name and how many coins were lost, they then want you to answer the following questions:

Have you changed your gamertag recently?

Have you contacted Customer Support for any kind of transfer recently?

When was the date and time that you noticed that the team was last intact?

When was the team lost?

Was there an system or console update when the team disappeared?

Once you send across these details the EA development team will review you situation and look into possible compensation, at the time of this post my friend had not received compensation, but things are looking more promising than they one were. When we hear more on the matter we will keep you posted, for now we would recommended changing your FUT password to something more secure than it currently is, even if you haven’t been hacked – you can test how secure your password is here.

We have to say that we are impressed by how helpful EA are being, let us know if you were compensated due to your UT being hacked, if so leave a comment below.

We are not sure exactly how this hack occurs, however one of my good friends assures me that he hasn’t opened any dodgy email etc and now has lost all of is players, he also lost 25,000 coins and tells me he had spent roughly £30 on Microsoft points on ultimate team packs. He rang EA today and they are looking into the matter, but things don’t look promising.

It is not just my friend who has experienced this, if you check out this post the same thing happened to a gamer when playing FIFA 11′s utimate team mode – he suggests he lost all of the players which £100′s worth of Microsoft Points got him, people say that it is his fault and must have not “had the correct security measures in place”, but this starts an interesting debate as lots of kids play these games, should they really need to know about phishing scams etc?

Obviously it is not EA’s fault that people have been scammed / hacked, but perhaps more measures could be put in place to avoid this, we would love to hear your suggestions and ideas in the comments section. Also please answer our poll question. Here’s some tweets which report similar issues:

1jklange – My #FIFA12 ultimate team was hacked, all my players robbed. My Higuain black card gone. I will be EA’s first call at 7 AM when lines open.

JAM_LFC – Blahh .. it seems I was hacked .. no ultimate team for me no more ..

[poll id="402"]

If you ever received a message which read “We are sorry but there has been an error connecting to FIFA 12 Ultimate Team. You will be returned to the FIFA 12 Main Menu” we can confirm that this should be a thing of the past as EA has revealed that this particular issue has been resolved. Below you can see more information about other fixes (you can see full details via this link):

Instances of Debug Text (may require locale change to take effect)
Team of the Week players appearing with “0” stats in show off links
Empty watch list
Inability to load Web App (a.k.a. Stadium Bug)
Inability to load Web App – “Ooops sorry” error upon logging in
Locked out of account, unable to regain access through CS

There are still some unfixed problems which EA’s devs are currently investigating, these include an annoying issue where disconnecting occurs at the end of matches, also one annoyance where console gamers can’t access FUT is being looked into. Finally EA has confirmed that there are bugs with the game’s custom tactics and deleting squads features – so EA has advised against using these for now.

It looks like EA has already rolled out an update to the PC version of the game, however there has been no official word on an update for PS3 / Xbox 360, therefore we will have to keep you posted as we hear more. Let us know if you have received an update in the comments below, feel free to explain whether this update has fixed bugs which you previously noticed.

Let’s start with some PC issues, as PC hardware and software varies so massively there are bound to be some problems, a recent article posted over at GameBooze lists quite a few known FIFA 12 issues and fixes for PC so it may be worth checking out.

The official EA Sports FIFA Twitter feed recently confirmed that they are looking into a known issue with the game’s ultimate team game mode, you can see the error here, the error reads “We are sorry but there is an error connecting to FIFA 12 Ultimate team” – is this something which has happened to you?

When we spoke about the Battlefield 3 beta earlier this week it was obvious that there were some problems with the EA servers, well we are hearing some reports of similar issues affecting FIFA 12 gamers, a quick search for “FIFA 12 connection” on Twitter shows that some people are experiencing lag, despite having a fast connection, whilst this tweet said this: “During a pro ranked match on FIFA 12, the screen freezes at the start of the 2nd half and I get a ‘connection lost’ message”

One minor problem which some people have emailed us regarding the referee’s kit choice, sometimes their is a kit clash between on of the teams and the referee, apaprently when QPR or Swansea wear their orange away kits the ref wears red – have you noticed any other kit clashes?

We are hearing lots of reports of people who are less than happy with the game’s tackling system, we witnessed this for ourselves – but guessed it was just a change which would take some getting used to, and shouldn’t be categorized as a problem – but with so many people struggling with this aspect of the game, perhaps it is quite buggy.

We want to hear what problems you have noticed so far, nothing is too petty, so share any issues you experience in the comments section below.

Update: Here is some official information from EA regarding fixed bugs and known issues – link

Usually we would start from the back and work our way forward, however we think people want players who can score goals – so let’s start with forwards and attacking midfielders. Firstly Lion’s forward, Alexandre Lacazette, costs just £3m and starts with a 70 rating, Racing Club’s striker, Gabriel Hauche, is even cheaper at £2.2m and he has the potential to reach a rating of 80.

There are three great attacking midfielder’s to consider, Lucas Piazon will set you back £8m in Fifa 12, but he is capable of achieving a 85+, cheaper alternatives include Panagiotis Tachtsidis who will cost £3m and Marcel Buchel who has a £4m price tag – both have the potential to reach ratings of 80+.

Another midfielder to check out is Crystal Palace’s 17-year-old, Jonathan Williams, he has a lot of potential – so much so that Chelsea are said to be keeping a close eye on him, he will easily reach 80+ in FIFA 12 and costs just £3.5m.

Scoring goals is great, but if your leaking them as well you’re not going to see much success, someone who could tighten things up at the back is Sao Paulo’s centre back, Bruno Uvini, £7m might seem like a lot, but we are told that he should be able to reach an 85+ rating. Alternative you could opt for Inter’s Simone Benedetti, he has a £6m price tag and should go toe to toe with Uvini in terms of ratings.

Finally if you are short of money but, want to concede less you may find that Feyenoord’s centre back, Terence Kongolo, will help out a lot for just £2.5m. If not you could save up and buy Ajax’s defender, Nicolai Boilesen, for £10m.

As you can see we don’t have a goalkeeper for you, therefore feel free to leave comments below with goalkeeper suggestions along with some other outfield players which you think deliver value for money.

What makes this special launch even better is the fact that Wilshere is one of the faces on the front of the box, so you will be able to have your photo taken with him and your copy of FIFA 12. However, Gigwise tells us that this will only apply to the first 80 attendees, so you had better get there early to avoid disappointment. You will only be able to purchase the game after 9am, and then have your copy signed at 4pm.

It’s not all bad news if you do not get to meet the Arsenal player, as the first person in line on Friday morning will win a brand new 3D LG LED TV, which we reported the other day. You cannot help but wonder why a game that is centered on European football was released in the US first? How many baseball, basketball and American football games have you seen released in the UK first?

Every year there is a new FIFA title, and in the past the differences with each game has only been minor. However, the version this year is different, as the changes are more distinct than they have been in the past. We have discussed some of those changes before, but the biggest is how defending has now taken on more importance.

There seems to be conflictions when it comes to rating the game, as one review would give the game a high score, while another would mark it a little lower, which you can see for yourself here. Overall though this is one game that you will need in your collection, as it is the ultimate to put on when you have a few friends around for a drink.

There are a few FIFA 12 reviews floating around online, although some of those found on mainstream media websites are just recapping the features of FIFA 12 and prices. These reporters have not had any real time with the game, and certainly not hands-on. After giving the finished game a hands-on for around 30-mintes at EuroGamer in London we thought you need to know that it’s worth the money full stop.

We’ve not had time to give you a full review, but thought a review completed by those that organized the event in London would be a nice read for you. If you’ve not seen it already, this two-page article on eurogamer.net goes into all you need to know about FIFA 12 with a score of 9/10. The review points out that millions of people will get the new game each year just because it’s FIFA, and many of them will hate the changes to tackling but it’s part of the evolution in FIFA games.

As we stated before, the tackling in FIFA 12 will be much harder and the new game takes away the easy automatic tackling used before, this will mean more skill is needed and newbies will find it that much harder. In terms of graphics FIFA 12 looks great, feels smoother, and the players are even more lifelike. The crowds in the stand are not yet clear, but maybe it will take a PS4 or Xbox 720 to make this happen.

We found, just as the review on EuroGamer did, that FIFA 12 has taken the best from the previous game and builds on this, giving you more change to gameplay than graphics. Those that have grown accustomed to the gameplay for FIFA will be the first to complain, but true fans will adapt and love why the changes were made in the first place. Going back to the old FIFA games will feel horrible after giving the FIFA 12 just a few hours of time.

The game is not like reality yet, but the changes are certainly a step in the right direction.