The makers of football sims would like us to believe that every annual iteration is a radical improvement on the last. In a minority of cases, this is actually true.

The brief glimpse we caught of Fifa 12 during E3 suggested that this could be one of those occasions. Producer David Rutter is pushing a trinity of major changes to this year's instalment: a new player impact engine, a re-designed tactical defending system and precision dribbling. Having spent a whole day playing the game at EA's Guildford offices, it seems to me this is much more than PR bluster. This is a very different game to Fifa 11.



The player impact engine is the most immediately visible – and strikingly entertaining – of the game's new additions. An advanced procedural animation system tied with accurate collision physics, means that every encounter between players is calculated in real-time – and they all seem to look and end differently, depending on the physical forces and sheer bulk of the men involved.

In one game between Newcastle and Spurs, for example, a typically robust Barton tackle sends Bale spinning – literally spinning – across the turf like a crash test dummy. Physical altercations have real crunch to them; muscular forwards like Balotelli are able to barge through defenders, their bodies clattering and shoving, shirts tugged amid the tussle.

But the real physics seems to mean real risk. A tackle may upend the opposing player, or the tackler himself may come out badly, splaying awkwardly to upend an incoming team mate. You get these brilliant goalmouth scrambles as frantic players pile in, the ball ricocheting realistically between multiple sets of limbs.

And this physicality is not just confined to on-the-ball moments: you'll often see background crunches where players have simply run into each other, sending someone spiralling to the ground in the near distance. Everywhere, there are players scrambling, jostling and tripping. The pitch is crammed with action.

The impact engine, then, is authentic, often thoroughly amusing, but also a potential game changer. Fifa fans who have learned to predict the baked in behaviours of the ball and players will be quite literally wrong-footed again and again. Sliding tackles now often poke the ball against the oncoming attacker, rebounding it deliciously into his path; perfectly weighted through balls can clip the ankles of stranded defenders, knocking them agonisingly off course.

This sort of thing did occasionally happen in Fifa 11, but it was within a more structured, more synthetic system. Here, quirky interventions and unexpected rebounds seem to be a factor in every encounter – and it's thrilling stuff.

But it seems that there's plenty of skill and deftness to discover in the new controls, balancing out the blood and thunder. The game flow feels much more varied. The overhauled precision dribbling system puts a pace control option on the left trigger, which drops you down to a tightly controlled jog.

From here, you can easily sell the ball in one direction and accelerate off in the other. Then, the top left bumper button is for manual precision dribbling, which gives high-fidelity control over direction, allowing you to circle the ball, guard it, and hold up play. "We were umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether to keep that feature in, " says Rutter. "But I suspect it won't get cut because it's too much fun."

Fifa 12

The result is a game that is more analogue in terms of pace; you're not just sprinting everywhere (was that just me?), you're playing around with speed, you're slowing, then accelerating, you're Lionel Messi. (And even if you're clearly not Messi, when you approach a defender with no buttons pressed, it'll drop you into precision control automatically. The system wants you to play well.)

Rutter saw this as a key aim of the design process. "Yes, there's a time for sprinting, when there's a wide open space, but there's also a time for close control when you're in congested areas – and both are important weapons when you have the ball, and allow you to express yourself with much more fidelity and imagination than previous versions of Fifa. That's not to say they're over-powered, and I think that's an important qualification."

Meanwhile in defence, the new control set-up includes jockeying options on the triggers that let you put pressure on an opposition player. But there's also a tactical defending button that's more about holding your position and gently guiding an incoming player into the sidelines where they can't do any damage.

"At a base level it's about containing, not letting that player do what he wants to do until you force him into an error," says Rutter. "One of those errors is showing the ball to you, allowing you to tackle him – at that point it becomes very much about skill, because it's a manual button press to tackle. I tend to use the jockey buttons to drop a player into a sort of free-ranging contained state and then use the top right button to bring in a second defender if necessary. He would then apply normal contained pressure and I can move my other player with full manual control to try and cut out a pass or shot and wait for my opponent to make a mistake.

"The more adept you get, the more you understand that, 'okay, what I'm doing here is not necessarily trying to tackle, what I'm doing is waiting and holding until play breaks down.' That's what real players do."

Beyond the match engine, another key aim with Fifa 12 has been to add depth to the Career mode, which was introduced last year. As a manager you'll have to cope with genuine injuries, attained through the physics-led collision system.

Putting unfit super stars into your first 11 becomes a tactical option, but also a huge gamble – not just because they could get crocked again, but because of the effect it might have on your relationship. Player psychology and media intervention are much bigger deals in this game – aping, perhaps, the changes that have revolutionised the Football Manager series over the past few years.

The newspapers will hungrily pick up on injuries, player resentment, any whiff of a potential exclusive – and if you don't deal well with your squad's problems, they'll huff off to the tabloids quicker than you can say 'transfer gossip'.

"We've put a big focus on be a manager in the sense that if it can happen in the real world, it can happen in the game," says Rutter. "Last year, the 'Play as Manager' mode was very blinkered, it was just about you. This year, curve balls will be thrown. Your players might become unhappy because they don't think they're being paid enough, because the team's not successful enough, or they're not getting enough run outs on the pitch.

"If they become unhappy, their form dips; if they come and talk to you about it and you don't do enough, they'll talk to the press. And when they talk to the press, other managers within the game might try and sign them. Basically. things unfold that are outside of your control – things come to you. It's a very different experience."

Apparently, the transfer AI is a lot more cunning too. Transfer targets will chance extravagant wage demands to test your resolve; other clubs will put in pitiful offers for your star striker. Everyone's on the make. Thankfully, though, there's also an improved youth scouting facility, so you can bypass predatory clubs and mercenary players and discover the next Jack Wilshere for yourself.

All clubs have season expectations, which the press and match commentators (Alan Smith and Martin Tyler) pick up on. There is also an extended transfer deadline day feature, which provides tons of last-minute business, a news feed of the latest in-game deals, and a ticking countdown clock to replicate the excitement of those last few hours of negotiations. In the midst of the chaos, your Chief Executive will provide helpful hints on possible buys, and you're able to stall on deals until the last few moments of the day to see how other business pans out.

Another fresh addition is the EA Sports Football club, essentially a social networking feature similar to Autolog and Battleog. Everything you do in the game, from winning tournaments to triumphing in Career mode earns you XP which filters into online leaderboards, both worldwide and friend-based.

You're constantly kept up to date with what your mates have achieved in the game, and can also spam your own successes to your Facebook account. Elsewhere, a Challenge section, which offers themed match experiences based around recent real-world football matches – so if Chelsea just beat Sunderland with a second-half hat-trick from Drogba, a challenge might be to play the last half as the Black Cats and try to prevent the assault.

As an extra motivator, participants get to align themselves with a favourite club, which then gets a share of all their XP wins – this is all averaged out to create a score and a league table reflects the weekly fortunes of all the real-world sides. I'm not sure how much all this will mean to the average Fifa player – I just want something like Autolog, that makes it easier for me to complete against friends online, either together or asynchronously.

So far then, Fifa 12 looks to be ushering in a very interesting new era for the series – one of complexity and unpredictability, both on and off the pitch. Interestingly, although it seemed to me that the player impact engine was the most obvious of the three major innovations.

Rutter – who is on a something of a global press tour with the game – told me that different aspects are noticed much more in different territories. "Precision dribbling was a very big deal to the North Americans," he says. "Tactical defending was important too because it took a lot of the pressure off them. In the UK, we're talking more about the player impact engine – I'm off to France and Italy and Spain later this week and I'm sure they've all got their own take on what's important."

I guess that's the important thing with modern football simulations. Just like current fighting games or all those military shooters with their myriad load-outs and perk options, personalisation and individual expression are the key. Plus, anything that gets us further away from pre-cooked animation cycles, unresponsive team mates and defensive options that stop at "sliding tackle or foot prod" is a triumph, really.