Last week EA Canada give FIFA 09 a new lease of life, with the Ultimate Team DLC. If you had already played the old UEFA Champions League game this will seem very familiar.

To begin with you’re given a set of random playing cards. These range from players to home and away kits, your stadium, training ground and a collection of in-game Gameplay Modifiers that you can use during matches. Your ultimate goal is to collect and trade your way to the best possible team and bonuses by swapping cards and spending Coins earned through the completing matches.

At first all you can buy are Bronze packs, after 6 matches the silver packs unlock (and cost 2500 coins) and after 12 games the gold packs unlock (they cost 5000). The more expensive the pack, the better players, managers and gameplay cards you can get. You can swap and buy cards in a ebay style system, and if you are especially lazy you can buy packs off of the Marketplace for Microsoft Points.

Keep and eye on Player and manager contracts, because each squad member will only play a set number of matches before their contract expires. In these circumstances you need to invest in contract cards to extend a player’s stay, while crocked squad members can have their recovery sped up with healing bonus cards.

You can also create your own player to go into your team, and build him up using training cards which is a nice idea.

In an attempt to try and get you thinking a bit more there is a silly Team chemistry strand where you have to try and match up players nationalities and playing style in order to improve your team, I don’t really see how this affects the actual gameplay and haven’t really worried about it.

On the Pitch

Once you have played about with your selections & formations you can start playing some football. You can play normal matches against AI clubs, or go online play against other peoples Ultimate Teams.

There are twelve unique tournaments in total with three difficulty levels for each one, but before you can enter any of these you need to earn Skill Points. This is done by completing competitive games against AI or online opponents, and through skilful performances.

During the matches you can make use of your gameplay cards to help improve your team, this is always more fun against human opponents as they will be more unpredictable.

This is definitely a welcome bit of DLC from EA, it’s not perfect (a lot of people had problems with bugs at first) but it is fun and will keep you going on FIFA well up until FIFA 10 comes out