Last week the FIFA team welcomed the North American FIFA Interactive World Cup Champion, Joe Guastella, to the studios at EA Canada where he spent a few days getting a sneak peek at FIFA 10.

Earlier this year, Joe earned the right to be called the North American Champ by defeating last year’s winner, Michael LaBelle, who he’s also good friends with through playing online.  It took penalty shots for Joe to win which granted him a shot at the World Championships just over a month ago.

Check out the North American event highlights and the interview following his big win at Sony’s Wonder Lab in New York.

As the team is always looking to improve the game, what better way to do that than by bringing in one of the best players in the world to get some games in with the makers of the game.  Here’s Joe talking about his week at EA Canada along with his quick thoughts about the upcoming title.

At EA Canada today, and for the rest of this week, is the FIWC World Champion from France, Bruce Grannec.  We’ll get his take on the game during a recap of his visit next week! In the meantime, check out a video of Bruce’s famous victory at the FIFA Interactive World Cup Final in Barcelona right here.

Blog from Joe:

Wow what a week at EAC in Vancouver, got to check out the facilities at EA studios played some basketball with the the developers in there own personal EA Gym. Was able to get on there pitch and soak up the sun while it was out in Vancouver. But the most important thing of the whole trip was I had a chance to play Fifa 10.

I will not be getting into the modes they had or about manager mode this is strictly what I think about the game play and the improvements they have made from Fifa 09 to 10.

First of all the kick-off goals have been fix, you can’t score from kick-off anymore. The game play has improved from Fifa 09 in many ways. The most noticeable section is the dribbling, the dribbling feels more life like on how you control him. You can maneuver you way out of defenders much better because of the 360 dribbling physics.

The shooting feels a little bit different this year, the ball feels a bit heavier than last year’s helium ball. I was having a difficult time scoring on the goal keeper, the reason for this is because they have made the keeper much better this year. The keeper will cut the angles out, also would make 2nd save efforts.

Defense has gotten better this year, one big thing that everyone hated last year was Ronaldo going down the sideline with his rocket speed without anyone touching him. Well this year Fifa 10 has change, the speed of players are reasonable now. Ronaldo can still do it but, the defense has a say in it. The physical play determines if you can stop the star players like Ronaldo, Messi, , etc.. If your defender gives a shoulder nudge to Ronaldo he will lose his momentum and will slow him down for the other defenders to overtake the ball before he gets a breakaway with the keeper. Another portion of the defense that developers have added is making a better effort of getting in the way of shots and passes.

The speed of the game has been turned down a little. When I was playing the game, it seemed more of a passing game than just giving it to Ronaldo and hoping he beats everyone down the field for an easy goal. You need your midfielders to build up your play to have good chances on net. The passing pretty much felt the same as Fifa 09 but the lead pass is slightly better this year and is still being work on. The lob pass has also been fixed.

Overall Fifa 10 is coming along very well. From what I have seen the game is much better. They are trying to add features to make the game feel as realistic as possible and trust me on this they do listen to us gamers on what we want and what they need to fix.

I would like to thank everyone at EAC for welcoming me with such kindness. Would like to thank Aman (16-2), Sam, Enrico, Tiago, Berk, Alain, Gary, Aaron, Santiago (too bad you couldn’t change your headline in your facebook), and the one and only Rutter ( he is a busy man). Thank you once again it was a fun experience.