FIFA World Cup 06
With The FIFA World cup about to get underway in a matter of days we put the official game through it's paces. The game manages to capture the atmosphere of the tournament and the gameplay has its moment's but it is just not as fun and intuitive as other sports titles and the XBox and Ps2 versions have bad issues with slowdown.
Intro:
There are some things in life that never change, the ebb and flow of the tides, the earth revolving around the sun, and whenever The world cup comes around EA will always release a slightly different version of their FIFA franchise to cash in on the hype of the Tournament. This year is of course no different, with the World Cup kicking off on June 9th EA have released the official game of the tournament and unlike previous occasions it is slightly more updated than the last game, (typically they have been the same game as the last annual update, with rosters and presentation focused on the tournament). The FIFA franchise for the past few years has been commonly viewed as being in direct competition with Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer/Winning Eleven series, and while in the past EA have tried to do their own thing they have adopted a "Can't beat them join them attitude" in recent years by incorporating a lot of the same gameplay and control elements . The game even gives you the choice of playing with a new control scheme that has the exact same button mappings as Pro Evolution game. And unfortunately for EA it is going to make the comparisons all the more easier to make.
Graphics:
Seen as the game is out on Xbox, Ps2, Pc and Xbox 360 you would expect the Pc and 360 versions to look better. But what is really puzzling is the magnitude of the gap between the current and next-gen versions, not just in the quality of the visuals but in the games performance also. But we will get to all that in a minute, lets first talk about the positives, and there are a few. The Stadiums in the game, from the big world cup venues, to the small rural arenas in the likes of Ghana, are well represented here and as you would expect the major international venues look like the huge stadiums that they are and while the smaller venues don't look as grandiose they have some nice touches of their own. For example when playing a match in Israel the stadium backgrounds show buildings such as temples and churches in an attempt to better reflect the setting, and while they don’t look that sharp on the current gen hardware, are a nice touch and really make you believe you are playing in the country that you are. The crowds during normal play are not much to look at from a distance, but the game has a really nice touch where at key moments in the game it switches to what can only be described as a first person view from someone in the crowd. The view looks super-realistic and I imagine its part FMV, and it shows your fans getting really excited by the action on the pitch. It's used to good effect as well as is mainly only used during tense and exciting moments, picture this; you are losing 1-0 and its the 89th minute and you string some moves together to create a scoring chance and win a corner, the game switches to this crowd view and shows the fans getting really excited, it's a great little touch and really helps to create believable pitch-atmosphere. The menus and loading screens in the game look great too, as they are littered with scenic views of the contesting countries and other world cup themed images.
Ok so that’s what looks good about the game, here comes the bad news. First let's look at the player models. Now by themselves the models are not all that bad, and when you get up close during replays and such they look like their real-life counterparts, but other than that there is not a whole lot of detail to them, and when put up against the likes of Pro Evolution they just look very average. They do look a whole lot better on the 360 but still nothing like what the hardware is capable of and on the PS2 they just looks very average . Now graphical detail in a sports game is not really a big issue, where the real graphical metric lies for these games is the animations, because at the end of the day a soccer game has to move smoothly and realistically to attract the purists. Unfortunately this and the Xbox version are really poor in this department as the game suffers from some very jerky animations, and some bad slowdown when there are a lot of players on screen. While this would be forgivable if the models had huge amounts of detail, they don’t, so there is really no excuse for it. The players also move around the pitch quite sluggishly at times and sometimes look as if they have lead weights for legs, if you keep the sprint or close control button held while you move it’s not so bad, and at the games full speed setting it's much more tolerable.
Sound and Presentation:
If there is one area in which FIFA has always excelled, and the one where other titles should be looking, then this is the one. EA sports titles in general have always been big in this department and its especially good here. The sound for starters has the usual EA tracks mix and this time consists of the usual Indie/soft rock type tunes but as its the world cup throws in some great summer and carnival themed tunes and so the mix is quite effective here. The game also plays the national anthem of the winning team at the end of each game. While the crowds in the game don’t look the best most of the time they do sound a whole lot better. beyond the typical oohs and aahs, the crowd really sounds like they get behind their team when it’s needed, and chant realistic sounding football songs and they sound just like their real life counterparts, e.g. the Cameroon fans sound really up beat as if they are having a party. Commentary in the FIFA series has always been great and it’s superb as well here, thanks in part to good casting and non-repetitive dialogue (commentary always sounds ok when you play a game for the first time, but to be really good it has to still sound fresh an hour later. Commentary is handled by Clive Tyldesley and my fellow countryman Andy Townsend. Mr Tyldesley handles the play by play and Townsend is the color commentator and a damn good one at that. Townsend is a great choice as in real life games he sounds very energetic and positive and keeps that tone in the game and that’s the type of commentary you would want from a sports title. There is very little repetition involved and the two commentators play off of each other nicely. The presentation for the game also meets the same high standard. the atmosphere of a world cup is re-created to a tee and is thanks in part to a bunch of little things that overall work well together. examples would be before world cup games the game shows you a picture of earth from space and then quickly zooms in ever closer to the stadium of the upcoming game, loading screens displaying images and information relating to the participating country such as for Greece, showing a picture of the acropolis and saying something like Greece has only qualified for the finals twice or something like that. While Konami has always led the way with its' titles attention to graphics and gameplay, EA's FIFA is still unmatched in providing high quality Sound and Presentation.
Gameplay:
In my recent review of Tomb Raider I commented on how the game borrowed many gameplay elements from other games in The genre and executed them really well and threw in some of its own ideas and it worked really well and made the game a lot of fun to play. The same can be said for FIFA world cup in that it borrows a lot of its gameplay from PES and splices in its own unique features, but alas in this case the gameplay is not executed to the same high standard and while the gameplay has its positives, it's just nowhere near as fun and intuitive as Pro Evolution.
To be fair to the developers it's there is not really anything inherently wrong with the gameplay or the controls it's just spoiled by a number of contributing factors. Let's briefly discuss the mechanics for those who have not played any recent entries in the series. As I already stated since the last game EA have given you the option to use a control mapping identical to PES or you can stick with FIFA's classic button mapping. Either way the basic moves are as you would expect pass, shoot, long pass and through ball and on top of these you can do the usual moves like on two passes, trap the ball, perform dummy’s etc, while some of the manoeuvres from previous games are intact like pressing left trigger to send people on runs, a lot of the moves will be instantly familiar to Konami fans such as double tapping the cross button for a low cross or holding left trigger to cross the ball early. the game keeps the one touch system brought in a few years ago and is easily still the best thing about the gameplay. simply because its very natural and intuitive but requires practice and timing to make proper effective use of it and when you get it right you can pull off some fancy tricks and they are a lot of fun to do. if you are unfamiliar with the mechanic when a player is receiving the pass you flick the right stick in a direction as it reaches his feet to perform some skilful action; the action is determined by the players’ position and the height of the pass so it takes practice to know how to move to pull off effective manoeuvres for each situation. a typical example would be a player receiving a cross with his back to the goal and last defenders and if you flick the stick to the right/left as he receives the cross he will flick the ball over himself and the defence allowing him to run through on goal. Scoring goals with this mechanic is the most satisfying aspect of the game.
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