FIFA 06: Road to the FIFA World Cup

You never know what you are going to get with a soccer video game; it could be either one of the best games you have ever played or an experience that will haunt you for the rest of your gaming days.  Though it may be the biggest sport over in Europe, soccer has still not made the impact here in the States many thought it would. On the other hand finding a soccer video game may be easier, and gamers may have more of a choice than that of any other sports genre out there. EA has had a strong grip on that niche market for quite a time now so no one should be surprised they are the first publishers to release a soccer title on the Xbox 360.

Not to disappoint gamers, EA decided to keep their tradition alive and provide gamers with a decent soccer game, but one that also has some major flaws in its design and presentation, very typical of the first generation FIFA games to hit a new console. Unfortunately gamers that are familiar with this line of FIFA games will already know what they are in for, few features, basic gameplay, and lackluster AI. After all that negative stuff is said this is still the only soccer game currently available for the Xbox 360 and the beautiful graphics don’t hurt too much either.

I have been playing soccer games for a while now, so I presume myself to be an above average gamer when it comes to the EA and Konami soccer titles. Boy did I surprise myself with this game; I sucked, and sucked hard. After going through an infinite number of scoreless games I decided that, yes I sucked, so I should change the difficulty level down to amateur mode, but to my dismay I still sucked. Final score at the end of regulation in almost every game I played remained unchanged.  If you are really into those shootouts at the end of soccer games than this one is a must buy, every game comes down to an annoying shootout where your goalie is the one that usually scores the goal. The problems with the gameplay are the main reason this FIFA rendition doesn’t score very well, that and the features.

It is ridiculously hard to do anything productive in terms of soccer in this game. the pitiful AI sticks out like a sore thumb. The other teams aren’t comparative to how well they should perform in real life which makes playing as the best German team almost as exciting as playing with the worst MSL team. Features in this game are far from exceptional, besides the high count of teams to choose from (remember none of which are very different from the next) there is almost nothing in terms of customization or replay ability. All the usual game modes are present but this is next generation, give us something revolutionary EA. The road to the World Cup is just about as exciting as it sounds, it may actually have been fun had I been able to score more than 10 goals on the entire road; can you say boring? All in all the gameplay is a half assed effort to get gamers into the EA camp over from Konami’s soccer titles of past generations, there is nothing new here and thus no reason to get excited. However the next rendition of FIFA for the Xbox 360 will be much better and more polished, I have no doubt of that.

As far as controls go the scheme is simple enough but fails miserably in execution. Buttons are not responsive enough, basically meaning the lag time between when you press the pass button and when the player on screen passes the ball is entirely too long. Also the players themselves seem to suck, maybe it wasn’t just me! They cannot pass the ball accurately to save their life and scoring, oh lets not even go into trying to score a goal.