by:	November 23, 2005

I don’t play soccer at all so for me to review this game was a challenge. My roommate, who is from the African country Togo loved FIFA 06 for Xbox, especially since his home country was heading high in the leagues this year. I decided to trade it in so I could buy something I can’t even remember. He now looks at me asking “Why, my team isn’t on here, let alone hardly any less known teams, and there is a lot less.” With that note, FIFA 06 for Xbox 360 is a solid soccer title; it just isn’t what it could have been. This year you can definitely expect the roster changes, tweaks in gameplay, and so on with the title as well as some new modes. The game is harder from the previous versions, with AI keeping up with even the most expert players of FIFA. Since I had very little experience with the series, a few friends who were addicts of the game played along with me, and they definitely had a challenge at times. You will find however that going off to the side is the best course of action while playing the game, and it seems as if defense is constantly vulnerable there.

The strangest part about FIFA 06 is that it controls considerably well, except that when you are rushing to take the ball from someone that, when you are sprinting in the direction of their goal, when you want to make a sharp turn around it becomes difficult to do so while running so you have to slow it down and almost make an ugly and wide turn around. The AI in many ways seems like they have the advantage, as their maneuverability is far greater than that of your own. The best way to keep the ball from the person is to just run in front of them not pushing any buttons, hoping that your foot steps in between his and takes the ball from him. Otherwise any sort of tackling towards the opposing team will result in a yellow card and to many results in a red card and therefore taking that player out of the game. The control scheme of the game doesn’t help either if you are a beginner to the series as there are many variants of kicks, and each button on the face of the controller seems to control one of these variants. This is still a great chance for the more experienced players to really show what they are made of though. The fact that there are fewer teams means there is less to do, and fewer replays in the game as well. It will definitely become an annoyance for soccer aficionados, but in some ways it is a bit better.

The single player portion of the game has a very easy to navigate Manager Mode, which lets you create a manger, pick a team, and control is over the next few seasons of soccer. It is something reminiscent to the managing modes in EA’s other sports titles but this one has more of a prestigious feel to it. You have interesting decisions that will affect many attributes of your team. An example is, you have a team that has some really good players, but their overall teamwork isn’t all that great. Well depending on what you do and how you manage one or both of these things can be affected for the better or the worse. The game has other quirks such as a FIFA Retro, which lets you check out how the FIFA series has progressed. The strange part is that even though you see a retro console on the screen and everything else, you can’t play the retro versions to give you a taste of how far we have come over the past ten years. The game also has an interesting way of loading, much like NBA Live, you can practice while it is loading the game, but it isn’t quite as spectacular either.

The Xbox Live option of the game and multiplayer all together adds a better sense of depth that otherwise would have been lost had their been less competition this year with the contest. The setup is similar to most of EA’s online sports titles and as such you will receive a lot of basic matchmaking options but robust statistical analysis.

The glare of the stadiums when you are in them over the players and the lights gleaming down really set the atmosphere of the game. The characters, while most of the time is shown from far away overhead, still are animated incredibly well. The stadiums are also extremely well detailed. Despite most of the people in the audience being two-dimensional sprites, it is still incredibly realistic. The players all have pretty good looking faces, and body details, with even the coaches showing all the grimace and nastiness of their faces. They all do seem a bit to dramatic looking at times, and the clothing looks to much like plastic in many instances, but overall it is definitely a noticeable improvement. The hair on some of the players is amazing, with it twirl all around in crazy tangles. A few annoyances about visuals though, such as a nasty blurring effect when up close to players, and bad camera angles that want to follow the ball, and go behind signs sometimes. Other than that, the visuals are the best thing the game has going for it.

The sound in the game is done efficiently with a soundtrack that someone would actually want to listen to—featuring mostly popular international stars. Even though the soundtrack is good, it is still a shame that you can’t actually use your own custom soundtracks, although you don’t necessarily hear music but for maybe twenty minutes of a three hour session with the game. The commentators are probably the worst part about the sound, as you can’t understand what the hell they are saying with their thick accents half of the time, but they also add a bit more of immersion with their voices. As for the player and field sounds they are done well and should be expected as such.

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At the end of the day there are just cheaper, better playing soccer titles than FIFA. Such as Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer offerings, or better yet FIFA 06 on Xbox. The game plays fine I suppose, but there just could be a lot more put into it, and shoul definitely be passed up until Electronic Arts gets it together for next year.

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