Crappiest FIFA soccer game ever!!!
Gameplay:
I understand that it's FIFA "Road to the World Cup," which suggests that it's about qualifying for the World Cup, but I honestly didn't think it would stop there. I mean, in 2004 with the UEFA Cup game, it was both the qualifying rounds and finals, and previous world cup games were just the finals. This is the first EA FIFA world cup game that I can think of where you don't actually get to win the FIFA world cup, which I must say, was quite disappointing. So you may ask, "What do you get to win?" Well, you get these world cup look-a-likes from playing in these open tournaments while on your way to qualifying for the world cup. Lame!!! BTW, this is also how you unlock 2 of the only 6 Xbox Live achievements to be gotten by this game. There are also friendly matches that you play along the way to no apparent avail seeing as they did away with the player morale of UEFA 2004 and teammate interaction of later FIFA installments. You also get road points that seem to serve no purpose, as that's not what is used to unlock things.
You know, I would also think that they would have gotten the rules of soccer down by now, or maybe my knowledge of the rules is errant. My understanding of the offside is that the ball has to be coming from a fellow teammate while you are in the offside position. If the ball was a deflected shot coming off of a defender, or if it was a pass from a defender that you intercept though in an offside position, then it's not considered offside. They don't seem to comprehend this at EA. Also, a while back, FIFA made it so that the goalie couldn't grab the ball with their hands if it was coming off a pass from the foot/leg of a fellow teammate. So many times while I was playing this unholy game, the goalie would break this rule, or take it with his hands from one of his defenders who was dribbling the ball, with no foul given of course. Also, because games are in essence computer programs, you would think it would be easy to determine which team last touched the ball before it goes out of bounds. However, there have been occasions while I've been playing, that there is no doubt in anyone's mind who the last person is to touch the ball, because it came from an errant pass, or someone just ran out of bounds completely unopposed, etc. Somehow, the team to last touch the ball remains in possession. AMAZING!! To be fair, this has worked both in my favor and against me. But it absolutely p***es me off every time I see it.
There was another problem involving gameplay and relates to how apparently dumb and/or lazy the AI is in this game. If you would regain possession of the ball in the attacking third, no one on your team would run up and help you until it's too late and you've probably since then lost possession of the ball again. You can try sending someone on a run with a press of the appropriate button on your controller, but that may sometimes send someone you didn't intend on the run, or the person you intended goes on a run into a position where the through ball won't get passed the defenders. Most of the time, your teammates are just happy to stand around, to close to you so that passing would be pointless, or to close to the defenders, again, making it pointless. UUUUUUUUUGH!!!
This was also mentioned in the GS review. There are only 72 playable teams, which excludes 132 other teams that actually played in the preliminaries for the 2006 World Cup. In the non-world cup version of 06, there are hundreds of teams... Why God? Why?!!! It so happens that the team I play with is there, which is Portugal... But it annoys me to no avail to know that I paid an extra 10 dollars on a game for which EA did a whole lot less work.
Graphics/ Physics:
Now, the author of the GS review mentions that the crowd looks crappy, which I would agree with, but that is the least of my concerns; I really don't care how the crowd looks. What I do care about are the venues and the players, and I must admit... The venues look good, and the players/coaches/refs look very much like their real life counterparts. There is one problem though with the players/refs/coaches and the ball. There is always this aura around them whenever you get a close-up animation. It just kind of irks me.
And now for the pitfall of this game and the bane of my existence… this game’s physics engine. I really wish they had used the power of the 360 to get a good physics design/engine, even more than I care about how much the character models look like their real-life counterparts. I mean, you see games like Gears of War coming out on the 360, using the Unreal Engine, and with graphics just as good if not better than this game's, I really wonder why this game's physics b--w so much. As was mentioned in the review by the GS author, the header physics are completely fudged. Not only does the ball gravitate to the players' heads as the GS author mentions, as you can clearly see in the replays, the ball doesn't even touch the player's head and somehow gets magically redirected to the goal. It sometimes seems to be a whole foot away from the players' heads. WOW!!! Every time you see it, it's like EA just gauged your eyes out, or poured rubbing alcohol into your eye sockets. This brings me to my next point... slide tackling. This seems to have been a tough concept for the developers at EA to tackle, not only in this installment, but every installment I've ever played. What am I talking about here you may ask. I can't even describe it to you. If you've ever played soccer, you'll know what I'm talking about. However, you don't need to have played soccer to see on the replays of the slide tackles that many times, not one pixel has touched an opposing player's pixels, and yet it causes an over the top fall. I guess some soccer players actually play like that, diving on the turf looking for a foul, but it's horrid to see on a video game when it's not intended.
Sound:
There's a pretty good eclectic sound track that you can fiddle with anyway if you don't like it. The commentary is also pretty good, with a couple of weak points. The first weak point is that it can get repetitive, especially the trivia, which the GS review also mentions. The second weakness lies in the fact that sometimes the commentary comes in late. Also, it sometimes doesn't really make sense with what just happened in the game. Part of that of course is due to the fact that whenever the ball passes the goal line (back touchline), even if it is after an overshot pass or excessive dribble towards the touchline that goes out before the cross-in, it's considered as a shot on goal by the game. I would have hoped by this late in the game with all the technological advances, the computer program would recognize what the last button pressed (command into the computer program) was. Instead, they use the formula [ball crosses back touchline = attempted shot on goal]... annoying and über-lame when it shows the replay of it as though it were an important play during the game.
Replay Value:
This game has little, if any, replay value. There is an online component, which from what I read from the GS review, is also very lacking. Though I have Xbox Live, I will never play it online. The mediocrity of this game repulses me too much to care. Read the GS review about the online play if you care to know more about it. Don't buy this game unless you are hardcore soccer fan and want it for collection purposes. Also, I guess it's nice to have for when your friends who are soccer fans come over. It's good enough when just passing the time away, but it won't be the most exhilarating gaming experience you can share with them.