FIFA 2001 Major League Soccer Review

Last year's FIFA 2000 proved that even the finest PC sports game franchises are susceptible to some questionable design decisions. It emphasized fast action over simulation elements and also replaced the play-by-play commentary of the veteran British broadcasting team of John Motson and Mark Lawrenson with the unremarkable ESPN announcers Phil Schoen and Julie Foudy. Fortunately, this year's version represents a renewed commitment to realism and offers plenty of innovation to the hit soccer series.

However, when you first fire up the program, FIFA 2001 seems anything but improved. The introductory sequence is simplistic, grainy, and uninspired, despite the generous audible assistance of Moby's hypnotic Bodyrock. The menu interfaces are missing EA Sports' standard high-tech gloss, so they're uncharacteristically unsightly. Every menu selection is also accompanied by awful-sounding sound effects reminiscent of a loud coin-op arcade machine, but, fortunately, the game lets you turn these off.

FIFA 2001 really shows its stuff once you get to the pitch, where it exhibits the culmination of a complete visual and practical makeover that'll satisfy anyone who can appreciate the accuracy of a sports simulation. Now, the players move and groove with more realism than ever before, as they stop and plant before changing direction, take a reasonable amount of time to gather in passes, and move at a decidedly measured pace even during speed bursts. Though the players in FIFA 2001 are still a bit faster and more capable than their living counterparts, these players aren't swivel-hipped supermen - they generally move just as you'd expect them to.

Nevertheless, they're still capable of executing a stupefying variety of actions. FIFA once again takes full advantage of every aspect of your ten-button controller, so much so that you'll probably still be practicing new moves even days or weeks after you first play the game. You'll want to work on advanced moves such as 360-degree spins and double stopovers, and you'll get to control a full roster of in-game team management decisions and set piece decisions. Though the game won't let you reconfigure gamepad buttons, the default controls should prove to be highly accessible.

Unfortunately, the gameplay does have some minor problems. For instance, goalkeepers are capable of occasional gravity- and physics-defying saves. Virtually any player can execute implausibly long-distance sliding tackles. Lob goals are made possible only if you lob "pass" toward the opposition net when no teammate is positioned in front of you. And when you play on the more challenging difficulty levels, the computer-controlled rearguards become unnaturally effective. Even so, such problems are all but completely overshadowed by all the great features in the game.

In general, computer-controlled team and player actions in FIFA 2001 are much better than those in the previous version. Lesser defenses play for the offside. Talented offenses work the "give and go" and feed looping timed balls to bursting strikers. Defenders slyly monitor ball carriers and don't commit until the time is right. Even if you prefer to play FIFA 2001 as more of an action game by cranking up the gameplay speed and selecting the lenient officiating option, computer-controlled FIFA players are always smart players.

They're also noticeably smaller than in the previous installment, which better reflects their real-world size. That means you'll do a lot more running to get to where you want to go. It also means you'll be staring at very small players from most angles in the game's four available camera views, unless you decide to observe through the field-mounted "action" perspective and apply manual zooming. Yet, even then, none of the cameras get nearly as up close and personal as they did in FIFA 2000. They won't usually even get close enough during the game's replay mode, even with its free-floating, manually adjustable viewpoints.

But when you do happen to get a good close look at the players, whether it's during the game, the replay, or the wonderfully rendered cutscenes, you'll see their downsized stature hides how impressive they really look. The 3D players in FIFA 2001 are bereft of the straight lines and jagged edges of prior editions, and are quite capable of demonstrating various degrees of emotion and fervor. Their faces are particularly striking - they are individually rendered right on down to hair color and hair length and are articulated with moving lips and shifting expressions. When you watch your little computer version of Ronaldo or Zidane throwing a fit over a carding and then actually listen as he verbally chastises the referee, you'll know you've found your game.