For a handheld soccer game, it's amazing what FIFA 2005 for the Game Boy Advance offers.

User Rating: 8 | FIFA Football 2005 GBA
For a handheld soccer game, it's amazing what FIFA 2005 for the Game Boy Advance offers. This version of the game features all the major soccer leagues from around the world, real clubs, and actual player names. The gameplay modes include Career, Competition, and Challenges. Competition is a single season mode with a club of your choosing from among the available leagues, while Career spans five seasons, and allows you to build up Manager Prestige by earning Prestige Points for accomplishing different tasks, such as winning a match with a goal differential of three, or getting a clean sheet. Challenges puts you in twenty progressively tougher real life scenarios from the past season, and require you to score a specified number of goals in the remaining time to replicate the actual results.

The technology in FIFA 2005 is quite impressive. For the most part, the game is played in a 2D side to side overhead view, and there are three cameras to choose from that affect the zoom level. However, the replays show off the game engine's capabilities. At any time, you can call up a replay, and while in this mode, you can rewind, fast forward, slow motion, and change camera angles. In Competition mode, the game also generates replays for other league games, so you can view highlights of those games as well.

When setting up a game, you can select from a few different pitch types, as well as choose among the available kits for the clubs. The controls are implemented nicely, with R used for sprinting, and the L button acting as a modifier, so that you can use the A button for shooting or through balls, and B for regular and sliding tackles.

The action is a bit on the fast side, and it's fairly easy to move the ball from one end of the pitch to the other in a matter of seconds, as well as score. As the default half length is set to 2 minutes, it makes FIFA 2005 a great sports game for quick games on the go. You wouldn't expect the amount of content that FIFA 2005 packs in a handheld game, but this is a pretty impressive game, and definitely worth your while if you're looking for a soccer game on the GBA.