Excellent on the domestic game a bit of a let down on the national side. But all in all, it is a well made FIFA game.
The first thing I noticed was that the graphics where amazing again. What impresses me is how the game is looks more like a real live football game you tune into. It will take a lot of game play to notice the few bugs in the graphics. O yes, there are some, they come with parts of the players disappearing during set pieces or cut-scenes. You can see right through that guys chest… o no, I always new C.Ronaldo had no heart!! Another problem is when you it rains and the flood lights are on. The players have a type of shine that shouldn’t be there, the glazed look! But overall the graphics are awesome, the stadiums look great and the players almost look like their real counter-parts but not quite. Some of the players don’t look themselves at all know, which is a shame. The most improved area in the graphics has to be the instant replays of the goals. They are crisp and when it gets to the final replay from set-pieces or crosses you get the commentators doing a break down with circles around players and arrows pointing out where and what happened.
The new one touch passing in FIFA 2005 works great. You can play fast paced football getting from one end to the other quickly. You can work the ball round the pitch nicely and get excellent one-two’s to score goals. The game can even be slowed right down with passing across the width of the pitch and play it slower through the park if done correctly. Defensive play could still use improvement but what they have done so far is good. You can do counter runs, cut offs, soft and strong tackles. There is also the covering play which is much improved and makes for a far better game. This gameplay all builds rather nicely for a solid challenge. Again know, when you get better you will need to put that difficulty level up otherwise things will start getting too easy.
Now for the A.I system… The opponents can certainly score goals easy when they get into the right positioning. But sadly the challenge can be irritable, the A.I can hold onto the ball move it back and forth erratically. Then pass it right out into touch for a goal kick. There is defiantly something wrong with the A.I but I couldn’t quite tell you what.
Going the other way the A.I on your team is annoying at times too. Players will retreat back into positions you don’t want them to go. The team will not move forward as a team and the positions are always set to defensive mode even know the tactics are set to offensive. Something is clearly wrong here and I hope it is much improved in FIFA 2006.
Two player mode is so much better, playing against a real person is so much harder. The human brain can understand the game better than the A.I and it makes for an excellent challenge.
The depth of the game is excellent. You have a whole new career mode where you can move around the world and win trophies in different countries. This allows you to collect points when winning and purchase the extras in the game. The career mode is an excellent feature and I have been playing through it a lot. There is certainly room for expansion here. Sadly for the game, the commentary can certainly kill the addiction in ways you wouldn’t have thought of. Well it’s either that or your thumbs being worn down to the bone! There are a whole host of teams and continents but sadly the game lacks on the national teams and competitions. You can’t setup a decent world cup tournament because you are missing vital teams. For all the Dutch supporters I feel sorry for them. For FIFA 2005 have for got to put Holland into the game. In some ways that could be considered rude, but in this case, ouch, that’s a red card for EA there.
When you first start playing a game in FIFA you feel, “WOW” the commentary is amazing. After a while you start to feel, “wow” the commentary is short… In season mode the commentary will talk about games in the wrong context and place your team in mid table when either at the bottom or top of the division. FIFA could certainly work on a whole new system for the commentary because it really needs improving. Then the most annoying part has to be when you have about 15 or 20 games left to go and they start talking about you only have 3 games left to go in the season. McCoist will continue to repeat things like “He won’t mind that miss, as they are already guarantied top spot”. So very very annoying…
Other features in the game also include adding new players, music list (jukebox), create your own tournaments, which is pretty standard really. Sadly they didn’t have an option to create new teams because I would have entered Barnet FC then. The list of music is the game is pretty cool. I like most songs but there are one or two I aren’t really that fond of. The season mo
Overall you have a fast paced, one touch system with long balls too. The game plays excellently and the graphics is what you would expect from a FIFA game. The A.I isn’t all there but it is good enough, sound and commentary is excellent too. Well the commentary could certainly be improved. The game was a let down on the national side but the domestic side has excellent depth and you could easily play that for hours on end. All in all a class game with room for improvement.