Electronic Arts has been making some pretty major changes to its long-running FIFA Soccer series in recent years, and its 2004 edition is no exception. The game features the same slick presentation, official licenses, and instantly recognizable players that the series is known for, but it also boasts a number of enhancements, including a goal-driven career mode, online play on the PS2, more realistic ball physics, and the well-publicized off-the-ball control. FIFA Soccer 2004 is undoubtedly EA Sports' most realistic soccer game to date. Though some of the new features will inevitably take you a while to get used to--and there's still plenty of room for improvement--it manages to be both enjoyable and challenging.

Big-name players, like English national team captain and current Real Madrid midfielder David Beckham, come at a high price.

FIFA Soccer 2004 features more than 350 real teams from all over the world, and the first thing you're required to do after booting up the game for the first time is let it know which team you support--or at least which team is your favorite. From that point onward, either your chosen team's colors or those of the league they play in will appear on menu screens within the game. Additionally, your chosen team will also become the default selection for the game's exhibition and practice modes. The other modes of play on offer include no fewer than 17 real cup tournaments and an all-new career mode in which you can attempt to lead any of the clubs featured in the game to glory by using your skills both on the pitch and on the transfer market.

After selecting a team to manage in career mode, you'll be given a one-year contract, and then you'll be presented with a series of objectives for the upcoming season. Each of the objectives presents a certain number of prestige points for you if you successfully complete it. In fact, you'll be required to attain a certain number of points each season if you wish to keep your job. Your objectives will vary according to the expectations of the club you're managing, so, for example, one of the smaller teams in the English Carling Premiership might award you prestige points for simply avoiding relegation (in essence, this is a team demotion for not performing as well as expected for a given season) or for conceding fewer than 50 goals in a season. Manning the helm at a major team like Manchester United, for example, will require you to become league champions or, at the very least, it will require you to qualify for one of the big European competitions. Teams will also stipulate certain conditions that could see you losing points, like being relegated or finishing the season with a negative goal difference. These prestige points challenges not only serve to keep the game interesting, no matter what stage of a season or a career you're at, but they also act as a constant reminder of the pressures that face soccer managers in real life.

Prestige points represent your reputation as a manager, and they should increase as you progress through your career--depending on your achievements, of course. The number of prestige points you have determines how much training you can put your players through each week, and they also determine the likelihood of your being able to attract other players to your club. The 1000 points you start out with will basically be enough to keep your whole team in regular training, and they will also provide just enough extra points to offer some more-specialized training routines to select, key players. These routines focus on such areas of play as sprinting, passing, and shooting. Needless to say, as you become a better manager, and the number of points at your disposal increases, your whole team is able to benefit from additional training. Although each exercise has a cost attributed to it that varies according to the selected player's current skills, prestige points aren't actually spent on training as such. If you have 1000 prestige points, that means you can select 1000 points worth of training every week. Player transfers, however, are an entirely different matter.

When attempting to sign a new player to your team, you'll notice that, in addition to his monetary value, each player carries a prestige points cost. English national team captain David Beckham, for example, is worth a lot of money in the game, so, in order to tempt him away from Spanish giants Real Madrid, you'd also need to part with 1000 prestige points. It initially seems strange that you should lose prestige points simply for signing a player, particularly since, in this instance, it might mean that the rest of your team has to go without training for the rest of the season. The system actually makes a lot of sense when it comes to gameplay. By assigning a prestige point cost to players, EA has not only effectively put a cap on the number of players that you can purchase in a single season, but it also encourages you to work with the players you already have by pouring resources into their training. You still, of course, have the option of spending all of your prestige points on a star player if you think that particular individual is good enough to justify the rest of your team missing out on training--to some extent. Should your star become injured, however, you could find yourself regretting the decision to put all of your eggs in one basket. As you've probably gathered, FIFA 2004's career mode offers a fair amount of depth and will certainly provide more longevity than any feature found in previous FIFA offerings. We'd even go so far as to say that it represents some serious competition for the master league mode found in Konami's Winning Eleven 6 International for the PS2, except that the action on the pitch isn't quite there yet.

FIFA 2004 contains songs from The Dandy Warhols, Kings of Leon, The Jam, Radiohead, and Timo Maas.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing that strikes you about FIFA 2004, once you've made it past the menu screens, is that EA has once again improved upon last season's visuals. All of the 20 real stadiums and 10 generic stadiums boast a high level of detail, and all of the more famous players are instantly recognizable as they exit the tunnel and step out onto the turf. It's unfortunate, although inevitable, that the majority of the game's 10,000 players clearly haven't had as much development time lavished on their looks as the likes of English favorites David Beckham and Michael Owen. None of the players in the game could really be described as generic though, and EA has obviously taken the time to ensure that no two players on a single team look the same. The team strips (uniforms) are equally impressive and boast all of the official sponsor logos and team badges, in addition to the requisite player names and numbers. Patches of mud can also be seen to appear on the kits (uniforms) of players if a game is being played in less than clement conditions. This represents a nice touch that really adds to the sense of realism when players are seen up close in action replays and the like.