Finally, a chance to play football on your console the way you would with your mates. It can’t possibly be bad! Can it?
Five minutes into the game I fell in love with the ability to nutmeg your opponents as well as many other famous football tricks. But this soon wears of after tenth time you do it. This surly shouldn’t matter as they are an addition on to the normal FIFA engine, simply adding more options to your playmaking. Well… no. FIFA Street plays more like FIFA 96 on the Mega Drive than FIFA 2005 on the XBOX. Put simply the passing system is extremely poor and the shooting system happens to be the worst I’ve ever come across. Why? When you find yourself near the opposition’s goal a ‘radar’ of sorts appears at the bottom of your screen shaped like the opponents goal. On this ‘radar’ is a red dot which is controlled by the left analogue stick, where your red dot is determines where the ball goes when you shoot. Not a bad idea, but floored by the fact that this happens to be the same stick you control your player with. Hence when you aim for the bottom left had corner your player starts to move away from the goal. As you would expect the player doesn’t move to the extent that you will notice every time you shoot, but because of it you will often find yourself running into a defender or a brick wall to pull of the desired shot.
However this system does have its positive points. It lets you (when it works) hit the ball more accurately than other football games. Just one problem. It doesn’t! Hence forth I retract my earlier comment about it having positive points. More often than not the ball will just fly straight into the goalkeeper’s hands. It seems that the only time you can score is when you do two or three ‘sick tricks’ as the commentator would say.
This brings me to my next point, the awful commentary.
The commentary is done by someone who goes by the alias of ‘MC’, or as I’ve affectionately dubbed him: ‘Stereotypical Rapper Number One’. Who decides to ‘drop a beat’ every now and than to help preserve the ‘street’ feeling. Not only this, but he also uses the word ‘sick’ or ‘massive’ in every sentence. Last time I checked there wasn’t any vomit or large items on the football pitches, maybe I missed something. Highly irritating, I’m sure you would agree. And to compile my misery all the music in the background is rap. Which as you might have guessed by now is not my cup of tea. However if you do like that sort of music, it’s probably more of a positive than a negative.
The graphics on ‘FIFA Street’ are no more or less than you would expect from a FIFA game. They are quite aesthetically pleasing, but nothing to get hot and bothered over.
Finally ‘FIFA Street’ is good value if you bought it as cheap as I did. However if you were to pay full price for it than you’ll find yourself searching for the receipt soon enough, unless you are oblivious to its faults.
In conclusion ‘FIFA Street’ is ‘all flash, no substance’. Its uniqueness is entertaining, but not for long. Its poor passing and shooting system will leave you frustrated, and the best part of it, the trick, soon get repetitive. My advice to EA, leave the tricks and the four aside where they belong, on the streets, not on games console. But simply, buy Pro Evo instead.