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2006 FIFA World Cup Review
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Set pieces have been dumbed down in the game, which is a bit of a mystery as the mechanic they have been using since 2003 is easily one of the series' better innovations and I really liked it. now in the case of free kicks for instance you simply point at the general direction you want to kick and set the power and then try and use after-touch to swerve the ball. My guess is EA did away with the old mechanic as it did take a bit of learning and was not instantly accessible. I personally find it very dangerous when a game focuses on making the gameplay "more accessible" because it normally ends up just making it boring. This issue of accessible gameplay leads nicely onto the next point and easily the biggest flaw with the gameplay, which is that it is still too easy to score. This is due in part to certain moves like through balls having a higher than it should be rate of success and some awful defensive AI and rubbish keepers. now while it still requires some work to create a scoring chance , once you have one it’s too easy to convert them. The keepers for a start are still too easy to beat, this completely baffles me as this has been a problem of the franchise for as long as I can remember and its never really been addressed. They also have some pretty Puzzling and inconsistent AI, for example in a one on one situation they are too late to come off their line and pretty much don’t react quick enough when faced with a dangerous situation. Sometimes the AI just broke altogether, one instance had the ball deflect off of a defender and roll towards the goal and the keeper just stood there and watched it roll into the goal. The AI of the defence is just as perplexing as more often than not they will always try to play the ball out of defence rather than just clear it quickly, in real football if a defence is under pressure and its late in the game or they are protecting a lead they will just boot the ball out or up field to get it away from the goal, here even in close tight games the defence will nearly always do this. and more often than not you can take the ball back and run in and score. The gameplay also suffers because of the slowdown and jerky animations, which ruins the flow of the game. Now the main argument for FIFA being slightly easier than the competition is that it makes the game more accessible to average gamer and makes it easy to score spectacular goals, because apparently playing out non score draws makes a boring game, but when put up against Pro Evolution where you have to really work and be clever to create scoring chances, scoring goals in pro evolution will always be more satisfying and thus in my book this makes that game much more fun. So while FIFA can be fun to play it does not come close to the feeling that you have really earned that 3-0 scoreline.
On the plus side of things the game does do a good job of presenting different game modes for you to play through. Obviously you have the world cup mode where you can jump right into the finals or take a team through qualifying where you play a mix of friendly games and official qualifiers. The game keeps the lounge mode from the last game and this is still a lot of fun, especially with a few mates around pick a few teams and you can play different modes like winner stays on, and you can still earn what are called cheap shots to use on your opponents, which are essentially handicaps, like benching their star striker or giving instant yellow cards to players. The game also has a global challenge mode which is really just a classic match mode, where you are put into classic scenarios from the tournament such as France v Croatia from the 98 tournament semi-final and Croatia have just gone 2-1 down and you have to fight back to win the game. you are given different awards depending on how well you do , gold silver and bronze, if you win in normal time that’s silver, but run into added time and it’s a bronze. Given that the World Cup mode its short in its length these additional modes are a lot of fun and add some replay value. The game also adds longevity with the achievements and the passport feature. The achievements like they sound give you objectives to complete like scoring hat tricks and come back from 2-0 deficits and such. the passport feature ties into this as when you defeat a country the passport is stamped with their emblem and you have to fill the passport with stamps and complete pages like all the African teams are on one page. for completing the challenges the game rewards you with points that can be spent in the FIFA store where you can unlock new stadiums, kits and balls and also unlock the likes of a turbo mode or slow motion mode.
Lifespan
The game does offer decent replay value and that’s a nice change for a game focused on re-creating just the one tournament. If you have friends or siblings that are into the game then the lounge mode will keep you entertained for hours, and if you are by your lonesome it will take you some time to fill that passport as there are a lot of teams to beat in the game. the achievements and the challenge modes are pretty well flushed out also and get progressively more difficult. So if you like the kind of football the game offers then you will get a lot out of the game even after the tournament has come and gone. Of course the game features the obligatory online mode but still the soul-less heathens at EA still charge you to register to play on their servers , or you can provide your email address and avoid paying, but as you might guess this option gives EA a license to spam your inbox to high heavens and if you are going for this option I suggest setting up a free account somewhere you will never use and let them fill that with their rubbish. I can't really recommend going through all this hassle because at present you wont find a huge number of people in the online lobbies at the same time and in the case of this version and the xbox, any lag at all ruins the game as when you couple it with the already bad slowdown and frame-rate issues making the online portion very frustrating.
Conclusion/ Closing Comments.
Whatever I say about the game to be honest is irrelevant because like all the FIFA games it will fly off the shelves because there are still plenty of people who love the games high presentation values and fully licensed teams, regardless of how broken the gameplay is. There will invariably be people who really enjoy the gameplay and for them there is a lot to get out of the game as a companion to the tournament and beyond. To be fair had the AI been better and if you took away the slowdown then the game would be a lot easier to recommend and could even give the mighty Pro Evolution a run for its money. But for those of us who have been fans of that series FIFA still does not offer the same intuitive and fun experience. If on the other hand you are a XBOX 360 owner than it’s easily the best football game on the system so far and it does not suffer any of the slowdown issues and looks a whole lot better. But as the PS2 version stands it is just barely above average and unless you really want it for the World Cup theme then I dont recommend it.
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