FIFA World Cup First Impressions

I’m looking forward to a bank holiday weekend playing the latest football game from EA Sports.

I’ve played the game for a couple of hours today and am really impressed. It’s clearly a FIFA game, yet EA has been brave enough to make a few welcome changes. The shooting is the area where you’ll notice the most change – the shoot button is used to select the shot height rather than power and it works very well. The game will decide on accuracy and power based on your player’s skill and current position. So a tight angle following a sprint up field is going to be less successful than a close range tap-in. It works and more importantly it’s convincing.

The ball and player physics have undergone some work too, the ball bobbles around on the pitch a lot more and it looks less like playing on a snooker table. The AI is improved too, I’ve found forwards take up more realistic positions and track back well compared to the most recent FIFA game and aren’t afraid to go wide. Computer controlled opponents now make tactical changes and substitutions and more than once I’ve had to change a player when faces with some fresh new member of the opposition so I can keep pace.

Pace is now very important in the game because it’s used much more naturally now. In previous games, no matter how fast your player, if he had the ball he’d run slower than the defenders. 2006 FWCG doesn’t do that, instead the player’s pace is based on his stats. Michael Owen for example can turn and outrun most centre-backs easily, which makes for more natural breaks and counter attacks. As you’d expect though, it makes defending harder, defenders out of position are punished cruelly and it’s worth choosing to man-mark particularly pacey forwards.

As you’d expect with an EA Sports title the presentation is superb. There’s a real sense of occasion to the game with some epic music and good use of national anthems. Though every time the martial drums of the FIFA theme kick in I keep expecting the theme from Where Eagles Dare to start. The commentary is better than I expected from Tyldsley and Townsend and I was impressed they mention goals scored in other games occurring at the time.

Graphically the game is much better than FIFA 06 on the Xbox 360. The slowdown is gone, the animation and replays are silky smooth despite all the detail in the stadiums. Gone too is the terrible shiny skin from the last game.

So my initial impressions are very positive, it’s a very good package with a lot of content and some excellent additions to the gameplay. Look out for a review early next week.