FIFA 06: Road to the World Cup

At the end of the day Brian, it's a game of two halves…

But what of the other presentation? Well the game itself looks stunning. Yes EA has gone overboard on bloom effects, but mostly the game looks superb. The level of detail is incredible. You can actually see the grass when the camera zooms in, and the level of detail on player kits and skins is uncanny. Some of the player likenesses are almost photo realistic. Sure, David Beckham doesn't quite look like David Beckham, but he looks like a real person.

And the action is smooth while you're playing, with plenty of animations on show. At times its just like watching football on TV. The stadia are wonderfully realised, and the crowds finally seem convincing. Alas there's some lazy coding on show, EA likes to hit release dates whether a game is ready or not. Many replays and cut-scenes, such as when a card is being given by the ref, become a slideshow and the framerate becomes bogged down. Thankfully this slowdown isn't apparent when playing, but it looks utterly awful to see the game drop to one frame per second when showing a replay of a goal.

Perhaps my favourite feature of the game is the commentary. It's the Sky team of Andy Gray and Martin Tyler. Unlike the regular FIFA 06, where Andy is criminally underused, the commentary here is superb. Thanks in part to the game featuring fewer players than a fully loaded FIFA, both commentators have recorded snippets talking about individual players and it feels so very natural.

The sound in general is very well handled. If you listen carefully when Andy and Martin are discussing the team sheet before each match, you can hear the stadium announcer reading out the team sheet. You'll also hear goal scorers being announced too, to the very convincing and dynamic crowds. If FIFA 06: RTTWC was being marked on sound alone it would get a ten.

FIFA 06 Road to the World Cup is at its best when played with friends, and there's support for up to four players in each match. As you might expect, you can play on the same console, or play one on one via Xbox Live. The experience has been a mixed bag. Some matched I've experience lag, others it's been very smooth, I expect this is a function of the players' net connections and not any problem with the game itself.

So what we have in FIFA 06 Road to the World Cup is a cut down advert for next year's full FIFA. The on pitch play is excellent, but much of the design work surrounding the game, especially the fiddly menus, is badly thought out. The messy slowdown in cut-scenes show the game wasn't really finished when it was released. However the biggest problem for the game is that it doesn't offer all the features of the regular FIFA 06 such as club teams. If it had those, it'd have a much higher score. A flawed game, but a good one none-the-less.