2006 FIFA World Cup Germany

EA Sports provides a wonderful experience to enjoy between the real matches this summer.

The cynical or the fanboys among you may scoff, but with its new World Cup game Electronic Arts serves up one of the finest football games every released and easily the best in the long-running FIFA series. It’s not perfect and I’ll come onto the game’s faults later, but in terms of gameplay 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany, henceforth FWCG, should keep you busy until the next fully fledged FIFA game is released in the autumn.

I’m not going to get into the debate on whether there are too many FIFA games released, I see it as a completely pointless debate. The game exists, you have the choice whether to buy it. That’s the end of that.

So should you splash the cash what do you get, just some ripoff of the tournament only then and a few teams? Well no. What you get is over 120 teams along with the various qualifying tournaments for the regions. That’s a good number of teams but isn’t the full roster of FIFA teams and some of the kits/player selections aren’t totally accurate. But the major squads are there and it adds up to a lot of content.

Qualification isn’t a prerequisite to play the World Cup tournament, but it does add some interesting content to the proceedings. Trying to guide Australia to the finals is an entertaining prospect given the Oceania region’s tortuous qualifying structure. At the end of qualifying, should you be successful, you’ll be able to take part in the finals in Germany with the other teams that have made it.

Should you plumb for the World Cup finals right off the bat, you can take part with the real teams present or customize your heart’s content. Away from the World Cup you can play exhibition games and if you’ve already played through the WC Tournament, play one of these friendlies as a qualifier, group game, quarter final, semi final or World Cup final to add extra atmosphere.

There’s also a section of challenges to take on from World Cup history. Interestingly these don’t use the real squads from the time, but place you in historical scenarios using the current squads. There are big Xbox 360 achievement points up for grabs for finishing all these events.

All this content would be for naught if the actual play on the pitch wasn’t up to standard, but thankfully the EA team offers up the finest FIFA experience so far. The shooting has undergone the biggest overhaul. Like PES, the shoot button now controls shot height, the game worries about power and accuracy based on factors including the squad member’s skill, fitness, position on the pitch etc. It works wonderfully well and makes for a lot of variety in goals scored and realism. Headers have undergone the same treatment and the various types of headers look very convincing. And it’s now a real joy to watch a keeper off his line back-pedal unsuccessfully and flap at a ball lobbed over his head from outside the box. In games past these would have always been saved.

The ball physics aren’t perfect yet, but are a big improvement on the last FIFA games, and the players feel convincing and responsive. In past FIFA games a player with the ball, no matter how fast in real life, would always have been slower than the opposition. This has changed, radically altering gameplay. Give the ball to someone like Michael Owen and he’ll race away from defenders to create an easy shooting chance.

This could have been a terrible change if the defensive AI, both for opposition teams and the player’s team, hadn’t been improved. But the change allowing players to use real pace is a wonderful addition to the game, making for very different gameplay opportunities based on player stats rather than an arbitrary rule. Opponent AI has been improved all around and you’ll now see AI teams change formations and tactics as well as make tactical substations. If you’re winning a match you can often suffer an absolute deluge in the last few minutes as the AI puts four men up front and launches an all-out attack.

The size of the squads varies, with the more prominent teams featuring a good selection of players to choose from. The squad and tactics menu can be a bit fiddly though. Sometimes it has more players than at other times. Occasionally I found it hard to move players around the squad because a popup menu would obscure them. Even more strange is the tactics menu, which seems pointless. You can look at the options here, but not actually choose any of them until you’re on the pitch.

My major gripe though with the non-playing aspect of the game is the very intrusive save game system. The first time you run FWCG it informs you there’s an autosave system in operation. Someone needs to explain to EA what an autosave system should do. It should handle all the saving with the minimum of fuss without pestering the player. Instead the system prompts the player about overwriting saves and which device to save them on, over and over again. Not just for one thing, but for tournaments, unlocks etc. It is a royal pain in the arse.

On the pitch thankfully technical problems are minimal. The cameras have been tweaked and all work very well, I’m rather fond of the broadcast came which gives a very realistic TV view of the proceedings. The game has none of that over the top shine that blighted FIFA 06 Road to the World Cup on Xbox 360, nor is there all that slowdown. The game is super smooth and very attractive. Not all the player likenesses are great, Beckham looks very odd, but overall it’s a very good looking game. The stadiums in particular are chock full of details and atmosphere even down to the level of having thrown streamers littering the edge of the pitch.

The commentary is well recorded by Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend, however the World Cup developer team really is a long way behind the regular FIFA programming team when it comes to implementing the commentary. They’ve given Andy Townsend an obsession with goalkeeping skill that means he praises the keeper whenever he makes the most minor of saves, even if he’s let loads of goals in already. There’s also the problem that during replays both commentators mentioning a throw in leading up to the goal that didn’t happen. Compared to recent FIFA titles where the commentary programming has been very good, it’s disappointing to see this letting the side down, being a long way from what’s expected at this level. One wonders why it couldn’t share the same system as the regular FIFA games.

While I’m talking about replays I may as well mention an annoying feature that’s followed the series from the last FIFA. That is the way the replay video controls are used. Score a goal and you’re treated to several TV-style replays of the build up and goal. But after these have run their course another replay is shown with a video control pop-up. Now I do want those controls in the game when I choose to run a replay. But having this pop-up without asking destroys the immersion of watching a TV broadcast. You have to manually skip it, so even if you want to watch the regular replays, you have to choose to get this off your screen.