FIFA Street review

Football is potentially a big seller in the computer games market. Everyone wants to be David Beckham or Wayne Rooney but as the games get more realistic they tend to become slower, lower scoring and bit more tedious. EA has now applied its Street branding to a football game in an effort to rejuvenate the game.

Taking place as four-on-four in the playground rather than on a beautifully manicured field, EA is hoping to get a back to basics feel to remind us of the way that non-international superstars tend to play the game. This should then be a fast paced, high scoring, rough game of football from one of the most respected sports game companies of the moment.

Warm days in the park

FIFA Street takes place in the playground rather than the park. The rules are slightly adjusted as well. The pitch is enclosed on all sides infinitely high so play only stops when a goal is scored. There isn’t a ref so tackling from behind and aggressively slide tackling opponents is all part of the game – there are no injuries either though.

This helps to keep the game flowing on the small, four a side pitch. The street element also manifests itself in the trick system. With the press of the Y button or a move of the right thumbstick your character performs a variety of tricks to beat the defender. As you string these together you improve your chance of scoring, increase your skill points and fill up your trick bar.

When the trick bar is full you get a gamebreaker shot. This is a slow motion, high powered shot which is almost guaranteed to score as long as you have a clear shot. Any defenders in the way will be knocked flying but they will deflect the shot.

Careering out of control

There are two main game modes available in Fifa Street – career and friendly. The friendly allows you to control a national team made up of real, recognisable players. This takes the form of a one-off match with no way to create tournaments with these real players.

The career mode is where most of the gaming time is likely to be spent. First of all you have to create a custom player who will always be included on the team. You can customise the appearance to a decent level of detail allowing you to get a passing resemblance to yourself or your favourite player if that’s what you’re aiming for. From here you have 200 points to spend on increasing your various attributes including shot power, tackling, tricks and speed. You end up with a fairly rubbish player and you add them to a team made up of similarly rubbish players before you take on the world in a tournament.

The tournaments take place at various locations around the world. Once there there are three game modes available: kick about, upgrade team and the tournament itself. The Kick About game pits you against another team that will be entering the tournament in a first to 5 goals match. This allows you to earn reputation and skill points which you can use to buy your way into the tournament or to upgrade your player.

The upgrade team option pits you against another team and if you beat them one of their players will join your team. You can pay with skill points to play against the best players but the lower skill ones – probably still better than your team – are free. The tournament itself requires payment with skill points and reputation points to enter and takes the form of a basic ladder tournament.

Falling apart

The game starts to fall apart as you get the hang of the controls. They’re not difficult but it will likely take a couple of games for you to stop shooting when you want to do a high pass and vice-versa. The first problem that struck me was the response time. The player animations are very nicely detailed but they have to be completed and they take too long to play out. During the animation any button presses are queued up, which is unlikely what the player wanted. That is, get into a trick animation, spot a team-mate with an open shot on goal and press pass. The animation is still running so press pass again. Now your team-mate is less well open but the animation has finished and you pass the ball.

The player you passed to immediately passes back to clear the button presses by which time you’ve lost your shot on goal. This gets far too frustrating too quickly. AI is also immediately apparent as a problem. The computer controlled players on both sides rarely sprint allowing you to easily outrun them. The players are too slow coming up in support of an attack and too slow dropping back in defence. For street football the pace is just too slow. The players and goalie have a habit of standing around when the ball isn’t directly coming at them and the goalie, particularly has trouble telling when the ball is directly between his feet.

Presentation

The graphics in FIFA Street are big and chunky and well animated. The animations may be too long but do look good. Some of the tricks involve two-man animations leaving the opponent standing as you move the ball around them. This is particularly annoying when you’re controlling the defender as control is taken away from you until the animation has finished. The ball tends to stick to the players a bit too much but generally the graphics are pretty good. The sound is a little less well done.

The commentator is rather repetitive and never interesting. He also has a habit of bursting into raps over the R&B soundtrack. The music track is suitable for the content and, whilst not great music, helps to create that Street feel to proceedings. The other sound effects are a bit lacking though, there’s no real sound of the ball being struck or rebounding off the goalposts, and there’s no audible feel for hard tackles. These things all help to create the atmosphere as well and the game is poorer for their absence.

Jumpers for goalposts

FIFA Street is almost certain to be the first of a series given EAs track record with these things. It isn’t as well put together as the NBA or NFL street titles but it is only the first version. This isn’t an excuse for a poor game and with EA's history of FIFA titles I had expected a bit more from it.

As the series matures it will certainly get better and all of the ideas and the elements for a great game are in there, they just aren’t that well executed. EA may also have been using it as a testing ground for ideas in the main FIFA game with a shot aiming system being employed with the left thumbstick moving a target around on a picture of the goal at the bottom of the screen when you get into shooting range. These little ideas may well be promoted to the main FIFA series.

Maybe FIFA Street will remain a testing ground for FIFA, which may be no bad thing if the Street game gets all of the good ideas first. Hopefully FIFA Street ’06 will make this series worth paying attention to. Keep a look out for it but maybe give this one a miss unless you’re really keen.