Overview

I really don’t get it. This is arguably the best Fifa game ever, and easily the series’ best title in the past 6-7 years, and yet this game is getting panned by a number of the mainstream gaming media. It’s like my mate Doug said; it seems like these sites and magazines are trying to ‘make up’ for all those years of giving absolutely crappy Fifa games an instant high score

I dunno.

Anyway, don’t believe them when they say this game isn’t very good because this self-proclaimed Winning Eleven WHORE thinks that this Fifa game isn’t only the best in the series, it’s a damn fine soccer game, period.

Graphics 85/100

Let me get this out of the way; Fifa 2006 gets a score of 85% in the category of visuals not so much for the player models and animations (both are a bit naff) but because of the phenomenal TV-style presentation. From the graphical overlays, the player line-ups, substitutions, fouls, the replays in the background of the pause menu (was in Fifa 2005, I know) and panoramic stadia views in the build up, the presentation is fabulous and almost on-par with a real-life TV broadcast. The game also features the same selective blurring of the foreground, and then background, in some of its cutscenes that has been in the Winning Eleven games for a while now.

Unfortunately, when the camera moves in closer things aren’t so nice and once again I have to wonder what the mainstream gaming press are smoking when they talk about Fifa’s ‘exceptional’ player models because these guys still look like rejects from Resident Evil! I’m serious, some of these guys look like the walking-dead with exaggerated, bizarrely angulated faces and texture-less hair (okay, so Peter Crouch looks PERFECT). Beyond the faces, the players still look like they’ve been hitting the gym with Rafael Palmero too much and don’t look proportional with respect to height and breadth. However, because this is indeed a Fifa game, these muscular zombie midgets are immaculately dressed in impressively rendered kits complete with real-life licenses for even the lower division teams.

Animations are similarly as scary with jerky movements and poor transitions between them. The player movements are particularly poor when it comes to the interactions between each other and often a closer look at a ‘successful’ slide tackle will show that the tackler hardly touched the ball at all. Conversely, I’ve seen sliding fouls where it seems that the perpetrator barely touched his opponent at all.

One area that Fifa has never been lacking has been in the stadia and Fifa 2006 is no exception with fantastically modeled real-life grounds, as well as several well constructed fictional stadia for the lower division teams. I especially like the little touches like individualized banners for the lower league teams lining the pitches.

Finally, as you can see from the screenshots, the game also features a very generous sprinkling of ‘bloom lighting’ on the replays and in many of the cut-scenes. I’m kind of torn on the bloom lighting. On one hand the bloom lighting really helps to give a surreal, larger-than-life, look to the game. This is particularly effective in the build-up to a match as seeing a stadium like Old Trafford in the pouring rain with the floodlights glowing really adds a sense of drama and importance to a match. On the other hand, the bloom lighting for regular replays can look overdone.

Sound 95/100

Oh Motty where art thou? Yes, Fifa 2006 parts with tradition and replaces the legendary John Motson with Clive Tydsley for the play-by-play commentary. In the colour commentary spot Andy Gray returns to replace Ally McCoist. While I rather preferred the previous commentary combo, Tydsley and Gray do a fantastic job and their vocabulary and variety of comments seem slightly more expanded than last year’s game. You still get a lot of repeats come the end of a long season but it’s a lot better than in previous years (and light years ahead of anything in the Pro Evo series).

In the music department, Fifa 2006 has the one of the best soundtracks since Fifa 98:RTWC with a shitload of songs from a wide variety of artists and wide variety of genres. I also really like the random excerpts of famous real life commentaries that can play in the background.

Options 90/100

As always, Fifa 2006 features more real-life licensed professional leagues than you can shake a very (very) large stick at. Beyond the single season modes, cups and multiplayer, the bulk of your gaming time will be no doubt spent in the phenomenal Manager Mode. In truth, not a great deal has been added to this mode from last year but its still a great time waster that really engrosses you in the development of your managerial career as well as the progress of your team.

As in last years version, you begin Manager Mode creating your manager profile and then seeing what job positions are available (I took up the head spot at Scunthorpe). From the moment you take control you have a dazzling array of options open to you to manage the day-to-day activities of the club. These range from the more conventional managerial tasks like squad management, transfers, coaching and assigning scouts, to things like securing contracts with sponsors and setting ticket prices. The foundation of the Manager Mode is the clubs finances and almost everything, from sending out scouts to training players, costs money and your income is tied to gate receipts and sponsorship deals. The sponsorship deals you can sign vary with regards to game-by-game payments, win bonuses and loyalty clauses. You also have to deal with other aspects of team management such as deciding whether or not to fine a player when he misbehaves off the field.

Fifa 2006’s Manager Mode also features a half-baked ‘teamwork’ aspect to the play whereby if you fail to discipline misbehaving players, unfairly discipline others, or sell club favorites you can upset the balance of your team. On paper this sounds pretty good but its mostly a gimmick and pales in comparison to the Teamwork ratings development in Winning Eleven’s Master League where you can sign a superstar in the midseason transfer window and yet have him play very noticeably poorly as his teamwork rating is low with his new mates. Likewise, player development and progression is much better in Winning Eleven – but again, this has more to do with the quality of the game engine as you’re able to notice subtle nuances as players develop and improve (or decline).

Overall though, I think Fifa 2006’s manager mode is the star of the game. Don’t get me wrong, this mode is still far behind most dedicated football management games but it is involving enough that I’m willing to accept the inferior gameplay of Fifa while I’m playing. I think a decent comparison would be that of Kick Off 2 and Sensible World of Soccer. In a single match I always preferred Kick Off 2 to SWOS, yet I still played SWOS to death because, even though I didn’t find the gameplay of each match as enjoyable as in Kick Off 2, each match MEANT more because I had more invested in the managerial aspect of the game.

Along with the gameplay modes (a training mode is also included) and multiplayer, Fifa 2006 also features some nice extras in the form of highlight videos (though their Top 10 selection of goals is a bit questionable), interviews, and a nice video review of the history of the Fifa videogame series. It would have been nice to see EA Sports include one (or more) of the earlier Fifa games as an extra but its mindnumbingly easy to find these games on emulators anyway.

Along with the crapload of playable leagues, club teams and international teams, Fifa 2006 also features a staggering 44 (forty four!!) stadiums! While a few of these grounds are fictional grounds that have been created to host matches in the lower divisions, the majority are real-life stadia that range from the obvious inclusions such as Old Trafford and the Camp Nou to stadia I’ve yet to see in other soccer games such ass the Ataturk and Hamburg AOL Stadium.

The rosters in Fifa 2006 are more up to date than in those in Winning Eleven 9 (not much of an accomplishment there) but don’t include transfers made very close to the European transfer deadline. As a result Michael Owen is still sitting on Real Madrid’s bench, Jenas isn’t yet at Spurs, as well as whole host of other transfers are absent. Thankfully, the game includes a solid player editor and I’ve no doubt the legions of Fifa fans will come up with up-to-date roster/option files available for download off the net.

Finally, the game features licensed and accurately modeled real life referees! I think this is particularly neat, though it would have been nice if the refs had noticeably different refereeing styles (like in Winning Eleven) and it’s also worth a chuckle or two to see Urs Meijer refereeing a UK Division Two match!

Gameplay 80/100

I’ve already blabbed quite a bit so I’ll try to keep the gameplay section of this review more structured and divided into the following categories; controls, ball physics/player interactions, AI, and overall gameplay.

Starting off with the controls, I’m pleased to say that EA Sports have included an option to choose from a variety of control layouts including one that is almost identical to that of Winning Eleven on the X-Box! As such, you use the left analog for player movement, the right thumbstick performs first touch moves and ‘skill’ moves, and you hold down the right trigger to sprint. The B button is to shoot, the Y button is a through pass, X is to lob/cross the ball, and you press the A button to pass. Just like in Winning Eleven, holding down the left trigger in conjunction with the shoot button (B) performs a lobbed shot, the left trigger plus pass initiates a 1-2 (give & go), and the left trigger plus Y performs a lobbed through pass. The S-controller’s Black button initiates ‘pace control’, while tapping the White button performs stepover/dummy moves. Finally, the back button is used to control ‘team mentality’ and the D-pad is used to change tactics.

As in most recent versions of Fifa, shooting uses a power bar which rises slower than in Winning Eleven resulting in less shots that fly over the bar. The through pass (Y) is analog and I’m torn on whether I’m a fan of that or not. On one hand its great to lead the passer with a well measured through ball but on the other hand making a quick through pass is slightly harder and I like the fact that in WE because the weighting and exact location of a through pass is player attribute defined you can tell the difference between a through pass from Kaka and one from Roque Jnr.

Like in last year’s Fifa, the right analog controls ‘skill’ moves (ironically named as they require none of the sort) and more importantly the first touch moves. These one touch moves are really well done and help the game flow more realistically as players don’t have to always stop to control a pass before turning. The range of one touch moves aren’t player specific so sometimes you can see ridiculous things like Titus Bramble taking a single touch to perfectly flick on a lobbed pass through his legs, but overall the benefits of the one touch system outweigh the negatives.

I’ve always thought using the analog stick to control skill moves with a single flick is kinda dumb (even when it’s in Winning Eleven) and Fifa 2006 hasn’t changed my mind. Making things worse is the fact that often the direction you flick the stick in doesn’t correspond to the direction the player does the move in!

One of the new additions to Fifa 2006’s controls comes in the form of the ‘pace control’ function. This button acts as a kind of skill move modifier allowing you to slow down from a sprint and perform skill moves that are slightly different from the ones you do at high speed. Basically, you can be sprinting with the ball and then you press the black button to suddenly slow down, once this has been initiated you can then flick/wiggle/turn clockwise/whatever the right analog stick to perform different ‘skill’ moves that have a higher probability of succeeding. These moves include a variety of drag backs, rolling your foot over the ball and other assorted party tricks (for which, the likes of Claude Makalele would kick you into touch for doing against him).

The pace control moves are hit and miss depending upon the situation. On one hand I like the fact you can maneuver to avoid the odd tackle or two in close quarters to either get a shot or cross off. However, as this is Fifa you can also do these maneuvers with pretty much anyone and these moves have an even higher success rate than the regular skill moves – often prompting an over-reliance on the fancy.

As I indicated (repeatedly) in my WE:PSP review, I usually prefer the D-pad to control the action in Winning Eleven, but because Fifa requires far less precision I’m fine with using the left analog to control movement. As a result I particularly like the mapping of tactical options in Fifa to the D-pad. When you push one of the four cardinal directions on the D-pad a graphic appears on-screen indicating which particular tactic you’ve selected. The D-pad selects both offensive and defensive tactics and you can use more than one tactic at a time. Furthermore, you can also use the Back button to change team mentality to further modify your team’s attacking and defensive bias.

The final change in Fifa 2006’s controls comes in the form of the free kicks that no longer feature the option to select which part of the ball you want to strike. Instead, you get free kicks that are much like those in Winning Eleven – no targeting arrow, just a view behind the kicker which rotates as you move the left analog. While this system works well for Winning Eleven, the less precise controls in Fifa make this initially quite frustrating. However, with a bit of practice free kicks can be quite rewarding and overall I’m a fan of this change as it ramps up the skill required to be successful.

Focusing on Fifa 2006’s ball physics, it is quickly apparent that they are improved over last year’s Fifa. Much like in Fifa 2005 the ball has been largely freed from the rails that constrained its movement in prior Fifa titles. However, I still wouldn’t say that they are totally unscripted as you still see some oddities like the ball looping back to a player’s foot when he shoots. On the positive side though there have been more than a few occasions I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the odd super-realistic bounce or random series of deflections.

However, despite the fact that EA Sports are going in the right direction with the ball physics they are still a long way behind Winning Eleven as there’s still no variation in player ball control (Richard Dunne collects a pass just as neatly as Claudio Reyna) and still NO PREFERRED FOOT! I wouldn’t have a problem with these simplified ball physics if Fifa changed its focus to providing a more pick-up-and-play arcade style experience but EA Sports still positions this series as simulation of the beautiful game. Likewise, the player interactions are improved from last year but still far behind Winning Eleven. I think the biggest problem is that when two players come together to fight for the ball you don’t get the sense that they’re complex physical entities like you do in Konami’s game. In Winning Eleven 9 you get a sense of not only the speed at which two players are colliding but also their respective masses, the angles at which they’re approaching and also a sense of shirt tugging/holding (by pressing X). I love that in Winning Eleven you can run alongside the ball carrier and strategically tap X and move into him to try and tow the line between getting called on a foul by the ref and just doing enough to put the dribbler off. By comparison, a player interaction in Fifa just feels like two objects of equal mass coming together and if the ball carrier can press the pace control button and flick the trick stick in time he comes away with the ball – meanwhile, this is represented on screen as Stephane Henchoz deking the shit out of Sol Campbell.

While Fifa 2006 features marginally improved ball physics, I would say that the AI has been improved much more noticeably. One of the biggest issues I had with the AI in Fifa 2005 and Fifa Soccer PSP was the feeling of absolute disconnect between the midfield and the forward line. You always felt like there was this gaping expanse between the two and the game was all about quickly getting the ball up to your forwards and then charging down middle of the field – basically all attacking movements were composed of surging runs by the forwards. This has changed considerably in Fifa 2006 as the midfielders have finally decided to take part in attacking play and there have been more than a few occasions where, to my complete shock, I’ve seen a midfielder rush into the box (INTO THE BOX!?!?!) to latch onto a loose ball and blast it home. The support play still isn’t near where I’d like it to be and you still feel like you’re searching for a teammate to come and give you an open man, but it’s not like in previous versions when you felt like one players versus an entire back four. On the CPU side, the AI does a better job of making overlapping runs and also making some pretty neat passing triangles that I hadn’t noticed in previous titles. There still isn’t, however, any real variation between the playing styles of teams and the CPU seems to favor play down the wings too much.

At this point you’re probably wondering why, with what seems like improvements that result in a game that’s still vastly inferior to Winning Eleven, I’ve given this game a score of 80%. The answer is pretty simple; Fifa 2006 is FUN!

Sure the game is still mostly end to end, there isn’t much benefit to passing the ball around to probe the oppositions defense, there’s no preferred foot shooting, the ball physics are simple, but goddamnit this game is fun to play! I think the main reason for this is that EA Sports have managed to remove all but the last vestiges of the button mashing shitiness that plagued Fifa games between 1999 and 2004. Skill moves DON’T work all the time, there are a wide variety of goals that can be scored and there’s a moderate degree of skill in the shooting and passing. Likewise, while possession isn’t nearly as important as it is in real-life, you can’t get away with simply making lone runs with Henry from your own end, deking six players as you go before shooting into the top corner from 30 yards out. For the first time in a long time you actually get a sense of satisfaction from a Fifa game and just as importantly, you actually feel like you’re playing a game of soccer, and not ice hockey on grass.

Replay Value/Longevity 80/100

It’s obvious that Fifa 2006 doesn’t have nearly the depth of gameplay and sense of satisfaction when you succeed that Winning Eleven 9 does, but Fifa gets a high score in the replay value stakes because of the fantastic Manager Mode. You really get caught up in both the on and off-field progress of your club and I really do liken it to Sensible World of Soccer, or better yet Player Manager on the Atari ST.

Overall 80/100

Best Fifa ever? Definitely! From a sentimental standpoint I’ll still have a place in my heart for Fifa: RTWC 98 but overall, Fifa 2006 is the best game in the series in terms of both gameplay and features. From a pure gameplay standpoint, Fifa 2006 still can’t come close to competing with Winning Eleven, but for the first time in years Fifa’s gameplay is solid enough that it can ride the vast quantity and quality of its features to a high score.

Even if you’re a Winning Eleven nut I’d definitely recommend giving Fifa 2006 as a whirl as it can be a nice arcade-style alternative to Konami’s game. If you’re a casual football fan I think Fifa 2006 could easily tide you over till Winning Eleven 9 comes out stateside…..or maybe till Fifa: RTWC 2006 is released……

Lavan Chandran

10/10/2005

[Screenshots from EASports.com & TeamXbox.com]