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FIFA World Cup 2006: Reviews

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Game Score: 8/10

In my opinion the best football game I have ever played is sensible soccer on the mega drive all those years ago. Since then I have played many football games including those of the FIFA franchise and Pro Evo.

I was anxious about buying FIFA 06 for the DS as there was very few news features and previews about the game in the weeks before release.

The game opens with it asking you for details of your favourite team, I can only assume from my experience so far is that this is asked so it displays your favourite team first when you select the game modes, to save you searching for your team every time, a nice touch. The game allows you to select current teams in every mode of the game from a large selection from many top leagues from across the world and even selected lower divisions. International teams are also included in these options. The selection of teams available in this game is very impressive. It may be that there are more options in the consoles and PC versions of this game, but the selection provided is more than adequate and includes the more common teams that are supported in the various countries.

The game offers several forms of play; these are:

�KICK OFF�
a basic friendly game against any other team of your picking

�GAME MODES� these include:

�CAREER�
this is the main part of the game, it has a 5-season career challenge with criteria that needs to be achieved in each season.

This area of the game has the most to offer and anyone who has played FIFA games in the past will recognise this aspect of the game. This mode gives you the chance to play through a regular season including league games and cup games with all the usually rules. The objectives it gives for each season are a great addition and give you something realistic to aim for on the higher difficulty settings (to be honest playing this game on the easy difficulty is going to be far to easy for anyone). You are awarded �Prestige� points throughout this mode for basically winning games, keeping clean sheets and scoring multiple goals in each game, achieving an unbeaten run gives you a nice reward of �Prestige� points and once you meet a certain level of points you get to upgrade you team from a selection of options. These options including giving skills to either the goalkeeper, defence, midfield or attackers, or just to basically improve the overall fitness of the whole squad.

�CHALLENGES�
this is a new section that again is a great addition to the game. It offers a large selection of challenges that are presented as factual games and asks the player to achieve what happened in the real game. For example one of the first challenges is to beat Liverpool with Man City with around 15 mins of play left in the game. These challenges are quite tough but incredibly good fun to play and encourage you to play as teams and in leagues you may not usually opt to.

�SEASON�
this mode basically speaks for itself allowing you play a regular season with any team of your picking, the main objective is to win.

�TOURNAMENT�
this mode again �does exactly what it says on the tin�, pick a team, play a tour a tournament. It starts off with a small league scenario then goes through to knock out stages, great for the international teams.

�MY CLUB�
this mode should be the award winning section of the DS version of FIFA 06 but unfortunately it just doesn�t seem to make any sense. The idea is not a new one, but basically you design your team, and you�ve guessed it; you use the touch screen to draw a team logo, which I suppose is fair enough. All seems to be going fairly well in your team creation even up to the point to designing what each player should look like from a selection of options including face, build, hair do�s etc., then it come to actually being able to alter the skills the each player. Again on the face of it, this seems like a fairly good option, each player is allowed to have 350 points to be used to alter their skills from shooting to keeping the ball. This is where this mode completely fails, the 350 points for each player allows the user to completely max out every skill of the player so potentially the goal keeper can be as a good a striker as,� well the striker, and visa versa. This makes no sense to me because the team you originally get given are hopeless, and the temptation to max out your teams skills are too much given the original abilities the players have.

If you do create a club in �My Club�, then basically they get added to the selection of teams in each mode so you can pick them in career mode or any other mode. I found them added to the back of the Premier League so I imagine they are added to the league that you pick your favourite team from.

The pointlessness of this mode doesn�t really affect the overall game play, because you can ignore it, but it seems a shame. If you can create a team without the temptation to max out their skills or even leave them as they originally are, then you can enjoy this option as you would get great satisfaction from playing you team in career mode and trying to earn �Prestige� points with them.

�MULTIPLAYER�
this is an option I would love to use, but unfortunately I know no one with a DS. Although the box says 2 players can play multiplayer with one card, by using the download feature of the DS, which sounds great. Multi-card play allows up to 4 players to compete in leagues.

�MY FIFA 06�
this is basically an options menu, allowing you to choose whether replays should be allowed as automatic and numerous other options including weather conditions, injuries and offence cards being awarded. Most of these options can also be changed before any given game in the pre match options including the team management.

To sum up FIFA 06 I will use the scoring system from other game websites such as IGN and Gamespot:

PRESENTATION

8

FIFA 06 is presented well on the DS and feels fluid with great controls and use of the touch screen in game to assign the whole team to defend or attack. Although the touch screen isn�t overused, the options it gives within the game do add to its appeal. FIFA 06 for the DS is clearly designed for the DS and isn�t a poor port of any other previous FIFA games.

GRAPHICS

8

One of the issues that worries me with the DS is that large game producing companies such as EA tend to make DS games that are potentially just the GBA version with touch screen controls, again this isn�t the case. The graphics are 3D and although the DS could probably produce better, it runs smoothly and presents well. The use of the bottom screen as a radar like display also helps to over come the short falls of a reasonably small top screen, as it can be used to locate a good pass. The graphics do a good job in this game, and although I suspect in future football games the graphics will be better on the DS, this version of FIFA 06 has some nice graphical touches, such a rain, snow and also clouds passing shadows over the pitch.

SOUNDS

7

This is perhaps the most surprising aspect of the game, the game does a decent job of the sound effects, the menus have songs playing in the background like the console versions of the game and it also has in game commentary. The commentary may not be as advanced as the console versions but offer a good addition and the game would probably feel less real without them. Crowd noises and chants within this game are maybe a little too limited but this is one aspect of the game that should be limited to allow extra qualities to be added elsewhere. Although the crowd don�t sound too realistic, their short falls do little to reduce the fun in this game.

GAMEPLAY

7

FIFA 06 for the DS plays genuinely well and the controls feel smooth and well worked on. The touch screen offers full control over replays of goals and the game does feel complete. The lack of trading players is a shame within this game and also some of the later player buys such as Owen at Newcastle and Phil Neville at Everton haven�t been included, and it is understandable this may annoy and insult some football fans out there.

It has to be mentioned this game has some strange bugs that are basically due to a lack of adequate game testing. If you change your team formation within a game or substitute a player, the next time you play a game your team will continue in the formation you finished the last game in with the same squad. The squad never resets itself, this is very frustrating as every game you have to rearrange your squad. Some other bugs include intervening in a game you chose to simulate and watch the minute by minute text commentary, when intervening although you play as your team, the player names and stamina bars displayed are always for the opposite team, which can be extremely confusing.

Despite the shortfalls in the game mainly due to some bugs and limited memory on the DS card the game plays well and feels like a finished product.

LASTING APPEAL

8

The career of 5 seasons and the option to create your own team and play them in any of the given modes allows this game to having a good lasting appeal similar to the other FIFA games on consoles. The FIFA 06 for the DS has a good lasting appeal for anyone who likes FIFA games, as this feels very similar to other games in the series.