FIFA Street review

Make no mistake, this is the one I’ve been waiting years for. Ever since EA Big wowed my ass off with its SSX series I’ve always entertained the prospect of it creating a football game. And why not? Basketball, Snowboarding, Wrestling, American Football… hell, even jet skiing. EA Big has sampled many wide delights but never something as obvious as football.

Well that time has come, and what we have here is FIFA Street on the PS2. A game with Dizzie Rascal and Fatboy Slim on the soundtrack. That should tell you a lot about the game already.

There’s a part of me that feels conflicted. FIFA Street is a good game, make no mistake about it. You can’t really compare it to the past FIFA titles or the Pro Evolution games because we aren’t even talking apples and pears here. Not unless one of the two fruits was wearing a jetpack and high heels – it’s that radical.

But at the same time, EA Big has shoehorned as much of what it considers to be contemporary style into FIFA Street that it borders on alienating. As ever the graphics and colours are glossy and vibrant. The gameplay is a little over the top and it isn’t particularly realistic. There’s an MC who talks so much that you’ll turn him off within an hour of playing the damn thing. And there’s a whole smorgasbord of various musical ‘talent’.

Fit for the streets

It’s not too hard to get your head around how the game plays. Rule the Street is your main arena, whereas friendlies and kick-abouts take the back seat. Within Rule the Street you essentially have to work you way through dozens of fully realized teams of four winning various Cups and prizes – all the while earning points and respect for your team.

It’s that classic EA Big staple, and the aesthetic hasn’t been altered one iota. Within the games you can perform special tackles and passes that earn you points and add to a meter that runs beneath your team name. Once the meter hits full and you’re standing near the opposing goal, hit L1 and O and watch as your player unleashes a special kick that is almost always guaranteed to make it to the back of the net.

Taking a leaf out of the equally indifferent NFL Street 2, you’re able to perform what the game calls Showboating. To you and me it’s just a fancy word for showing off. Showboating is easy – just tap any button on the D-Pad while holding L1, or press the Triangle button when near the player to watch as they chip the ball over them or run it through their legs.

In a very nice twist on the gameplay however, the ball doesn’t always land back at your foot after successfully performing one of these tricks. You’re still excepted to run to it and claim it before the other team. Unfortunately it can be a little tricky when you attempt to alternate the tricks and tackles to accumulate bigger points. Throwing the right analogue stick in a number of different directions will allow you to do this – but in the heat of battle, as it were, it can be a little jerky.

Trackies for goalposts

Equally jerky is the games choice of assigning the change player button to X and the shoot button to O. Whoever thought of this deserves to have a firing squad fire footballs into their friendly area. When the action gets tense it’s hard not to press X in a moment of sheer panic, or forget to hit O and press pass (Square button) instead. It makes the experience very fiddly sometimes and considering how fluid everything appears on screen, it’s a bad thing.

Speaking of which, my largest problem with the game is just how fluid it all is. There’s a bit too much attention put on autonomous control. Naturally you can’t control every player on the pitch who is a part of your team. However, the game spends a bit too much time doing so.

You’ll find your selected footballer running in directions you don’t want them too, taking too long to respond or failing to block a tackle even if you’ve done everything right. And god forbid you’re standing in your own box with the football and attempt to pass a bit too late. Own Goals are something I became very used to early on. It’s just the way the game was created, seeing as there needs to be at least a little opposition.

The Gamebreaker shots are a very nice addition, mind you. As mentioned earlier you’ll find that most often that not each time you attempt a Gamebreaker you’ll successfully make it. Initially it seemed a little too easy for me to score – ranking the points up before unleashing the fury. But as you battle your way through the streets the teams get harder and so does the prospect of scoring.

You’ll get to the stage of shouting at the screen when you’re 10 – 4 down and attempt to make a Gamebreaker shot, only for the ball to hit one of the opposing team instead and knock him over. It’s certainly funny in a Oh my god I’m about to rip my hair out but I can still spare a little giggle kind of way.

11- 6

That’s certainly the kind of score you can come to expect in a game like FIFA Street. As mentioned earlier it isn’t most realistic of titles – but it isn’t trying to be either. It’s the alternate game – the one you pop in even if Pro Evolution has been sitting in your PS2 for the last couple of hours. As a package, it’s everything an EA Big game deserves to be.

But as a game it comes up a little short. Four aside in tiny pitches, no matter how variable, loses its charm rather soon. So even if you get bored of the main beef of the game the prospect of throwing ten minutes into a friendly is a little out of the question. It’s the exact same game no matter how you play it. And with that ultimately comes the largest criticism of the game. It deserves to be a bigger and better title than it stands.

In short, it’s fun – but nowhere near the kind of game I had always been waiting for from EA Big. But something tells me we won’t see that game until the obvious release of FIFA Street 2.