EA get a fair bit of flack from their policy of releasing new revisions of their franchise games every 12 months or so and charging full price for seemingly small changes. Sometimes this is warranted, and other times it is not. The problem with the FIFA series is that football is such a well-loved sport, and EA has tried to buy the sport through exclusive licensing deals, that people often slag EA off before giving the games a really good chance. I couldn’t say I’m a football fanatic, but I do enjoy the sport, did play in my youth, and I have played all the FIFA series of games on Xbox, and it’s my opinion that FIFA 2006 is the best to date.

One of the primary causes of concern amongst football fans about FIFA was the scorelines. People on forums constantly whinged about how in “real football” there are no 4-4 draws, or 6-3 wins, and said that the FIFA game should reflect more realistic scores. I’m not going to enter a debate about how boring a nil all draw can be to watch, but for me this arcade score line made the game extremely fun. I come from a background of playing games like Sensible Soccer and Microprose’s International Soccer, which were lots of fun, had crazy scorelines and realism wasn’t the entire point. I’m of the opinion if you want “realism” in a soccer game, go play a game like Championship Manager – they’re made for geeks in glasses who obsess over numbers and statistics.

However, FIFA 2006 has indeed addressed this complaint, and it’s quite tough going to score at all in FIFA. This is both a blessing and a curse. For someone used to scoring high in matches, it can seriously put a dent in your ego to win by only a goal or two, and to have more draws than wins. However, at the same time that makes it one of the most intense FIFA games to date. Every strike has to be on target, every loose ball has to be won, and every time the opposition gets close to your goal square the anxiety levels rise.

Part of this is the result of smarter AI. It’s a subtle change over the previous release, but after prolonged play it becomes more apparent. The AI is tougher, sticks to the player, and plays much more aggressively. They’ll play advantage, but they’ll also play towards the sidelines when in defence when you’re in a threatening position. Speaking of playing advantage, I was shocked the first time the commentator said, “the Ref has given advantage” after a bad tackle. The ball was held up in play, the whistle blew and I was awarded a free kick. This could be in other games, but this was the first time I noticed it, and the first time it was an accurate reflection of how the play-on rule works.

Another reason the game seems tighter are the physics of the ball are a lot more realistic than previous FIFA titles. The theme song of this years release is Jamiroquai’s “feels just like it should”, and sums up the ball physics perfectly. It actually moves like a ball on a pitch, rather than a sprite in a game. When it rains the ball becomes slippery and heavier. When a kick is reflected off the gaol post it’s reflected in a real direction. And in addition, this year the player stats do actually seem to mean something. Fast players will be able to outrun slower players, tougher players will be able to force players off the ball with their body, and the strong kickers will be able to kick the ball more accurately.

However, there are some major problems with the game, holding it back from being a truly great football game. When the ball is kicked into midfield, the game suffers a quite noticeable framerate drop. It seems that having so many players in the midfield cause the game to stutter and slow down, which is really unfortunate. When there doesn’t seem to be much going on in the terms of onscreen action, especially compared to a shooter or racing game for example, it really does seem like an inexplicable problem. And it is enough to make a player have second thoughts about playing it. You do become accustomed to it, but I was ready to stop playing and give a dismissive review the first few times I played.

Another issue is the Team Management section. Even though I’m not a great fan of team management games, finding the statistic crunching to be rather dull, I am prepared to admit they usually do impact on a game. FIFA 2006 has attempted to bring in some form of team management, but it fails because it doesn’t seem to have too much an impact on your team, but enough to simply annoy you. This year, instead of gaining points for winning and spending it on certain coaches, you earn money from home ground ticket sales and sponsors. You then use the money to improve your coaching field, improve your grounds and pay your players.

However, choose the wrong sponsor and you could find yourself losing money every match, especially if you’re not getting wins every game. This makes it hard to improve your coaching line up, which in turn means your players don’t play as well, and their team and individual morale drops. This in turn affects team chemistry, that unquantifiable quality that means certain teams play better together, which is sadly given a score that you have to try to improve on. When your team is not playing well, crowd attendance will be down, meaning you lose more money, and sacking players doesn’t help team moral much either.

On top of that, you get wildcards, as per the Sims, where a scenario presents itself, such as “Management has heard rumours of dissention in your team” and you have to answer appropriately from a choice of three. Sometimes answering the question appropriately doesn’t seem to give a satisfactory result. It does all seem rather light, and there’s no option to turn it off in the main Manager mode. It only mildly impacts on your teams’ on-field performance, and makes transfers and recovery of players more difficult than perhaps it should be. EA should go all out with this mode and give a rich and deep transfer and management market, and give players the option to simply turn it off.

For those who like playing with mates, FIFA2006 has you well covered. Not only is there Xbox Live functionality with the ability to play in online leagues and track your wins and losses, but there’s also FIFA Lounge, which allows you to create a local league of mates on your xbox and rank you against each other. Lounge allows you to play a round-robin knockout game, or a full tournament, and also allows you to get “Cheap Shots” like issue Yellow Cards at the start of a match to really piss your mates off. Xbox Live games were fairly free of lag, but I had fairly regular server disconnections from the EA severs. Admittedly I didn’t do any of the set up things suggested when I first signed in, like opening ports and so forth, but then again I shouldn’t have to when most other games work fine. And that information should be in the handbook, not on a screen that can be quickly skipped.

Graphics problems mentioned above aside, the game does look quite impressive, with players looking much like their real life counterparts. The stadiums look great, and the shadowing on the pitch is very impressive. The crowd looks a little like 2D cardboard cutouts though, although the crowd roars and stadium ambience is excellent. When you’ve got the ball and the crowd are chanting out the teams name, it really does strive you on to excellence. As with any sports game the commentary can get a little repetitive, but this year the dropping of Ally McCoist and John Motson inclusion of Clive Tydsley and Andy Gray mean that there’s less inane chatter and much more action orientated discussion, which is very much welcome. The music that plays on the menu pages is quite a good selection of world beats, being mostly free of crap rap and rnb.

Closing:
Playing FIFA 2006 was a really good experience after I got over the initial disappointment of the framerate drop when the ball enters midfield. The game is a real challenge and a real improvement over last years’ release. The AI is especially tough, but never so much so that it becomes frustrating, and unlike previous FIFA games I never felt that the AI scored against me by using cheap shots or cheating. Likewise, online play is equally challenging, but again I never felt that a better player overwhelmed me. The Team Management section just doesn’t seem robust enough to me, which indicates that it will be seen as wasteful by the hardcore football fans, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Pros:
Overall improvement in realism from player representations to scorelines
Excellent and challenging AI
Great Ball Physics
The aftertouch plays are still a great inclusion
FIFA Lounge is fun – especially the ‘cheap shots’

Cons:
Heinous framerate drops in midfield
Team Management not robust enough
Bland stadium crowd animations
Frequent disconnection from EA Servers

82/100