Xbox 360 owners felt pretty ripped off by EA after the universally loathed Road to World Cup was offered as a launch title. Why they could have just slapped an Xbox360 sticker on FIFA 2006 is beyond me, as that was a fantastic game and easily the best in the series in a long while.

2006 FIFA World Cup improved the series greatly, providing a solid title that bode well for the future releases of EA’s franchise. Although it used the same FIFA engine as the xbox version, it featured brilliant presentation, a whole heap of options, and a gameplay system that somewhat refined the way FIFA has played in the past, a little for the better and a little for the worst.

Enter FIFA 07. EA has actually listened to gamers for once, redesigned the engine from the ground up for the Xbox 360. Here we have in actual fact a new game for our money, and this can only mean good things, right? Unfortunately a lot of what was looking promising in the old engine has been trashed, and I found the more I played the more I longed for the old version as I discover things that at first thought were cool, but suddenly become very annoying.

Like the physics on the ball. Finally the ball is completely untethered from the players, and has its own identity, which used to be a common complaint about FIFA. It bounces freely, and is deflected off various body parts in a natural and realistic manner. If you hit the ball with the edge of your player’s foot, it will shoot off at an odd angle. Spin and velocity can influence its direction. I have seen it spin under the cross bar and into the goal. However, at the same time you never feel as though you have control over the ball. It can receive a glancing blow from another player and scurry out of dribble range, bounce off the back of players’ head.

Combined with the AI, this gets quite frustrating. Many times you lift the ball in a pass to a player, and they’ll be running forward and the ball will hit them in the back of the head. When on a run forward, players never seem to turn around fast enough. It’s like players are on tracks, and won’t deviate from their runs, so if a ball bounces funny because of a deflection or interception, it takes too for the game to catch up. This sense of being somewhat behind the play appears to infect the whole game. In fact, because it’s so noticeable the commentary actually apologises for it!

“Commentary isn’t an exact science” quips Clive Tydsley quite often as the players scrap over the ball because they’re moving this way and that in response to your joystick movements and the ball bouncing of body parts. At first I thought this was funny and clever commentary, but after the 10th time in a match I realised it must have been included because this flaw!

Speaking of 10th time, I know soccer is a sport known for seemingly soft tackles and frees, but when you get your 10th foul and you’ve never hit the button to slide-tackle, it becomes incredibly frustrating. Players will push and jostle each other when running for the ball, and pressing the A button makes your player attack the ball with vigour, but if you tackle from any position than slightly in front of the other player, you’re issued a foul. Now, given your player is running on a track and will often run past the play because the response is slow, you player will be nearly always the player from behind the ball, so you’ll nearly always cause a foul when you tackle.

Some may argue that this is realistic to the game of soccer, but for a computer game it just doesn’t feel natural. You get worse at tackling and give away more frees the more you play. If it was a realistic play device it would work in such a way that the more you tackled the better you become. You’d figure out better strategies and a better way to play. I’ve played many, many games and am still not better at it. I’m better at corners and frees and passing and scoring, but this is a fault in the mechanics of the game.

The presentation of the game is superb though. The interactive loading screen with a keeper and your favourite player is great fun, and the option screens are very slickly designed. The ability to change not only team but an individual’s play style and level them up with skills is a very welcome change, allowing those who like the simulation side of soccer to tweak to their hearts content. You can also look at the stats a player has for an individual game, essentially checking their performance on the fly; their tackles, their main areas of play, where and when they commit fouls. And it has a greater impact on the field than the simulation in FIFA 06. Changing your formation or pinpoint the space a player should run when in attack can have a greater impact on the game.
Where the presentation fails is in sound. Whenever there’s a substitution, the sound stops completely. Sometimes the channels clash,

[NOTE: The rest is missing. I think the original file has become corrupted]