Shoots, scores and celebrates
Written: Mar 09 '04 (Updated Nov 14 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Best football game of recent times,great graphics,real player/team names,best free kick system EVER
Cons: A few niggles
The Bottom Line: A must for fans of the sport. Especially if you have friends who like it as well.
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: FIFA Soccer 2003 for Xbox |
Fairly unrelated: I’m slightly annoyed that I have to enter this under FIFA Soccer 2003 with the US player (Landon Donovan?) on the cover, whereas the PS2 version lets you put it under the US version or the Euro version with Football, Davids,Roberto Carlos and Giggs on the cover.
The fact that epinions has listed these two separate makes me wonder if there are any slight differences, but apart from the titlescreen and sleeve I doubt it.Just thought I would get that out of the way before I start.
When FIFA International Soccer first arrived on the Sega Megadrive and Super Nintendo, it was hailed as a god-like game, it was one of the first games to offer real player and team names for a more realistic experience. Its sequels, FIFA 95 and 96 built on this reputation, adding club teams to the mix. FIFA 97 added indoor football, but was not met with the same warm reception as the others. From that game on, FIFA was on a downward slide in the eyes of the gaming press and the 'hardcore' gamers who slammed it. Personally, I had not bought a FIFA since 99,not owned one since 2001 came free with my new printer, it was only after playing it at a friends, that I realized FIFA 2003 is not just the best FIFA ever, it's also one of the best football titles of recent times.
In case you don’t know, the FIFA series is Electronic Arts Football/Soccer game, along the same lines as their NBA Live, NHL and Madden NFL titles. In the game you select a team from a variety of countries top leagues (or a National side) and take part in one of a variety of tournaments.
First up is the 'Club Championship’. This is a fictional league tournament comprised of the teams that EA have deemed the world’s elite. It’s a similar idea to the DC/PSX game European Super league, except European Super league was crap and I wont mention it again in this review.
The teams in this tournament are the ones that have received the most work in the way of creating the individual players. For instance, more work will have gone into recreating Real Madrid than has gone into Hibernian.
Domestic season is what it says, an example would be to pick an Italian team, I did this with AS Roma, and play through a season of Serie A and play matches in domestic and European Cup tournaments.
Tournament allows you to play in a variety of tournaments such as the World Cup or one of the European trophies or alternatively create your own cup or league from scratch. Choose how many teams, what teams...you get the picture, and then choose your team and play through it.
The game allows for up to 4 players, which has been a staple of the FIFA series since the beginning, and allows you to have it any way you want, 4 on one team playing Cpu, 3 on 1 or 2 on 2.
The graphics are awesome. It isn’t like EA, but they have actually put work into the Xbox version to make it look better than the PS2 version (I can’t speak for GC as I haven’t played it). Most of the top players look spot on, the only exception being Thierry Henry, but even then you can easily tell who it is.
The stadiums used are also superbly re-created. Having been to a few of them(Olimpico in Rome,Nou Camp in Barcelona, Bernabou in Madrid and Amsterdam Arena), I can say that they are probably as close to the real thing as you can get, with individual stewards and everything.
The sound effects are good. We get commentary from the despicable but loveable John Motson and living legend ‘Super’ Ally McCoist.
The crowd chants are all very well done and realistic, and I like the fact that if the away team scores there is less of a cheer than the home team.
Since it went CD based the FIFA series have always included some high profile music and some unknown stuff. This game has a mixed bag of music. The title theme is the decent enough Timo Maas track 'Get Down’, and highlights come from Idlewild (You Held the World in your Arms) to the lowly horrors of Ms.Dynamite (Dyna-mi-tee ugh) and a remix of Avril Lavigne's bile complicated thing. I just wish they allowed you to put in your own music, oh well.
The controls are staple FIFA. While on the Ball, A is Pass, B is Shoot, X is Lob/Cross and Y is through ball. The R trigger makes you sprint and the L brings up 'puddles' or where your players will be making runs. To perform stepovers and such other tricks, you tap the right thumb stick, while this is less reliable than the old method of a button press for skill; it also makes the game a bit more challenging.
While off the ball, A is change player, B is conservative tackle, X is Slide tackle, both Y and the L trigger make your keeper charge out at the player with the ball. Neither White,Black or Back is used.
One thing the game constantly comes under criticism for is that its matches have too many goals scored in them. Yes, in a sport where the IDEA IS TO SCORE GOALS it is apparently a bad thing to score goals. While I can see where past FIFAs have come under fire for this (it was often possible to get into double figures), 2003 is much tougher, with no clear ‘Always-score’ zone.
My personal favorite aspect of the game is its Free Kick System. This is the first time in any football game I have ever played where I felt totally in control of the taking of free kicks. You are given a target, which naturally you place where you want to aim the ball. In the bottom left hand corner there is a picture of a ball which has another target on it, you use the right thumbstick to choose where to hit the ball, at the side of this there is a bar that is mostly red apart from a small green patch, flashing up and down this par is a pointer, you have to try your best to stop the pointer on the green section. What adds to the brilliance is that some players are better at free kicks than others. If you get a free kick that is at the correct side and range and just makes you think “Roberto Carlos left foot” then taking it with him will make the pointer slower and therefore easier to get right.
The game is not perfect however, and it can be quite irritating when the computer wins the ball in tackles that are physically impossible to win. Headers are also pretty irritating to win, and they aren’t very powerful, meaning few spectacular headed goals.
On a similar subject, that does not just apply to this, but most football titles, why is chesting the ball down to control it so difficult? You do not press a button to do it, so you have to wait until the ball falls to you, by which time your opponent has usually headered the ball away.
Another such point is that hitting the ball first time cannot be done well. When the keeper spills the ball, you have to charge your shot, which from 2 yards out is stupid; anyone would just thump it in.
This isn’t a problem you will encounter much though, seeing as one of the game’s other faults limits these chances. Your strikers are a bit too keen to run back to the halfway line, meaning when you hit a shot, even if the keeper spills it or it hits the post and ricochets back out, your strikers are probably half-way back to their own box.
While these are incredibly irritating, they cannot detract from what is definitely the best Football title of recent times. Goals cannot be scored by simply running down the wing and crossing it in which means you will have to play some football to get goals.
As you would expect from a sports title, the game is meant to be played in multiplayer. This is the mode in which all the game’s faults are forgiven because it is just too much fun to hate.
Like I said before, this is probably the best football title of recent times, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the sport, even above its successor 2004 edition, which committed the hideous crime of removing the free kick system.
Other EA Sports Football Games
FIFA 96 for Super Nintendo
FIFA 96 for Sega Saturn
FIFA 97 for Sega Genesis
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 for Sega Saturn
FIFA 2004 for Gameboy Advance
UEFA Euro 2004 for XBox
Recommended:
Yes
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flash-hammer
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