In typical EA fashion, the FIFA series 10th anniversary game, FIFA 2004 was a complete shambles. It looked ok, but it was sluggish, unresponsive, and easily the worst FIFA title that wasn't released for a 32-Bit console. When it came time for FIFA 2005's release, I wasn't exactly hyped up. However, it did launch the day after I got paid, and I was in town, so own it on launch day I did.

For those unaware, FIFA is EA Sports videogame based on football, or soccer if you Americans must, in the same vein as their NBA Live and Madden games. It gets released once a year, with the standard updates to team rosters and kits, and usually a few gameplay tweaks here and there. However, it was going to take for than a few little tweaks to repair the damage that was the previous year's game, which had, as it's major addition, the very fancy, but ultimately quite useless in multiplayer Off-the-Ball control.

FIFA 2005 was marketed, outside of the US anyway, with Patrcik Viera in his Arsenal colours, Fernando Morientes representing Spain and Andriy Shevchenko sporting his AC Milan shirt. Aside from raising the bizarre point of why EA are allowed to show the Nike 'Swoosh' on their front cover and not on the in-game shirts(and why they put him in his Arsenal Shirt, when his France shirt is from Adidas, who clearly have no qualms with having their logo in the game), this is quite irrelevant, but I suppose it can be used to highlight how far the FIFA series has come, from a stock shot of some keeper on the first game, to a professionally shot cover featuring three of the world's best players.

As with every other FIFA game, there is no story or anything, it's a sports game, the objective is to play football matches. Where a football game is made or broken is in the gameplay engine, and FIFA 2005 doesn't disappoint.

The major gameplay addition, as in the one EA based their marketing campaign around, was the First Touch Control. This move, performed by flicking the Right Analogue stick as the ball is recieved by your player, and depending on the movement of your stick, as well as how the player recieves the ball, can result in a variety of tricky little moves, from step-overs, tap-aheads and little flicks, this is a neat addition, and certainly beats the old 'Skill Move' to hell.

However, this would be worth nothing if they didn't fix 2004's problems, which thankfully they have done brilliantly. Players are now a hell of a lot more responsive, and the game is played at a generally faster pace. The free-kick system is easily the best system for representing Free-Kicks that videogames has ever seen. Like an improved version of the system EA has been building since the series hit the XBox, you pick a target on the goals, pick which angle you will hit the ball at and by trying to stop a cursor on points of a bar, which moves at a speed determined on the player taking the kick, to gauge accuracy and Power.

If there is one complaint I have with the gameplay, it's still the horrible Corner Kick system, which I can't really explain because I don't truly understand how it works. It involves picking an area of the box to hit the ball into, and you have to try and get your timing of pressing shoot, as well as placement and other factors correct to make contact with the ball. The fact the instruction book doesn't explain it at all doesn't help.

The game plays as smoothly as anyone could expect when in open play, and is easily the best representation of the sport available at the time of writing. Scoring headed, vollied and first time hit goals is now not only possible, but it will be a necessity if you want to win, and the game has carried over all the nice touches from it's Portugal 2004 spin-off, so you can now perform flighted through balls and lob the keeper when through on goal, simply by holding the L trigger as you press the correct button. It's really quite hard to describe what is so good about a football game's engine, without just saying that it feel like a game of football should. Matches never veer into unrealistic scorelines, computer AI is actually pretty decent, and my only basic gameplay complaint is that it sometimes pulls the old 'computer knows better than you' move and passes somewhere which you never intended it to.

Controlling the game is much the same as recent years:

A: Pass/Change Player
B: Shoot/Step-in
X: Cross/Slide Tackle
Y: Through Ball
L: Modifier
R: Sprint
R-Stick: First Touch
L-Stick: Move Player

The system is easy to negotiate for new players, and it's basically what FIFA vets are used to. It responds perfectly well, and the game is basically a control success.

As well as having a very good engine behind it, FIFA 2005 also packs the gameplay modes in to keep you occupied. Along with the standard Exhibition and custom tournaments, needed for multi-player play, which this game has spades of enjoyments worth of, but also a really well worked Career mode, where you create a manager and take control of a lesser team, and try to build your way up the ranks winning games and so on, before hopefully moving to bigger and better clubs, based on your success in not just signing the right players and winning matches, but also your timing in making substitutes and keeping the team fit.

I absolutely love the Career mode, and it adds so much more life to the game's single player value than any other sports title I've ever played has. My only complaint with it, is that if you are a fan of a team of galactic proportions, eg Chelsea or Real Madrid, it can be almost impossible to get to manage them, and chances are that if you do, it will be years in the future(the game gives you 15 seasons), and they will be unrecognisable. So far I've managed Rangers, won the SPL(x3), the Scottish Cup(x3), the Champions League, the UEFA Cup, and managed Oxford and so far got them into the Championship(from the Second Division) and won all the cups on offer to me, yet I'm still nowhere near qualified enough to take on a team of that stature. Doesn't really bother me, but it would be a bit of a kick in the balls for a Chelsea supporter.
One nice feature in Career mode is the ability to interactively simulate games. Here you start the game in simulation, which is like watching a game in Championship Manager, but you can intervene and join the match at any time.

The game features not only a healthy selection of national teams(once again notable absentees are the Netherlands and Japan) but also the top divisions of countries like Scotland, the USA,Germany and Spain amongst others, not to mentioned the top and lower divisions of England and Italy, and a neat 'Rest of the World' section that takes in teams from countries that only have one or two large teams(or don't sell many copies of videogames) ala Sparta Prague or Galatasuray.

It should also go on note that if a team has a third kit, it won't be available from the start, it will have to be unlocked. There is an 'EA Sports Extras' mode, where you can unlock various kits, different balls, stadiums at night and more songs for the soundtrack. While this is a nice feature, which also adds life to the game's single player enjoyment, the fact that you only get points to unlock stuff for specific things actually, in effect, hinders the game. You see, you get points for doing things for the first time, and it's cool to begin with, you get some for accessing the game's many options, winning a game, winning a game by shootout, winning trophies in career mode...it's cool. But then, you realise it isn't so cool. For a start, some points can only be gained by playing the game on XBox Live, which I don't have. Bummer. And second of all, you only get points for winning trophies the first time around, which means you would have to do a lot of country hopping in terms of managerial roles to get points quickly. This is a pretty minor gripe in the long run, but it bothers me a little, that I'm nowhere near to unlocking everything in a game I've played consistantly for almost a year, and soon it's new installment will be out, and I probably still won't have unlocked it all or won it all in this game.

As with always, EA have the license for all the correct player names and kits, but it isn't quite perfect. For a start, every shirt has a collar, meaning shirts that don't have them in real life look stupid, especially the Diadora shirts that have an almost polo-necked collar, the aforementioned issue of Nike shirts missing Swooshes, and the fact that unless a player is 'unique' then they all look like one of three stock players(one of whom seems to be Robbie Keane) really doesn't give credit to EA's reputation for their games always looking perfect. Granted the game does cram in a hell of a lot of teams, with a lot of effort going into their kit reproduction, not to mention the well rendered stadiums, but it was a sticking point, the fact that half of the SPL and lower English leagues have the same face.
In general, the graphical aspects of the game are all at least good. Players are animated nicely, it has good lighting effects, and as I say the stadiums are well recreated.

Sound boils down to a decent commentary from Ally McCoist and John Motson, but sometimes during career mode they mess it up, often declaring you are a league winner or through to the next round of a cup already,when it simply isn't true. They don't really grate on the nerves, and it's certainly one of the better commentaries in videogames.
The soundtrack is a pain. Why EA won't let you put your own music in their games is beyond me, which means we deal with a real eclectic mix of stuff that really isn't very good. We've got some bizarre Europop, some German metal, Morrissey, Franz Ferdinand,the Scissor Sisters, some Swedish band who want to be Avril Lavigne, and if you unlock it in the Extras, even good old New Order(thankfully not World in Motion, but the more preferrable Blue Monday).

While it may not be perfect, but will any football game ever be?, but FIFA 2005 is, at the moment anyway, the best football game you can buy for your XBox. I realise it's a bit odd saying that when I've given an older installment a higher score, but that game came after years of repetitive FIFA games, so it's improvements were more visible. 2005 is a very good game, that I would imagine all fans of the sport, and even those who just like to play it in videogame format will enjoy. Due to the time I'm writing this, we are probably only about 3 months, at most, away from FIFA 2006, so this should be going pretty cheap about now. If you aren't overly concerned with having the most up-to-date rosters and kits, then this would be a great bargain. It's got single player life, thanks to career mode, and anyone who ever doubted the multi-player qualities of even the worst FIFA game was a fool, and on a solid installment like this, it's a great game, and you could easily play it on 2-4 Player and never touch the single player game, although you would be missing out.

Other EA Sports Football Game Reviews
FIFA International Soccer for Sega Genesis
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 2002 for PlayStation 2
FIFA 2003 for XBox
FIFA 2004 for Gameboy Advance
UEFA Euro 2004 for XBox

Recommended: Yes