FIFA Street
It worked for Football and Basketball, so it should with Soccer too…right? Wrong.
Tags: FIFA Street Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by David Hinkle on Mar 29th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| FIFA Street (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Sports | No | ||
Fifa Street is the result of an attempt to blend together the world’s most popular sport with flashy, hip-hop presentation. In this respect, Fifa Street accomplishes everything it sets out to do but falls short in every other department that makes a game fun and replayable.
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If you’re unfamiliar with its NBA and NFL counterparts, EA Big’s Street series is known for its fast-paced and stylish gameplay, based around the ’street’ version of each sport. What this boils down to is more of an emphasis on the arcade side as opposed to the the simulation side, offering a wider appeal to those who may not be all that enthused about the other side of every given sport. For the NBA and NFL, Street has created a nice take on the spirited sports, which makes it odd that the transition to soccer turns out to be far less enjoyable.
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Fifa Street is played throughout various seedy back alleys and locales that are much smaller and less impressive than those that hold real matches. Here, each team presents 4 players to square off in matches. The victor is, of course, decided by the amount of goals in either a timed or an untimed game. The biggest problem with the environments isn’t that they are completely walled in, but that those walls are only 3 feet tall, at best. Seeing a ball bounce off of an invisible wall of air and back into play is a common and altogether strange occurrence.
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The professional players look pretty accurate here, but in regards to their playing ability, things aren’t quite as good. The AI is the worst it’s ever been, even when the difficulty is amped all the way up. CPU players often just charge you, rather than form any kind of defensive structure. Once you get down their approach, it’s really nothing but child’s play to take them apart. This applies to the goalkeepers as well, though their lack of intelligence can be attributed more to the combo system.
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Like other Street titles, stylistic juke moves are an integral part of the game. Using the right analog stick allows you to perform certain directional jukes, pressing up to toss the ball over a defender’s head and down to push it between his legs respectively. These are all nicely animated, and upon progression through the game, get even better when new ones are unlocked. Eventually you’ll get jukes that allow you to mix up two defenders at once, which look pretty good, but cause a major problem when you are controlling one of those defenders, as the game will automatically take over that character for you and essentially leave you powerless. Sure, you can switch players quickly, but honestly, you shouldn’t have to. Stringing together multiple jukes and taunts together will start to add counters on the top of the screen, which act like modifiers affixed to the goalie. The more you string together, the more of a decrease in stats the goalie receives. This seems to take away from the weight of stat points on each of your players, which are acquired with the game’s currency: Skill Bills.
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There are two areas of the game you will spend your time on: Friendly and Rule The Street. Friendly is just for exhibition matches and multiplayer games, whereas Rule The Street plays in the same vein as NFL Street’s. Taking a squad of players, which you may also create from scratch, you essentially tour around neighborhoods and take on opposing teams. Most of the time, there will be a requisite for winning the match, such as scoring a one-timer and whatnot. Traveling around, accumulating territories and players is fairly fun, but ultimately fails due to the lack of polish on gameplay.
With a mix of techno tunes that work for the game fairly well, you get good audio to go along with the fast gameplay. Along with that, the commentator does a pretty good job with the position. Each of the locales also have various things going on that sound good, such as car horns and bustling pedestrians. Other sounds aren’t too noteworthy, such as the grunts and thuds every few seconds, but this is to be expected with how much bouncing one little ball tends to make.
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Fifa Street isn’t Live enabled on the Xbox and is incapable of going along with the PS2’s Network Adapter. In fact, both versions are nearly identical to one another, only differing slightly in graphical quality and load/save times. While I think it rather odd to not include online play, it’s understandable since every other inception of Street has debuted without the inclusion. Still, it would of been nice to toss a bone to those who own a Xbox through Custom Playlist ability.
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So, with the first Fifa Street we see some nice potential, yet we are left with an overall bad taste in our mouths. Maybe add in another game type or two, some online play, and better AI before deciding to toss another Fifa Street our way, EA. For those who are absolutely mad about Soccer, this game is going to be fun for you, especially if you have friends who share your same madness. The casual fan though, who plays a few games of soccer here and there, has no reason to go and buy this game, let alone rent it.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Fast and tense game play + Real life players + Sound |
6.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- AI is just plain horrible - Could have used more modes of play - No online play |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Those nutty about soccer and the Street series will find little to deter them here, yet will become tired of it shortly after. For the rest of us, it's not a big deal. | |
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Tags: FIFA Street
Posted by David Hinkle on Mar 29th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
