FIFA Street

Written by Vadim Leonov  on March 18, 2005

Review: If Уthat's how it's done on the streetsФ, then the streets are a place you should avoid.

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The most popular sport in the world is soccer, however this is not the case in the U.S. The average American can probably name only two soccer players in the world: England's David Beckham and Ronaldo of Brazil. Americans prefer sports like football, baseball, basketball and even hockey. When FIFA Street was released a few weeks ago, it is apparent that EA BIG was not catering to the tastes of a mainstream American. On the contrary, they were actually targeting a mostly European market. Now I'm certainly not a big soccer fan, but being a huge fan of the Street series by EA BIG (including the NBA Street and NFL Street series), I decided to give FIFA Street a try.

FIFA Street follows the basic formula of all of the Street games: you mix the game of soccer and its greatest players of today with tricks, flashy moves and sketchy locales. It's kind of weird to see soccer being played in the ghettos of the world, as it is hard for me to see soccer being played anywhere but on a grassy field or in some park. Soccer is not at all associated with the street like the game of basketball, although EA did a noble job of giving soccer as much of a hip edge as possible.

When you turn on the game for the first time, you will notice that there aren't many gameplay modes to choose from. There is your standard Game On mode to dive into a game right away and a Friendly mode, which is very similar to Game On. You can create a team or a player, but this only leaves us with the Rule the Street mode, where you will be spending the bulk of your time. You start off this mode by creating a player to be the captain of your team. The customization options are fairly deep as you alter his appearance, body type and choose accessories. Later on you can buy things such as jerseys and new shoes to change your player's appearance. After doing so, you are given 2000 skill bills, which are used for a few things in this game. Their main reason for their existence is to build up your character's statistics, which include things like tricks, shot power and speed. After choosing teammates, you begin your career.

To explain the gameplay in a nutshell, you play fast-paced soccer matches with 3 players and a goalie on each team. To win the game, you must either be the first team to score five goals or in some situations you must play to a pre-determined time limit. There are three types of matches in Rule the Street mode. Upgrade Squad matches involve challenging a certain star player to a match (although you must pay a small fee to conduct such a match), and if you beat his team then you can add that player to your squad and drop someone. You also have your standard matches known as Kick Abouts, where you can earn skill bills and reputation points. Reputation points are critical, as when you reach a certain amount of them you are invited to participate in Cups (tournaments). If you win the tournament, not only do you win a shiny golden trophy; you also get to move on to another locale.

With the flick of the right thumbstick (known as the trick stick), you can perform various tricks. Performing tricks in FIFA Street is crucial, because if you string a few tricks together for a nice combo, your shot has a higher chance of going in. The tricks in FIFA Street are cool the first few times that you perform them, such as the off-the-wall dribbles, juggles, bicycle kicks and mad jukes. Passing the ball around through the air is a trick that is easy to do and you can link with a lot of other tricks for a nice combo. Unfortunately, doing combos all of the time isn't exactly the easiest thing, as whenever you get the ball your opponent will try to slide tackle you. Since there are no referees, anything goes, especially knocking a player off his feet. If you do manage to perform a really long combo and shoot the ball, you will usually score. I find this to be ridiculous, as sometimes I would shoot the worst shot in the world and the goalie wouldn't go for it even though he could have saved it easily.

The GameBreaker is also a staple of the Street games, although in FIFA Street the GameBreaker really isn't much of a GameBreaker at all. When you fill up the meter on the top of the screen by doing a bunch of tricks over a period of time, you are allowed to unleash a GameBreaker on your opponent. To put it plainly though, the GameBreaker really sucks. All that happens is that time simply seems to slow down a little and if you aim correctly, your shot will have a high chance of going in. If you score, that's it. It only counts as one goal and nothing is taken away from your opponent. Not much of a GameBreaker to me.

The gameplay is also full of glitches that deteriorate the gameplay. My main problem was that sometimes the goalies would not respond when the ball was very close to them, so instead of getting to it and passing to someone, they would just stand there and wait until an opponent chased down the ball and got an easy shot on the net. And although the goaltending was decent, I noticed a glitch where the ball would sometimes go through the goalie as if he didn't exist at all. Another problem was that players didn't pressure enough. At times, I had a player shoot the ball, get it blocked and when the defender touched the ball, instead of chasing the defender down, my computer controlled players would sprint back to midfield.

In total, there are about 12 matches to be played at every location, and with 10 locations and the average game lasting about 8 minutes, the Rule the Street Mode will keep you busy for a nice 15-20 hours. After that, you'll probably play this against your friends or the game will be shelved. None of the versions of the game have online capabilities, which is a real shame.

Graphics-wise, FIFA Street looks fairly nice. One thing that I liked was the fact that the players were not distorted Ц they didn't have huge biceps and oversized chests like their fellow brethren in NFL Street. The game had a nice mix of realism and arcade action. The players are all fairly recognizable, although obviously the stars like Beckham, Freddy Adu and Zidane stand out the most. The player animations were very realistic when the players are performing tricks, but when they are simply running after the ball they are a little strange. The ball physics were also messed around with, although realism isn't the main objective of the game. The locations such as Brazil and Italy were fairly lively and vibrant, and I always looked forward to seeing what the next location would look like, despite the fact that I still don't think that concrete courts and soccer are a good mix.

As far as the audio department goes, it's a completely different story. I found the announcer, MC Harvey, to be the most annoying announcer I have ever heard in my life. It's something about those witty comments pronounced in that British accent that just pushes my buttons the wrong way. And instead of saying relevant things about the game, he usually just yells a stupid comment after something happens. The sound effects are rather realistic, although thereisn't a wide variety of them found throughout the game. And the soundtrack is a soundtrack that will please some, but will be disliked by many. It mostly consists of hip-hop and techno from around the world, which is a justifiable selection as soccer is a global sport and if EA wanted to give soccer a УstreetФ image, then adding hip-hop music is definitely the way to go. The artists include Fatboy Slim, Dizzee Rascal, Criminal Mindz and others.