2002 FIFA World Cup

"Soccer at its worst, but fun!"

Once every four years, the entire world (except America) gathers for the joy of watching their country play their favorite sport. So naturally, why wouldn't EA want to capture everyone's money by releasing a game to make things happen the way the consumers would want it to. But why should you settle for the 2002, clearly we should be buying the newer version. Well – yes and no. I prefer to play games from the passed as you can rejoice on why players used to be so good. So let's get to it!

What you'll notice first is that there are only two things to do in the entire game; one is to play a regular match with a friend or against the game, and two, play the World Cup. You'll usually be playing the latter so let's start there. You open up by choosing your team, there's some nice info on when they qualified and such but the real joy is when you realize that there's all the teams that didn't make it in to choose from as well. So you're set with around 40 teams – note – that they don't have any club teams in the game. Once you choose your team, you'll be thrown into a group and begin competing in your groups to see who advances, following exactly how the World Cup plays.

As for the actual match, you'll randomly get thrown into one of Japan/Korea's many cities that contain a stadium. There you'll hear the commentary of I'm assuming soccer's most popular commentators. They're not as bad as a lot of other sport tend to me but can get annoying when you play all the time. There are a few phrases they use a little too much though so I prefer to leave it off. If you've played any of the newer Fifa games you'll have to adapt to this slower and much different controls. I've tried some of the newer ones and still prefer to play like this, as it doesn't require crazy skill to get around a defender. If you've never played a soccer game you might be asking if you actually play a 90-minute game. Theoretically no, as you can adjust the half-length and it speeds up the timer accordingly. And yes you can play two 6-minute halves and score like a real soccer game would score, it's very realistic.

Now for the goods, the actual game makes the real soccer game look easy. You'll often question yourself after you do some completely simple move why they never do that in real-life. Dribbling the soccer ball is easy enough (since it's automatic) and you can a by a lot of defenders just by sprinting past them. There's a few different types of kicks you can do; a normal ground pass where you'll get to charge up how hard you want to kick (which is the same for all kicks) and huge lob pass and a shooting kick. You'll begin to see the monstrous kicks that you can pull off just by powering all the way up. Which is one of my peeves of this game; you'll often see a perfect passing lane open and you try to pass but it converts all passes to shooting once you get close to the goal and you give up a perfect shot. Passing and the like is pretty much done automatic and you'll always find someone next to the ball which is another peeve, that they always seem to have someone right there to get it. But the thing that bugs me the most is the goalies; you'll always see them doing some crazy cover-the-ball move even if no one is around and it's moving slowly. Plus you'll never see the goalie on the opposing team throw the ball – it's always a huge lob.

That's pretty much how you'll be playing the game; visuals aren't to die for nor are they Nintendo 64 era. And since you're zoomed out it really doesn't matter too much. Lastly, I loved the music they were able to put in for scoring and such, I just wish there was more a variety of celebration animations.

And there you have it; once you beat the world cup you can try to unlock the All-World teams and such and then you're basically out of things to do. This would make the perfect renter for a soccer party or the likes. I highly recommend it only for that and not to buy it as there are countless other new games with more things to do.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/06, Updated 04/20/09

Game Release: 2002 FIFA World Cup (US, 04/30/02)