FIFA 07 Soccer

"A better package from last year's installment but still need a lot of fine-tuning and polishing."

FIFA 06, last year's installment from EA showed a lot of promise and showed me that they were taking their FIFA franchise seriously. However, their many attracting features also contained a lot of gameplay flaws.

This year's FIFA installment brought back a lot of the features that '06 had but also improved a lot on the gameplay as well and I'm finally happy to say that EA's FIFA franchise, if they continue to fine-tune and polish out their gameplay experience without taking out their features, shows great promise for future installments of the game.

One thing that I complained about, and it annoyed me to no end, was that the animations of the players, more often than not, overwrites the script.

For example, if I was controlling a player carrying the ball and I wanted him to pass the ball to a teammate nearby, it takes the computer one or two seconds to read the script and then either acknowledges the order or delays it until the animation for that player ends. There were also some rare times where the computer cancels out the controller's command in favor of the animation which I find absurd.

I want to be in control of the player, not the computer and I shouldn't be hitting the "pass" button two or three times just so my player can make a pass.

This year, however, EA's made huge improvements on it's gameplay and especially the issue of the animation overwriting the script. This year, I had an easier time making passes to teammates as well as clearing the ball out of my 15 yard box without having to wait for the computer to acknowlegde my command due to animation problems.

However, the gameplay's not perfect and is still in need of an overhaul. More specifically, the computer's AI.

In '06, whenever the computer has possession of the ball, the player would just "hog" the ball and I mean, literally, hogging the ball. Once in possession, the player would just run around the pitch not passing, and not moving forward to my surprise. Every now often, the computer would do some fancy tricks but in the end, it goes nowhere and it wastes time. Another thing I complained about.

Defending against such atrocity was also very hard as the ball hog would turn his back on the controlled player making light tackling very difficult. The only thing that can dispossess CPU of the ball is by hard tackling and often enough, would lead to a card.

In '07, same story but I think the EA team lightened up a bit. At least the CPU passes the ball this time but the sole problem remained. Well, at least it's easier to play defense this time.

Shooting was bit akward to me. Do I really have to manually aim at where I want my player to shoot the ball? I think EA went a bit old-school with this was as the same problem occured in FIFA 2005, a game that I really liked by the way. Other than that and the CPU ball hogging issue, EA's made improvements on all aspects of the game in terms of gameplay and overall gaming experience.

I'm certain 90% of the features that were present in '06 returned as when I bought this game, I thought the game itself would be completely different but alas, it wasn't all that different. A few sub-features were added in to make the game a little more realistic. The only "new" feature, it's not all that new if you collect FIFA games, is the "Create Team" feature. The title says it all.

The music selection for EA Trax, this year, was a bit biased in my mind. A lot of rock-n-roll and pop but a not lot of hip-hop. EA kept it's Paul Oakenfold's "FIFA Theme" in since it is a FIFA game so that make legitimate sense.

Clive Tyldesley(I don't even know how to spell his name) is back along with Andy Gray, boy do I John Motson ;....(

Overall, a good improvement from the last installment in terms of gameplay. If EA can build on this, I believe that it's FIFA franchise can take the title of "Best Soccer/Football Game".

My rating for FIFA 07 is 7/10.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/07