Customer Reviews

2006 FIFA World Cup

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All is forgiven. While I was lukewarm about FIFA 06, this latest title is absolutely EA's finest soccer effort yet. Every one of the items that irritated me about FIFA 06 have been ameliorated, if not outright eliminated in 2006 FIFA World Cup.

Game speed is just about right. Passing and shooting are intuitive and fluid, if a bit clumsy on occassion. Shortcomings in ball physics, while present, are almost never distracting. Matches end with realistic scorelines (on Slow speed, that is).

Graphics are sumptuous in the extreme. I always regard an EA World Cup or Euro game as a souvenir of the tournament, and this year's edition doesn't disappoint. In fact, it probably presents the most compelling pagentry of all the previous efforts combined.

Several challenge modes keep the game fresh with unlockable rewards. You'll probably never complete all the objectives available.

Best of all, you can qualify for the tournament from your region, much like Euro 2004 (another excellent EA soccer title). It all brings back memories of EA's Road to the World Cup 98, a flawed but very fun game. Well, the fun is back.

Lace up your boots!

I have pretty much all the EA games and most of them provide more frustration than they are worth. Just take basketball with the repetative comments and obnoxious AI, and NHL 2006 with the bugs that kill all the fun, like scoring 95% of the time on a wraparound and still loosing because AI scores on 100% of puck possessions. Football games have always been good, but this one hit the sweet spot. I liked Fifa 2004 and LOVED Euro 2004, but was a little dissapointed by Fifa 2006. The gameplay and the graphics were better, but just not what you'd expected after 2 years. The players looked blurry and unfinished.
If you are a football fan and liked the previous EA games at all, you will love this one. The graphics are great. The players look awsome; they are clear and look realistic and very well done. I'm sure in a year or two we'll look back at it unimpressed, but now it's as good as it gets. The stadiums are amazing. You get more camera angles showing players celebrating, play highlights and even angles from the crowd. The crowd is well done. The play is generally the same as Fifa 2006, except for small details. Passing and shooting is a little diffent, but it's more in the feel and after a couple minutes you don't even notice it. In any case, it's made the game better. The menues are well done and look great. I haven't had the chance yet to explore all the features, but from what I've seen they look really fun. The game is really fun. It's hard, but if you are a decent player they AI will not rip you to pieces like in some other games, you actually get to compete. I immediatelly went to the hardest setting and did ok, winning 2 of my first 3 games. That's the whole point of this thing, fun. I work all day and when I come home and decide to play on the computer, that's what I want to do - play, not pull my hair out get a heart attack. Those of you who will surely complain because people always complain, shut the f up. This is not a simulator, it's a game. If you want something more realistic, get off your fat asses and play outside. Everybody else, have fun and play hard.

I remember the conmemorative game of the world cup Korea-Japan 2002, in it, you only can play in the world cup, only whit the teams that clasified for it.
Fifa Worl Cup 2006, is a BIG step up in this franchise.
In this game, all the teams who will be in the cup are represented, and you can play whit your favorite team, even if it?s not the favorite.
In this ocasion, EA put, also, all the teams that participate in the eliminatories to qualified to the Worl Cup. Something similar like the game, Road To The World Cup. That is, you can compete for a spot in the World Cup in Germany. All the teams are represented. You like Camerron, you have it, play with them and qualifie them to the cup.
There are the North America, South America, Europe, Asian, African and Oceanian stages to qualified, all the teams, even rare ones like Saint Vincent, and the small contries you don?t even now where they are.a big new: JULES, HOLlAND IS HERE, REPRESENTED WHIT THE REAL PLAYERS, NOT NUMBERS OR POSITIONS. I refer to Jules ( I apologise to you for use your name if you don?t like it), because in his rewie of Fifa 2006, he said, that Holland is represented by players, in this game ALL the players are real ones. Even teams like Togo, San Vincent, etc. all have they star players in this game.
In the game you can chose amogn several ways to play: Exhibition, Penalty Soutout, Qualification series, World Cup, Practice ( free practice 11-11, 11-10, 11-9 or 11-1 man, penalty practice, free kicks, indirect kicks, corners), on line games, Scenario (when you recreate the mos memorabble games and try to repet or chanc?ge the history). You can use any tem you want.
If you win the match, you won some points, that serve you to unlock famous players of diferents teams, like Hugo Sanchesz for M?xico, than you can use in the World Cup.
The dificulty is very well balance, in this game, the better in the ranking the country you are against, the more oposition it makes. That is, is very easy to beat Saanin Vincent like 7-0 or 6-1, but try to win, even in the amateru level, to Brasil, Germany, Italy, or some other big squad, and you can do it, only whit some more work, and not spect a scor like 7-0 or something similar.
The graphics are very good. The players are represented almost like a the real ones, You can recognice the favorite one?s only for their look, like Ronaldi?o, Cocu, Del Piero.
In this time, the AI is a litle better, the oposition is more, depending of the country you like to chosee as your rival. The defensive side is more realistic, they tray to steal the ball, and they don?t give easy goals, the goal keperar behave more reaslistic, triing to lok for the beter man to give the ball to ( remember all depending of the team?s, it?s not the same the golakeper of Germany than the one of Togo). Somethig i noticed is that if you are the local country, the visitor is in the defensive area, trying to obtain a Draw, not atack much, waiting for the oportunity to do some damage, but the situacion changes if you are the visitor, the local's are goin to play more agresive, star to atack you, and in some cases when they are behind one goal and the time is over, send the goalkeper to the net in the corners, sometihg you see in the real game.
The controls are the same as Fifa 2006, use the A, S, D, W, E keys, that?s it. The physics are very well represented, forget about the time you hit a player and in the replay you can not see how you do it. The ball is more real this time, you can shott in the direction you want and whit the strenght you want.
The stadiums loke great. All of the stadium in which the World Cupr is takin part are here. Also, there are a lot more, some from europe, from america, asia, japan, and many countries, because, remember, you can play all the qualification games and try to qualifie for the Wordl Cup. ( try whit Cameroon, an qualified them).
For me, this game is a good combination of the Korea-Japan 2002 and the Fifa Road to the World Cup. All the stages of the World Cupa are here, from qualified to the big event. This game is a lot of fun, whit many teams in it. It dosen?t matter where you are from, if your country has a spot in the qualification tho the Worl Cup, is here, in the game, whit real player?s ( or at least real names, frankly, i don?t knok the names of the player?s of teams like Macedonia or Togo or Trinidad and tobago)
ENJOY THIS GREAT GAME, A MUST HAVE FOR ALL SOCCER FANS.

I find it a very good improvement on previous EA football games, although I was already quite happy with FIFA 2005. I never got to purchase the regular (non World Cup) FIFA 2006, although I played it a couple of times and see why many find it a disappointment and a step backwards from previous editions.

In WC06, the nicest innovation is Global Challenge, where you can pick among 30 or so scenarios of historical games, and see if you can match or improve on the performance of the team you are handling. In a few of these, you are given the game at minute 0 and challenged to meet a particular score; in others, you get the game pretty late, or at a critical penalty or free kick.

Also, unlike other WC games, this one lets you take a team from qualifiers, not only at the WC finals, and you have almost 100 national sides to choose. Additionally, you get many more players per team than previous editions (in a couple of countries, your roster is 40 names long).

It takes a while to get used to the new way of handling corners, penalties and, especially, free kicks; once you do, you find that the change has been for the better. It takes a while, also, to get used to a few new controls, and that the lag between pressing a shot and having the player actually shoot has been extended.

The unlockable features are neat, especially invisible walls (of course, very unrealistic, but fun) and perfect difficulty. The graphics are great; some player faces look odd, but the stadia are pretty good. The star-players are an interesting innovation. The commentary is better than it used to be, and if you pick Spanish, you get commentary in that language, not only menus. One big bug, however, is that Spanish commentary quite often makes mistakes on players names.

I miss that the game does not have the "career mode" for coaches. Also, you cannot simulate games...if you take a team through the qualifiers, you have to actually play ALL games. Since qualifying sometimes requires 15 games or so, this may be tedious. Also, while I am enjoying the game more than its predecessors, and my 10-year old is too, his younger brother (who is 5) seemed to have a much easier time with the previous editions, where the fewer control options made it simpler to manage.

All in all, a major improvement.

This is probably the best FIFA soccer game yet from Electronic Arts. Whereas in the past, Winning Eleven ran cicles around FIFA, the latter being plagued by arcadey gameplay and simple controls, this iteration of the venerable franchise actually has a good bit of substance.

The GOOD: Most World Cup games are really shallow, because once you play the world cup... that's it. This version allows you to play the whole WC qualifying tournament, which is great fun. You can take a tiny country, like the Faroe Islands, and try to qualify them for the WC. The graphics are pretty good, although in a soccer game, the fluidity is much more important that the actual pixel count. The game runs with no problems on my system, and the control is rather solid. FIFA now includes a more complex arsenal of moves and tactics, and is catching up to Konami's Winning Eleven (though the latter is still better). The music selection isn't bad for an EA game, and definitely conveys the international feeling of the game.

The BAD: The user interface and the menus are a complete and utter disaster. Trying to figure out where to go and what to click is brutal and counter-intuitive. When you want to save a game or select something, be prepared to go through a litany of popping screens and confirmation buttons, which sometimes respond to joystick presses, sometimes to mouse. Come on EA, is it that hard to design a clean interface? Also, I'd have loved to have this game include a full version of FIFA (with league play, etc); I know it's greedy, but then again, so is selling two soccer games within months of each other!

The UGLY: The player's faces. While generally realistic (Zidane, Ronaldinho, Riquelme, they're all here), the skin texture seems to make their faces look pockmarked and scarred, and generally pretty ugly. Small pet peeve, but hey...

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the replay value and the quality of this game. Recommended!

I bought this for 20 bucks at Walmart when there was a giveaway sale, and thought I was gonna play a mediocre game. I was totally wrong. The gameplay in this version is excellent, the players look very close to real and the plasticity in their faces has been done away with.

the commentary is excellent, and unlike some other soccer games is actually pretty engrossing, cos they dont say the same thing over and over again. Scoring a goal is not so easy in the professional mode and that should keep you motivated to get better, and when you do score a goal, its an awesome simulation of players doing their antics and waving to the crowd.

I won the World Cup finally in this game, and the celebrations are fun to watch. Definitely the best FIFA soccer game I've played.

just like my title says, its fun and very creative and does not repeat the same over and over again like most other games out there.

This is the coolest. You can be any almost any player in the world. Customization is very effective. I wish there was some app to learn how to play soccer better in the game for us non experienced player.

This game, made for the 2006 World Cup is the perfect accompaniment to this World Cup year, allowing you to play with about a hundred different countries in all parts of the world...Game play is nice and music score is great too...I only wish FIFA 2010 was able to combine the two, clubs and countries in large numbers to make a game with tremendous replayability...

THIS GAME IS PROBALLY THE BEST SOCCCER GAME EVER MADE. ALTOUGH THE WORLD CUP IS OVER, IT WILL LIVE FOR EVER WITH THIS GAME.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!