Customer Reviews

2006 FIFA World Cup

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Obviously, some people writing these reviews have not actually played this new installment of the FIFA series. The newest FIFA is probably the best ever. Road to the World Cup had many flaws that were corrected in this game. 2006 FIFA World Cup has many fun game modes and very good online play with very little lag. This is probably one of my favorite games out on the 360 and is definitely worth your money.

I respectfully disagree with the previous comments saying this game is similar to RTWC. For me RTWC was not finished and had to go out in order to not loose the momentum of the Xbox 360 launch. This version is probably the RTWC, but ready for the market. It has the Fifa 06 (for Xbox) gameplay, and more !!! It also has all the nice graphics that we had in RTWC. For me this is the best soccer game ever in terms of quality and gameplay. For sure there are some basic mistakes, as any other Fifa game, i.e.: you can't see the overall rate of each player without manually going to every single player's bio (x button); you can't create a tournament for 2 people and use the cpu teams to play against your friend, you can only play with one of the 2 teams you've marked as user teams; the goalkeeper may still jump to catch the ball and fall down inside the goal, while the referee doesn't flag that as a score; and some others that the Fifa consumers are already used to (unfortunately). I also agree the price is extremely high ... but it is worth it. If you like Fifa and was upset with RTWC, I do recommend this game.

I'm an American who played soccer when he was a kid but really doesn't watch much on TV aside from when the World Cup rolls around every 4 years, so take my review w/ a grain of salt. However, that said, I think FIFA World Cup 2006 on the Xbox 360 is a VERY fun soccer game. I'm told that the Winning Eleven series (which unfortunately doesn't have an Xbox 360 version yet) is a more accurate soccer simulation, but I never felt like FIFA WC 2006 was too arcadey. I think it does a good job of emulating real soccer. The animations are very good, the details in the players and stadiums are great on the 360 in high-definition, and the announcing and other sounds are very well-done (when I was playing a game, my wife thought I was watching a real World Cup match).

I recently borrowed FIFA World Cup 2006 from my friend and was amazed at how great it was. This is by far the best soccer game I have ever played. The graphics are excellent and are the best I have seen in any soccer game. FIFA World Cup 2006 certainly provides you with the ultimate world cup experience! Overall this is a great game and worth buying!

Now that the world cup has come and gone, I still continue to love this game. I had never played a soccer game before in my life, but I tried this one out and it definitely hooked me in. The controls are easy to learn, and it's fun to get to learn the rosters of different teams since the graphics are so good you can easily learn what players look like.

I knew that the previous UEFA Euro 2008 was giving me a migraine with the glitches I was getting from playing the game but this far surpassed that. First when I tried starting a match the player I was controlling would freeze up and than I would hear goal and the other team instead of at least getting one point got four points in one second tell me how that works out because I don't know, another was when I was at the goal about to take the shot my player would end up at the other end of the field making the wrong goal and giving the other teams another goal can you say what the @#$@!! I didn't have this problem with the FIFA 2006/2008 regular games those worked just fine with no problems so I really don't know what EA sports did with this one except give me and later on my friends headaches when I gave this stupid game to them. If I could the only thing good about this crappy game was the field graphics and character designs and that's probably the best you can get from this game. I don't really know if anyone else has had this problem I tried getting in touch with EA to see if my game was defective or anything I could do to fix these glitches but after being on hold for 45 minutes enough was enough. So all I can say is for a reasonable price and if you like soccer games this might be o.k. for you if you're lucky enough not to end up with a crappy disc like I apparently must have gotten...

I've played many EA FIFA soccer games, starting with FIFA 95 (I think), and this got to be the worst of all. In general the game just doesn't feel like it was well-thought out.

1, the graphics aren't impressive. This being a XBox 360 game I think we all deserve nicer graphics.

2, the game menu is very time consuming to navigate. It seems that if you select any item on the menu, it will ask you again and again if you want to save the settings to the harddrive, when the harddrive is the only memory device attached to the XBox 360! After you finish a tournament game, you must go through 4 questions in the menu. "Do you want to save the tournament?" (Yes) "Please select which storage device" (The only storage device you're showing me, the harddrive, please) "Do you want to save your awards?" (Yes) "To which storage device?" (Again, the only storage device, please). And all this happens after the computer asks me which storage device I want to use when the game first loads.

3, speaking of time time consumption, the game force you to watch a lot of animation. Whenever you or the computer makes a sub, the game puts on this stadium scene for about 10 seconds, and you can't skip it. Admittedly, those are the only nice graphics contained in this game. Perhaps that's why the producers really wants you to appreciate it! If you play on Xbox Live, your human opponent can force you to watch a truckload of animation as well, such as 30 seconds of opening scene and 30 seconds of closing scene.

4, This bothers the most. The AI is so dumb that it made me smash my gamepad in anger more than once, and I'm not usually an angry type. When you try to pass the ball to a wide open player the AI decides to pass it to another player guarded by 3 opponents. Or when one of your players is the person closest to a free ball but he won't do anything other than just standing there and watching the opposing team to take it. Or when the ball lands in the vicinity of a player, you hit the "switch player" button, but control is switched to the player second or third closest to the ball. You keep hitting the button and it just won't switch to the player who is closest to the ball who, of course, is just staring at the ball. I also like how when you make an offside pass, the computer doesn't tell you it's offside until after you dashed for it for 5 seconds and touches the ball.

5. Oh, and more design flaws. Sometimes the goalie makes a save, but unfortunately, his whole body AND the ball are both in the net already. But the computer does not detect the score, and the game goes on. I've seen this happen more than once on Xbox Live. Also, when you are very near the end line and thus have a very small angle relative to the goal, it's pretty hard to score a goal, right? Not so. If you do a chip shot at a very small angle, the goalie gets very confused and will not catch the ball - never.

These are the annoying little things I can think of right now. I love the sport and used to love soccer video games, but unfortunately this game has turned me completely sour. With little things like when the England scores a goal against France, the stadium crowd goes jubilant and joyfully wave French flags, it just feels like EA didn't care at all. There are so many annoying little things that could have been easily fixed.

Bottom line: This is the only soccer game for the 360 thus far. Buy it if you must have a soccer game in your collection. Otherwise, I would wait until Winning Eleven comes out. I can't wait to abandon the EA line now!

It took almost 30 days to get this product, if I would have known it would have taken this long I would have just bought the 2010 version

This game is very fun. It really shows you how hard it is to make it to the World Cup. The game is very challenging and one mistake can make you lose.

I haven't played the aforementioned ROTC, but I have heard about its numerous flaws. I must say that this game simply cannot be compared to ROTC; it really is very good.

The main menu leads you to: play now (generic exhibition game), 2006 World cup, other game modes (practice, global challenges, penalty shootout). You can also check out video clips of all the German cities and stadiums in the actual world cup, but they're pretty boring unless you really like seeing trains move around through Stuttgart or something with really bad music in the background. Anyway, you can also buy certain things with points you earn in games like different balls, classic players (like Beckinbauer, but Pele is missing sadly), cheats, and uniforms (only for Germany, England, France, Spain, and maybe someone else... I forget).

On generic games: These are really customizable. You pick your team, opponents team- there are 127 playable countries, uniforms, half lengths (the default setting is fine), cheats, ball, starting lineups, sttadium, and a bunch of other stuff which I usually leave alone. The loading screen pops up with a fact about one of the countries like the fact that Liechtenstein has no female prisoners (!!!) and the World Cup records for the country.

The game starts and the countries national anthems play, but it's unrecognizable for whatever reason. I find that the game has the ability to be played like a real soccer game- if you want to lose. The real best way is to try to get on fast breaks so its 1v1 against the goalie, or run up the sidelines and cross it, and hope that one of your guys can head it in. The reason for this is that normal shots from far out don't work too well, because the goalies are too good. You can hit an absolute cannon to a corner and the goalie will dive and save it. However, if you get up close, the goalies are absolutely worthless and have a range of about 3... Yes 3, not 3 feet, but about 3 inches in the way they feel like flopping on the ground. But, for the most part it is fine, since in a real life situation, the player will almost always score in a 1v1.

On Practice: This is pretty helpful, but not really fun. If you start a game, and find yourself getting the ball stolen from you a lot, or you can't score, just go into practice, make the other team play shorthanded and try to make some plays.

On Global Challenges: These are historic scenarios from the World Cup or other cups/qualifiers. These range from absurdly easy to seemingly impossible. Be aware that you cannot change the difficulty. For instance, one scenario has you, New Zealand, attempting to score 5 goals in the final 30 minutes against Figi. This seems really hard, but it isn't, because Figi is made into trash in this scenario. You can run up with the ball and nobody will really try to stop you. Others like the infamous Australia-Solomon Islands are impossible. Solomon Islands is a terrible team, but they somehow have amazing skill in everything in this scenario. These scenarios are really fun overall though and give you experience with certain teams.

On Penalty Shootout: Easily my favorite part. It's just a penalty shootout, like the name would suggest. You pick the teams, and the order of the kickers and it starts. It's very simple with a power meter on offense with a little bar moving. If you fill up the power meter past the bar, your kick will miss (unless your guy has good accuracy, then you can afford to go a little above the bar). On defence, you move the analog stick to where you want the goalie to dive. These are really fun! Try to get yours to last as long as possible. Once, I had it so long that my goalie had to take kicks twice.

On World Cup: You can decide whether to use the actual world cup, or start your own. Pick a team(s) in a region and play in the qualifiers in the actual groups the world cup was in. I find that, generally, the same teams seem to qualify, so it's pretty accurate for the most part. Once you qualify (I always have), you will be sorted into groups and play in the World Cup! I have won with Spain in my first Cup, and I have just qualified with Cry-naldo and Portugal, and Israel in my second cup.

Don't get frustrated with the global challenges, just have fun!