Customer Reviews

FIFA Soccer 2004

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

A lot of reviews here say they don't like the game because it is not soccer/football but I think they have it wrong. They have gotten closer to actual soccer play than they have in the past, and this may make it less fun for people (thus the comments about poor gameplay). They have gotten away from an arcade type of game to more of a simulation. They probably did this do get away from existing arcade type games like Winning Eleven which is pretty popular.

Gameplay-
Players have momentum and so they won't turn on a dime, and they also can't dribble the ball for very long unless there is nobody around. It is all about passing, and even passing won't work unless you thread them through defenders and make sure the player getting the pass moves toward the ball to avoid being tackled right away. When your striker is in or near the penalty box, don't expect a lot of time to shoot either, defenders will swarm on him. You can also lead other players to start running to open field so you can pass to them as well, to rely less on the AI. On defense, not much problem, you will obviously get a penalty if you tackle from behind, or if your tackle doesn't get the ball but the player's foot. Overall I found it pretty fair but it's too bad you can't adjust these settings. All of these factors make the game a lot closer to "real" soccer, except that they have gone too aggresive on the no-dribbling issue.

However real the gameplay has gotten, the game still needs better balance. Basically the point of the game now is to pass around until you can connect to your striker, and the game sometimes feels like hockey, trying to set up a one-timer. Once you get the ball to him, strikers can score from outside the box with ease, not too realistic here. Headers are weak and hard to connect since the defenders will be pulling you and pushing you (this is realistic). It is pretty much impossible to cut into the box from different angles to shoot from close as well.

Other-
Graphics are amazing (players really look like their real life counterparts) and the number of teams available is dizzying. Menus are very counter-intuitive, and hard to navigate through.

Conclusion-
I played the demo of Pro-Evolution Soccer on PC (same as Winning Eleven) and found it to be more fun. More ways to score (more headers, cutting into the box and scoring from close, etc...) with a more arcade feel that I prefer. It's good that they try to get the game close to the real thing, but they just haven't gotten the balance right. I found the older FIFA games (99 or 00 don't remember) more fun.

Fifa 2004 is a soccer/football game that is moving in the right direction. Its gameplay has moved away from the arcady feel of previous versions, and is now a pretty accurate representation of real-life soccer. The depth of the game is awesome, featuring a ton of leagues, teams, and players. The graphics are very good, continuing in the tradition of previous fifa games. And the new career mode enhances the replay/continual play value of the game.

However, Fifa 2004 is not without its faults, small and large. While the gameplay is more realistic than in previous years, it can become too static and frustrating. The new momentum and dribbling parameters create a realistic feel that prevent the game from resembling basketball more than soccer, but these same parameters can make controlling players physically and mentally tiresome. Much of the time it feels as if you're fighting against the controller in order to move players the way you want.

The single biggest drawback to this game, in my opinion, is the extremely poor menu design. I cannot stress enough how frustrating it is to try to navigate and organize these menus. I can't help thinking that this aspect of the game was ignored entirely. In fact, the menu design is so poor that it takes away much of the enjoyment of the career mode, where players are called upon to set up training regimes, make player deals, and assess team and player output--mostly through scrolling menus for statistics. If this part of the game design is improved for the next version of fifa, then this will most definately be a game to reckon with.

You know you want the players to shoot like in a real soccer game. But here, it feels like its the gameplay and graphics of FIFA 1997. There is nothing great to the game unless you want to murder your hand while you try to press all the buttons. wasted too much time making the franchise soccer mode while forgetting that the game is waht we want

I just bought this game and after a few hours look at it I really don't think I will play it again.
First of all the game is impossible to control with the keyboard. I have been a real fifa fan and have owned nearly all of them and always used the keyboard with great success but the buttons are simply getting far to many. And why on earth can't you configure the controls??? Did the EA people forget it? I mean I have never seen a game where you can not configure the controls!

You can not configure the game speed like you could in FIFA 2003 which is very bad because the game is way too slow as default. At first glance it seems very easy to score with long shots and the shots look very unrealistic. And why did they take out the season play? I think the game is getting more and more to lok like manager game but the main thing should be gameplay which is very bad in this game.

And really the commentary need to change! I won't even speak more about it.

The 2 stars are for graphics.

I could go on and on in here but I won't bother. If you want to talk with about this bad game then e mail me at thorirbe@hotmail.com.

I'm gonna go and find some other soccer game than FIFA.

Believe me, I am (or used to be, I guess) a hardcore fifa fan. My roommate kept making fun of me because I would spend a whole day just playing fifa and cheering as I purchased Smertin from Portsmouth for Celta Vigo...

However, after having something to compare to, I realised how much this game really sucks. No, of course, it's not the worst. Compared, for example, to fifa 2003, this game is the pinnacle of technology and realism. The graphics are amazing, the details of players are awesome, the soundtrack is cool, the cinematics are amazing, the commentaries are fun.

They brought back the old fifa 2002-style tackling (e.g, when you press the tackle button, your player tackles... he doesn't wait for the opponent to come and then tackle), they brought back the 2002-heading (couldn't head really in 2003). Off the ball control DOES make crosses awesome. I would make a run on the wing and then use off the ball control to cross , chest, and volley the ball into the net.

Pretty cool, but after you do it 20 times and see the world-class difficulty Juventus defender just kinda standing there not trying to stop you at all as you do it, you start thinking "what the hell?".

So I tried to score without crosses. Yea, right, good luck have fun. Even on amateur difficulty, the defenders are so amazingly good and block off the ball so amazingly well there is NO WAY you can make a pass in the box that won't be intercepted and kicked out. Through passes require like a month of non stop gaming to master, which I decided not to do, since that's not the kind of thing I like.

So then I tried to do moves. The only move that works is the fake, when your player fakes on way, sprints another way, but then in the box it's impossible to use because there is always a second defender that will take the ball from you before you get to it. So it's only useful in midfield.

I actually did find a way to score without crosses, eventually. It was to shoot from 40 yards out. Sounds funny, but my 40 out of 100 in shooting power and accuracy defender shot 4 out 5 shots on target and scored on two of them. Replay shows how the stupid keeper does a little bunny hop before attempting to go for the ball, which, by that time, is already safely in the net.

Another big dissappointment are the player stats. FIFA follows the crowd. Unlike in Pro Evolution Soccer (known here as Winning Eleven), EA Sports makes ratings of players more or less the way people think about them. I mean, c'mon, Renaldo = 98? That means he's nearly perfect. That means he can play defender, midfield, and forward nearly equally alike, which we all know is not true... I saw Mostovoi being an 82 and Sychev being an 84, and the Smertin, who is one of the best Russian players out there, is a 73 for some reason. So how does that work? I'm not even mentioning that the Russian Premiere League is not even there. Not that anyone cares. But Lokomotiv Moscow (which is the 1/8 finals of Champions League right now) definitely should be in the Rest of the World section, at least. And this applies to many other countries. But EA decided to kind of ignore them.

So there ya go. This game might be fun for 6 months, a year maybe at the most, but as soon as you see Winning XI, uninstall FIFA and play W11, because W11 is godly compared to this piece of crap.

EA Sports ave donne a good job in making this really addictive game but the goals are sometimes much too irrealistic as you can score from yards away from the goal + some players are much better than there real capacities(ex:P.Kluivert who isn't a wicked player is, in this game, nearly as good if not better than Henry or Zidane or Beck's).Also the refereeing is unfair as there's a foul when there shouldn't and sometimes there isn't when there should + youre team gets much more red cards than the others.Otherwise it is very good with a lot of options and competitions.The graphics are fantastic and the sound of nthe crowd and of the game makes you really feel in it ,playing.

let me tell you something. At first i bought the Winning Eleven International Soccer game and its' probably the most realistic soccer game of all time but it is so boring. You can't change the speed of the game. I am so pissed off that i didn't get FIFa soccer 2004 first but it's really the best game.

Tuxtucis
Excellent:
1- The presence of Portuguese and Dutch championships, whose lack was the biggest flaw of previous editions of the series.
2- The presence of the minor divisions of the most important European championships (but...see bad n. 1) with the opportunity to be promoted or relegated.
3- The opportunity to see t-shirts before the match is very useful.
4- The chance to simulate more consecutive matches is a very good idea.
Good:
1- To score goals with the head is easier than in previous games of the series.
2- Free kicks and corners are real as they are never been before in the series (maybe except FIFA 2003).
3- The look of best players and stadiums is often very good.
Bad:
1- The UEFA Cup Final from 1998 is played in a single match and not in two matches; teams winners of an European Cup should must play automatically the following Cup.
2- Four English division are too much : it was better to place other another (or two) national championship (Israeli or Greek or Turkish or...) or to offer more teams in Rest of the World section (specially Eastern Europe's teams).
3- National teams are few and they can't play tournaments.
4- We cannot save replays.
5- Penalty kicks are too much rare (and they can't be kicked by the goalkeepers, while Chilavert and Butt do it).
6- T-shirts are more beautiful in the pre-match than in the match.
Very bad:
1- The game is too big. 64 megabytes ? The game often crash in my 256 megabytes portable PC !
2- We cannot create personal tournaments (it was possible from FIFA 99) and we cannot raise the blockade of new tournaments (it was possible in FIFA 2002 and 2003).
3-After a season often are relegated some of the best teams : it's absolutely unacceptable that at the end of an Italian championship go down Milan, Inter, Lazio and Roma.
4- Between the tournaments we can play, there are not Champions League and EFA Cup : we can play European Cup, only after a (long) national championship. Interamerican Cup doesn't exist.
5- Successive team managements in the option's screening not considers previous savings.

In substance, with regard to some important points of view, the game is a considerable progress to a great soccer game, but a big number of (sometime very irksome) lacks roughly lower the judgement.

This is undoubtedly the death blow to the FIFA series. Having bought FIFA 98, 2000, and 2002, I was looking forward to this game. I was disappointed. I've played 2000 and 2001 on the PC and the controls were fine on the keyboard. This is not the case here. I can't keep up with the numerous controls and what could have been a *fun* game turns out to be a frustrating piece of junk.
Besides the keyboard controls, the gameplay is sorely lacking. You can't really notice how bad it is until you reach the professional level when it becomes absurd. No matter what I do I can't get a pass into the box unless it's a cross (and then it's almost always too close to the keeper). No matter where you are on the opponent's side of the field there is always a defender right in front of you to block any pass or lob attempt. This brings me to my main gripe. The passing is just plain awful. How many times have I pressed "up" and "s" and my pass ended up at the feet of a defender to my right? Too many. Sprinting is terrible because once you've begun your run you're guaranteed to lose possession. Defending, while not as bad as attacking, is still a pain. The AI will almost always tear through your defense resulting in one or two defenders chasing an attacker as he runs into the box.
Enough of the bad points... FIFA has great graphics compared to its predecessors and the licenses are nice touch. The Career Mode isn't that bad, but it's entirely unnecessary. All that was needed was a simple season mode without all this prestige points nonsense.

Don't get this game, buy Pro Evolution/Winning Eleven instead.

Anticipating for fifa games nowadays is like waiting for your final year results to be announced. You never know what is in store!
But once you see it, you either go "WOW" or "Opppsssss!", and i must say coming back to the game, it is a definite "Opppsssss".
Oppssss because despite all that hype, EA never truly deliver the soccer game that we fans eagerly awaited for. I got mine nearly 2 months now, and i think the game is a beefed-up version of previous FIfa titles. Nothing special that i can see....
Maybe for some of ya all, you will stick with the silly gameplay and funny AI of this game, on the basis of it is as close to soccer you can get. But for me, being a soccer freak my whole life, i just can;t accept that. Instead, i got the REAL experience of soccer which EA claimed they do from the Pro Evolution Soccer(PES) series for the PS2. (Try it you'll love it)
PES is as close, infact at times exactly depicts the beauty of soccer. It's all about gaining total control of your player...and that was sweet. Try doing that with FIFA 2004, and you will go "ooopppssss", there goes the ball!".

As for EA, just having good eye candy graphical wise is NOT enough....gameplay too is equally important. I guess until they learn to Balance these factors on an equal basis, EA will never truly deliver the type of soccer game that SHINES.