We’ve had far too many similar FIFA titles over the years. What was once a fresh and intuitive game has steadily transpired into a fractured mess, more focused on the authenticity of today’s soccer rather than providing a thorough and sophisticated gaming experience. With a brand new console to work on, it is very pleasing to say that developers EA Canada have finally turned the series around, and have at last given gamers a good game of soccer. They have listened and paid close attention to the flaws that were presented in past iterations, and have built the game from the ground up to take full advantage of the Xbox 360. You won’t be seeing virtual soccer of this quality anywhere else.
It wasn’t that past FIFA titles were bad, it’s just that they were very arcadey, and didn’t accurately represent what some of us consider to be a ‘beautiful game’. The actual gameplay mechanics were sorely lacking, and seemingly, all the aspects of soccer that are true to life were pretty much excluded from the game. You could quite easily hit a ball from forty-yards out and watch it fly into the top corner of the net, which, as we know, is immensely difficult in real life. Luckily, issues like these have successfully been resolved in FIFA 2007, and this results in a better game all-round.
Rooney splits Arsenal
The announcements about brand new physics, AI and animation engines were certainly welcomed by EA, but the question remained, how does this directly affect the gameplay as a whole? After all, it’s well and good to announce all these new flashy ideas, but to not implement them in the game properly wouldn’t achieve anything. It can be said that all three are incorporated amicably, and all three have their part to play in how FIFA 07 plays out on the pitch.
Passing in particular, I found to be thoroughly ironed out, and it feels so much more responsive than before. You can zip the ball across the pitch with ease, and now all passing is context sensitive. Instead of a pass going directly to the player who is closest to you, you can completely control the power of the pass itself. Holding down the pass button for a few seconds will pass the ball further down field, and holding it completely down will direct it to the furthest player from your position. The same applies for long down field balls, which can be helpful when your players are under insurmountable pressure.
There are however, some flaws with the new passing regime, and these derive from the very place that they originated from; the new ball physics. When playing a ball across the ground for a long distance, more often than not it’ll take a good, long button press to finally get it out of your feet. It is incredibly frustrating, as the time needed to press the button can be easily taken advantage of by the defending CPU, who will take the ball off you with ease. The ball also tends to curl a lot when along the ground, which simply isn’t needed when you are trying to string short, intricate passes together, with team-mates. Through-balls in particular are difficult to do, as your player never ever picks out the right person to pass too. Trying to play through wingers is very tedious also, as the player on the ball cannot drive it along ground like you can with a long pass. Rather than major gameplay detracting flaws, these are more of personal nitpicks from myself. They certainly don’t take away from otherwise a very solid passing aspect of the game.
Ronaldinho celebrates...
Shooting seems to have remained very faithful from FIFA’s of the past, but it does have some new, unique uses. Goalkeepers now find it much easier to save slow shots, whereas before they would let them drift in pretty easily. Given a players attributes, how well they finish a goal is completely dependent on where you place it. You can go for power, but more often than not, the ball will be too ‘straight’, and will help the keeper make an easy judgement on where to dive. You can however, hold the right bumper and shoot, which allows the player to release a finesse shot. These efforts will really trouble keepers, as they will curl tremendously in flight, obviously not helping the keeper adjust to tracking the balls position through air.
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