Maple Lions

Any thoughts/comments on footy video games? I’m interested in hearing what others might be playing and getting some reviews.

For me, the main one has been EA’s FIFA’04 for PS2. The gameplay is pretty solid. You get a massive amount of players/leagues (with basically only the stars having their faces rendered, although I’d expect an improvement here in subsequent versions). You can move players around from team to team to match real-world movements. I’ve enjoyed the ‘Manager’ feature, where you pick a team and manage them for 5 seasons — you get a budget to spend on training and you can identify the aspects of different players’ games that you want developed; after your first season, you can qualify for the Champions League, and that adds some fun; there’s also other domestic cup play, as well; get into the transfer market, with your budget increasing as you achieve success in the various competitions and meet certain managerial contract requirements. It’s a pretty full offering of video footy (and looks damn good on my 54″ screen); the different stadiums, and there’s even some club-specific fan chants/songs. I guess a feature that kind of leaves it dated is how the players’ individual skills are rated - a player with a 70 rating who has a breakout year will have to keep that game rating (at least, I don’t think you can change that), so it can be a bit dated. I can see picking up the FIFA’07 version when it comes out in the fall; I can imagine some gameplay improvements and the updated player files would be nice.

The other one for me has been FIFA for PSP (w Viera on the box cover). Enjoyable, too. The ‘Season’ management stuff only gives you one season to work with at a time. They have some fun ‘Challenge’ features, where you’re given a scenario from a real-life game and challenged to repeat it (scoring 3 goals in 20 minutes versus so-and-so) — I’ve gone through all of them now and it was pretty tough to get a few of them. There are some aspects of the gameplay that I find are an improvement over the FIFA’04 — the main one is that you can actually make a move and get past a defender (maybe I’m not doing it correctly, but I find this basically impossible with the FIFA’04 version).

I find a weakness for both of them is on corners (and other set pieces) - whatever option you choose, the ball is more likely than not to go right to the keeper. For FIFA’04, I found that if I kept the highlighted player from entering the box, then the ball was more likely to stay in play and you have a chance to get possession and try a shot on goal. As well, the top difficulty levels are a bit silly - particularly for the PSP version - you just can’t get anything going; for me, it’s almost like they need another difficulty level in there - though challenged, I pretty much clean up on the middle ones (draws are possible, losses rare), but the top level seems to be a bit much and not much fun.

Can anyone comment or give any info on other games you’ve been playing? Konami’s “Winning Eleven” or Sony’s “World Tour”? Like any of the sports games, if you like the sport, it’s the best bang-for-buck video buy that you can make, because it can always be renewed; you don’t go through 10 levels and then that’s it, you can always see something new.

Mike Campbell