Soccer Store - FIFA Soccer 07

FIFA Soccer 07

List Price: $59.99
Our Price: $55.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
Rated 3.0/5
Manufacturer: Electronic Arts

Comments
Where to begin... I've been playing EA's Fifa series for 10 years on various platforms/consoles(PC, Playstation, Xbox, Xbox 360), and I am always at the store the day the game comes out. I purchased Fifa 07 for Xbox when it came out, and I loved it. I thought the manager mode had some great touches, and the game was just a fun soccer game. But, that's a different review entirely. As for Fifa 07 on Xbox 360: Positives: Corner kicks. I like the fact that the players no longer just stand stationary in the box until the ball is played in. Anyone who has ever played the game in real life knows that you don't just stand around hoping the ball hits you on the head. You move to get open. EA finally added some life into the offense in this regard. Commentary is very good. I like the random side conversations, and the nice references to particular players. I play with Newcastle, and it's cool to hear them mention Owen's WC injury, etc. Personally, I think the graphics look pretty good. Some of the players are way off as far as looks go, but during the gameplay, the game looks great. That's pretty much where I end my positives. Oh, and I do enjoy being able to kick the ball around with Ronaldinho during the game load. It's nice to have something better to do during load times. Unfortunately, there are no moves, so it does get old pretty quickly. Negatives: Player creation lost some of it's fun. First of all, you can't turn your player when you are creating physical attributes. You can't turn the head to get an accurate depiction of what the player looks like. This isn't important to some people, but I enjoy creating a team of my friends, and it's fun when the people look fairly similar to their real-life counterparts. Also, you can't stack a player's skills. This is good and bad. The main issue I have is that you can't create a real phenom player that you can use as a future backbone of a team. I haven't played enough to see how long it takes to get a player up to a Ronaldinho level of skill, but I can't imagine it being possible with the talent attribute system that EA used this time around. The interface is horrid...I repeat...horrid. As an interface designer myself, I can't believe this game got away with this. I noticed that all of the EA games are using this new horizontal expansion menu, but it's garbage. Go back to using the simple stuff...please. Some of the stuff that I was looking for is so deep and annoying to get to, that it makes me not even want to complete certain tasks. Player creation took so long that I made one player, and didn't feel like going through the process again. The fonts are hard to read (granted, I don't have a huge HDTV), and the black is heavy and sets a very drab tone for the game. The regular Xbox version is so much nicer to look at. Game play leaves a lot to be desired. Is it just me, or does the computer try to dribble non-stop? I can't even get the ball half of the time. It takes a double or triple-team approach to disrupt the computer's player on the dribble. Annoying. Then there's the obvious lack of trick moves. How do you make a game this involved, a game that strives for realism, and leave out a major aspect of the game. The worst part seems to be this: EA made the defense easier to dribble around instead of adding trick moves. Very lame, and very frustrating, as it's hard to defend the dribble as well (mentioned previously). The amazing offering of teams and players!!! Okay, okay, you know that's sarcasm. 6 leagues? What? Seriously? If I'm lucky enough to get to the "ECC" or "EFA", I can't wait to see the teams in the tournament(s). I guess you go straight to the group games even if you finish in 4th in the Premiership. Looking forward to that! Ha. With all of that said, I will continue to play this game and hope that they improve some of the gameplay issues via updates, but I'm still highly bummed about this offering, and I'm so tempted to just go back to Fifa 07 on Xbox, because I had a lot of fun playing that...and thankfully, I didn't trade it in.

As with the other reviewers: RENT BEFORE YOU BUY THIS!!! The graphics in this game are great, the game play is however awful on the xbox 360. I have more fun playing FIFA 06 on the PSP than playing this on the xbox 360. The poor game play has resulted in lots of cheaters on XBL, which is a pity because the on-line play is great, if it wasn't for the cheating. I would say that off-line play is probably 4 stars, but if you look at the reviews below, two 5 star "reviews" on the same day smells of EA trying to jack up the rating for this game. Just an FYI, EA won't do anything about the cheating. These are really only a problem on-line, the AI players in off line play don't cheat!! :) This is what you can expect for XBL play: - Forget trying to play as your favorite team, unless its top rated, or you like to lose :) - Almost every opponent will play as Barcelona, Manchester United, Brazil, Chelsea or Arsenal. I've played about 80 games on-line, and I haven't met any opponent willing to play as anyone else. - The biggest cheat is a tackle where the opponent gets the ball even when they are far behind you. - Opponents obstruct (eg. you are running with the ball, suddenly the ball is rolling away and you've stopped for no reason) - Some teams (mainly Barcelona) no matter what you do, always win the ball from goal kicks, regardless of formation. - Arsenal and Chelsea cheaters run the same set of linear passes trying to beat your defense. - Arsenal can sneak in behind your defense in OFFSIDE position, yet its never called. Had one EA support tech admit it was a known bug!! - Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal all score 100% of the time with finesse shot whenever the defender is either in line, or slightly behind the goal keeper. This is a bad bad bad bug! Overall off-line, the game is good. On-line however, instead of a challenge, 80% of the time its frustration with cheaters! The PSP version of FIFA is good fun, especially with multi player mode.

This game is terrible. I rarely write comments on amazon but I just hope before you spend 60 dollars on this game (50 on amazon)please re-consider. You are much better off finding one of the many pre-played games being sold by people who have had the same experience as me. My fellow reviewers at amazon have done an excellent job of explaining why not to buy this game so I will not go into details. For people who have followed the franchise they will be VERY disappointed by the gameplay and the lack of any flexibility over your teams and strategies which gets very frustrating. For casual gamers and new-comers the game provides great eye candy but by no way are you playing the best football simulation out there. Rather save your money and buy PES or play the vintage FIFA games from EA. If for any reason you really absolutely need to spend your money and play this game, go the pre-played way.