FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 / Games / Web Wombat

With the 2006 World Cup upon us, everybody wants in on the action, and not just big business execs who desire corporate boxes and fancy BMW limo rides to the games, but even Nepalese Sherpas with access to satellite television.

And it's not surprising really, as it is the most-watched sporting event in the entire world, eclipsing even the Olympic Games for sheer audience numbers. And you know what that means: merchandising!!

As such, every single product under the sun is allying itself with the biggest sporting event in the known universe: from shaving gel to sunglasses, footwear to deodorant, breakfast cereal to motor cars, and even special edition Hungarian pitchforks. If your product isn't fully endorsed by Sep Blatter himself, or at least FIFA, then you might as well take a long walk off a short pier.

One such product that's about as deeply entrenched in FIFA World Cup madness as you can get is EA's latest soccer game, aptly titled FIFA World Cup 2006. As a bit of a football tragic myself, I couldn't help but get excited when this game shipped, and barring a few glitches here and there, it's a damned fine sports game.

We tested the new game on the highest spec system possible - Xbox360 - though the game is available on almost all systems, such as the Xbox, PC, GameCube, PS2 and most of the portable systems like Sony PSP and Nintendo DS/Gameboy Advance.

Visually, this game is incredible to look at, especially in HD mode. I'm one of these people who has run out and purchased an oversized flat screen LCD TV to watch the World Cup with, and the added bonus of this slightly shady, back-of-a-truck purchase is that the Xbox360 hooks straight into the High Definition sockets, and FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 looks amazing in 1080i mode, I can assure you.

Compared to past iterations on PS2 and Xbox, this Xbox360 version is miles ahead in terms of graphical quality and sheer detail. From the tiny blades of grass on the pitch, to the detail of the players faces, this game provides sumptuous eye candy, but without detracting from the actual game. Thanks to the Xbox360's processing power, there's more polygons flying round, coated in even higher detail texture maps, and the result will bring a smile to the face of football fans the world over.

Beyond the impressively grandiose stadia, complete with 3D spectators (instead of 2D cardboard cutouts), the on-field action looks a treat. You can fiddle with the camera angle and zoom levels to find your favourite perspective, and watching players like Argentina's Tevez, Brazil's Ronaldinho and Australia's Kewell perform fancy foot moves looks awesome. Of course, setting up a perfect run down the wing with a star player and then crossing the ball in to your lone striker, who performs a text-book header to score a goal in extra time during the semi finals is also reason to celebrate. And it looks fantastic.

Compared to the older FIFA 2006 game, this FIFA World Cup 2006 title is not as deep in terms of modes, teams and players. For example, in the older FIFA 2006 game, you could play in 21 professional club leagues, such as the Italian Serie A and the English Premier League and, as such, there were more than more than 10,000 real players and even a 15 year career mode. This game, on the other hand, only features the international teams such as Brazil, England, Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Ivory Coast, Czech Republic and so on, but it looks much better than the last FIFA videogame, so much of these omissions are somewhat forgivable.

All told, there's 127 international teams to choose from, so it's not all bad, and you can choose to play the World Cup Finals straight away, comprising of the first three group games, then three more games (quarters, semis, and the final), or you can even take your chosen team right through full qualifications, which adds another dozen or so games (and more if you play the friendlies).

You can play on your own, or with up to three friends in co-operative or competitive matches, and it must be said that multiplayer games are just sensational. Even if your buddies are crap to begin with, you can often drop back in a defensive role as they get to grips with the tackling and passing systems. And if they're good, the combination through-passes and deep crossing plays that often lead to stunning looking goals are incredibly rewarding.

Also, once you've scored a goal you get the obligatory replays, which often take up wide and reverse angles so you can relive your handiwork over and over again. There's even an option to play online games too, which broadens the game's appeal considerably.

In addition to the FIFA World Cup game mode (easily the office favourite), there's also a number of other challenges that add to the game's shelf life. Extending play are modes like Global Challenge, involving more than 40 historic matches, some of which were played out over the FIFA World Cup 2006 qualifiers. For example, there's one match involving Australia during its FIFA World Cup Qualifiers, where you must beat the Solomon Islands by 9 goals or something heady like that. You start the game in the second half with four goals already on the board, with your main objective to score another five goals, plus there are bonus objectives like keeping a clean sheet or scoring a hat trick with a star player.

You can also jump straight into penalty shoot-outs if you like, which are really quite well done in this sports game. There's a good level of difficulty involved, particularly when you are the goalkeeper trying to save a goal. It happens so quickly - do you dive right or left? And again, the high resolution visuals and Dolby Digital sound go a long way to recreating the tension and exciting experience of the penalty shoot-out.

When it comes to playing the game, there's not too much to complain about. You can pretty much play the game with two buttons - pass and shoot when you have the ball, which translate to change player and tackle when you don't and your in defensive mode. There's plenty of technical skill moves, crosses, lobs, fakies, through-balls, one-two's and various other moves that you can employ to try and wrest the FIFA World Cup from Brazil's gold-flecked hands. You can also take a strategic look at the game, setting up formations, changing players and tactics on the run, and the result is an absorbing sports game, with enough realism to keep the purists happy for months to come.

The ball physics are very good (highlighted in glorious detail during the replays) and there's not too much to gripe about in regards to the gameplay. Sometimes during the replays the collision detection - when foot connects with ball - looks a little out of sync, and moments of slow-down can frustrate if they happen during high tension moments in the box. There are a few graphical glitches that pop up every now and then, but in general I found myself playing dozens of games in a row with only sporadic teeth gnashing (usually when I missed a penalty).

In addition to the stunning HD visuals, the audio is also of a good quality. The deep drums beats emanating from the crowd sound off as you play South American teams, the crowd chants boisterously when you play European teams and it all adds to the occasion, coating the experience in measured amounts of atmosphere. There's also some pretty good commentary from your pair of British game callers, and the music selection that plays during the menus is very impressive, with a range of music from right across the globe spanning many genres, adding to the carnival sensation that is the FIFA World Cup.

All the official stadia are there too, including the massive Olympiastadion in Berlin, which for each game hosts a capacity crowd of 74,220 screaming, singing and crying fans. And as I mentioned earlier, all the stadia look sensational, with a real sense of scope as their massive size intimidates the players on the field. There's also many smaller touches that add to the game's appeal, such as the various trivia (from the finalist countries) displayed during the loading screens: did you know that Italy is the world's biggest consumer of bottled water, or that for every Australian citizen there are eight sheep? Food for thought, I think you'll agree.

At the end of the day, this is a great game to justify spending all that cash on your new plasma or LCD wide screen High Definition TV set, and even without one of these new fangled flat screens, it's still a very pretty game, and an incredibly playable title that gets you in the mood for some good old fashioned, once-every-four-years, football-champion-of-the-world kind of sports action.

It's a delight to play, especially with friends, and thankfully for you and I, it is one of the few seriously entertaining and long lasting merchandising items to bear the hallowed FIFA World Cup 2006 logo.

Game: FIFA World Cup 2006
System: Xbox360
Players: 1-4
Online: Yes
Developer: EA Sports
Distributor: Electronic Arts

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

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