"One of the games that help combust the excess free time."

To start off with, I was extremely bored one day. After doing all my duties for the day, it just becomes pretty annoying to play the same games again, and again, especially when there is nothing new to unlock, no secrets to discover, and no fun to have. To put it straight, I decided to buy two games for my PS2, one of them was this game.

Graphics 7.5/10

Nice indeed. At least that was my reaction when I went straight into the match. I enjoyed looking at the screen, everything looked natural. The shading, the players, the grass, and the stadium. Further into the match, I was indeed disappointed. When I got myself a card, the players looked blocky, and their clothes were not exactly "clothes", but were like plastic armor instead. As for the spectators, they looked like moving cardboard pieces. Sometimes, however, the spectators appear in extremely high quality though, but it looks like it happens randomly. Overall, the graphics deserve no more than 7.5.

Sound 9.5/10

The sound takes a well earned 9.5/10. Everything is almost perfect, the applause, which gets louder as you enter the penalty area, the commentary voice, the music, everything. An example of the extent of the sound effects is when the ball bounces off the bar, a clear metal sound is heard. Yep. The music is amazing, despite the fact that it only plays on the menu screens. It's a fantastic soundtrack I must say, with fine and clear tunes.

Features 8.5/10

Exactly. This game had much more than I expected. My guess was a traditional Quick game, World cup mode (post qualification), the countries that qualified in the cup, and a few options thrown in. This game had Quick game (play on) mode alright, but it also had a World cup mode complete with qualifying rounds. Impressive, huh? Well, it also had a massive array of teams to choose from, so that now you can qualify with virtually any team of your choice into the world cup.

The game also has a Global Challenge mode, where you can live the historical matches over the past years again. It also has penalty kicks mode where all you do is (duh) play penalty kicks. It has tons of unlockables, including soccer legends, new boots to put on, new game options, and new balls with different designs. There are also certain objectives to complete, including scoring 2, 3, and 4 goals with the same player (you get the idea). Oh, for the online lovers, there IS online mode, though I never tried it (and never will), but it will most probably add to the replayability of the game.

Lastly is the bunch of options. It was a bigger bunch than I expected (maybe twice what I expected). There are the choice of balls, difficulty, gameplay speed, disabling cards, a choice of stadiums, a choice of uniforms, and the list goes on and on. But its not always the features that majorly affect the game score, its the...

Gameplay 7/10

A summary to what I'll say is that the game is fun. World cup mode is a very good way to eat up excess time, an average of 10-12 hours on professional difficulty, 8 minutes half time. It's always nice to detour from the main thing and have some play ons or penalty kick matches. Global Challenge is honestly, boring. But it's optional, so you can just leave it to the end. What I liked about this game is all the options. There are also always the higher difficulties if you want a challenge.

But why the 7? For one reason, you're doing the exact same thing every damn time. Play a match, win, maybe lose, freak out, calm down, play the next match. The matches CAN get repetitive, especially in World Cup mode. It isn't exactly a big deal though.

Controls 7.5/10

The controls are not that great to be honest. Sure, there are different control layouts available, but all of them share the exact same problem: Complexity, which is, mind you, a bad thing in soccer games.

An example: You need to keep up the defense, or march into an attack, but then you decided to change the tactics. Two players are coming for the ball, and you don't have time to react. By some way, EA thought that you would reach out with your third hand to change the tactics using the d-pad, while weaving through the opposing players with the left analog and swerving the right analog stick like a maniac to evade the tackles, then pass the ball with X simultaneously. Guess what, the problem is, humans don't have a third hand.

Replay Value 4.5/10

4.5 for Replay Value is actually good. The reason? All games become boring after a while, and most games score a 3 or below in this category. Enough of that. This game does get boring, but it takes quite some time. However, once you finished World Cup mode with 6 nations from the 6 regions around the world, you should know that this game will be boring quite soon. But as I said, to actually finish World Cup at least 6 times is actually going to take a while, and that is not counting the play ons or the penalty shootouts you might do in between.

Overall 8/10, not an average

This game is quite a mixture of all good stuff you'd expect in a Soccer game. It has it flaws, but it IS still a good game.

Rent or Buy?

Rent. Even though I made it sound good, it might be disappointing for you, especially if you're a Winning Eleven fan. Almost all my friends are, and they all hate EA's Fifa games for some reason. Why don't I copy them? Let me end this review with a little secret of mine: I SUCK AT WINNING ELEVEN.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/06