Modes
Continued from page 1The list of modes isn’t very impressive either. The main single player mode is called Rule the Street and it is exactly like what you’ll find in the other Street games. You earn cash and reputation points and try to work your way up to the top of the underground soccer playing world. You use your money to purchase new clothes for your players and also to get new players for your team. Basically, you pay another team a set amount of cash for a player and then you have to play them. If you win, you get the player. If you lose, you lose the cash and you have to do it again. You progress through the game by winning new players and entering tournaments and that sort of stuff. It all actually works fairly well, but it isn’t really worth your time because the gameplay is so poor.
Other modes include standard exhibition and training as well as multiplayer for up to four people. Strangely enough, there isn’t any Xbox Live play in FIFA Street. It wouldn’t have been all that great thanks to the so-so gameplay, but in an era when pretty much everything on Xbox – especially games from EA – make use of Xbox Live in some way it is strange to not see it.
Graphics and Sound
The sound, however, is pretty much horrible. Since there aren’t any fans watching these games, there aren’t any chants or cheers or jeers that give real soccer such a distinctive atmosphere. The soundtrack is made up of hip-hop from around the world and it is hideous. It was nice they tried to continue the music from around the world theme which was featured in FIFA 2005, but they also continued the hip-hop theme of the Street series and the results aren’t too good. The announcer is also rather painful to listen to. Soccer isn’t exactly the loudest sport, so when there is no crowd noise and the music and announcer are so bad there isn’t much in the sound department to get excited about.
Bottom Line
The ultimate flaw of FIFA Street is that it tries to make soccer faster and more exciting but fails to recognize what makes soccer so good in the first place. Soccer is all about the drama of a close scoring chance or the heartbreak of a missed opportunity. It is all about the perfect pass or an amazing stop by the keeper or a glorious comeback by an obvious underdog. It is also all about a team of eleven players working together. FIFA Street tries to dumb all of that down into dozens of cheap goals and tricks that real players would only use in practice and it just doesn’t work. Soccer is already fast and exciting and didn’t need to be “fixed” like this. Soccer fans won’t like it and the gameplay is so poor that other gamers won’t like it so who is left? No one, that’s who. If you are itching for a new soccer game, EA’s own FIFA 2005 or Konami’s Winning Eleven 8 are much, much better choices. FIFA Street is rental material at best but you aren’t missing much if you just skip it entirely.
