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| FIFA '07 DS | | (And The End Of History) | | 01 December 2006 | | FairgroundTown first encountered video-game football in the mid-80s, when International Soccer was released for the Commodore 64. More than twenty years later, we've been playing FIFA '07 on our DS, and it is fair to say that a lot has changed... but a lot has also stayed the same.
While Internaltional Soccer featured basic visuals which seemed to be modeled on a game of table-football; FIFA '07 has all of the real teams from just about every league in Europe, and if the players aren't exactly instantly recognisable during normal play in the DS version, they nevertheless feel individually distinctive in the "action replay" animations and goal celebrations. The soundtrack too is quite authentic, with "real" commentry (spliced together from a few hundred different "clips") that gets it right nine times out of ten.
However, in terms of actual gameplay, it is as if history ended in 1985. There are more buttons to play with, of course, but the basic machanic is as it was twenty years ago - you control the player nearest the ball, and press a button to tackle, shoot or pass. In particular, we feel so much more could be done with the DS touch-screen, which is theoretically utilised as a mechanism to make off-the-ball runs, but which in practice is totally beyond any player with less than three hands!
This isn't to say that FIFA isn't a good game - it is fun, and will probably take-up permanent residence on our shelf, alongside Zoo Keeper, Billiard Action and Mario Kart, as something we wil pick-up and play on the train to work, or while we're waiting for the kettle to boil.
But we also feel like we are still searching for the perfect game of football - one that plays, like the greatest exponents of game itself, on pure intuition; and that's why we hope FIFA '07 is not the end of history! |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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FairgroundTown.co.uk /
Reflectable Ltd
2010