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2002 FIFA World Cup Review
Mark Simons
00/12/0000
EA have a football game out in time for the World Cup, what a handy co-incidence...
2002 Fifa World Cup to the cynical eye may appear to be no more than a cash-in on this year's world cup. Certainly things seem to head down that route when you find out that there are less gameplay modes than Fifa 2002, less teams and only a few changes to the gameplay. Let us continue however and see whether as a game in it's own right Fifa World Cup stands up to the competition.
The problem that we have here, and this may have been made clear if you have read our review of International Superstar Soccer 2, is the existence of Pro Evolution Soccer, which makes every other soccer game look pretty lame in comparison. Now we appreciate that Fifa is taking an entirely different approach to the sport and presenting what is billed as a far more accessible game that offers a lot of flashy moves and impressive goals. You can perform many tricks to outfox the opposition and they are activated by simple button presses, which keep games looking good, but sidestep any pretence to having significant amounts of depth to the gameplay.
A major new feature is the 'airplay' system for gameplay, which allows you to have more control over headers and volleys allowing you to direct them easily to teammates, or the goal. The animation used for the moves is very impressive and everything looks incredible when you say beat a few defenders with a run after chesting the ball down and proceed to tee yourself up for a volley and ram it home in the top corner. This looks good but due to the ease of pulling off such moves there is a distinct lack of gratification, and indeed in the one player mode, a lack of challenge. We managed to make it through an entire world cup scoring 40 goals and only having two shots on goal against us for the duration of the event. 2002 Fifa World Cup is easy to beat on all but the hardest of the difficulty settings. When playing multiplayer you rapidly acquire scores that you would very rarely see in a real game of football at international level.
In making Fifa World Cup accessible and impressive EA have made it rather easy, the artificial intelligence of the computer is not that great. You can quickly work out their attacking and defensive tactics and it becomes easy to respond successfully as scoring is a relatively simple affair once you've discovered the computer's inherent weaknesses. The problem with this state of affairs is that matches rarely resemble real life games, degenerating into endless attacks with little build up play in midfield, you can do that if you wish, but the problem is that it is not needed, you can simply turn on the skills and beat a load of players and you'll be in a good position to shoot. Whilst this theoretically makes the games exciting it removes the tension that you should be feeling when you have to doggedly hold on to a one nil lead or the satisfaction gained from coming back from behind to win a game in the last minute. Without any sort of tension the games just become rather boring to play, despite being stuffed full of hugely impressive moves and goals, it just doesn't feel like football. Now again, we don't want to dwell on this too much as Fifa is definitely not meant to be a simulation, but we cannot see how this type of game can be preferential to Pro Evolution Soccer for anyone who enjoys watching or playing football.
Away from the gameplay Fifa World Cup is on the money. Quite literally you may say, the presentation is slick, both visually and aurally from the introduction to the in-game action itself. A particularly nice touch is the dramatic music that plays over replays when you just miss a shot or get sent off, it's a little cheesy but we rather like it. The graphics themselves are rather sweet the attention to detail on the kits and players is very high and animation is top notch. However despite being technically very impressive from the point of view of animation, level of detail and other such things the characters don't look that realistic. They look rather more like caricatures of their real-life counterparts than the players in ISS2 or Pro Evolution, and they have rather freaky eyes as well. However they do animate rather beautifully and from a distance you can't see their eyes so that little niggle does not come into play that much.
Stadiums look rather good, although the shadows that are cast look a little odd but the overall effect is rather impressive, although the crowd is a little odd. From a distance things look good, the crowd is nicely animated and they hold up little pieces of card to make pictures in the stands - a nice touch. However get up close and you can see that the fans are all the same, faceless and the lacking in any sort of detail or variation. Whilst they animate nicely this does not look realistic and coupled with the look of the characters it really doesn't do much for making the game look realistic. The major problem we have with the graphics is that there is a distinct amount of slow down in places. We do not want slowdown in this type of game, given the slickness of the graphics and presentation in other areas this is just something that shouldn't be an issue and we are very disappointed that the game does slow down quite regularly. The gameplay is not affected too much as you get used to it, but the effect is disconcerting and definitely robs any pretence of realism and detracts from the other technical merits of the graphics.
From an audio perspective Fifa World Cup is very good, the crowd sounds are among the best we have heard in any football game and there is player chatter which is also hugely atmospheric. Commentary too is rather good as we've come to expect, a combination of John Motson and Andy Gray offer play by play that is of a good standard as well as nice introductions and a smattering of facts about the teams and the tournament itself. The commentary isn't as good as that in the excellent 2k series of sports games from Visual Concepts but for a football game this is leagues ahead of the dross that has plagued Konami's football titles.
