FIFA World Cup 2006 (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

The history of football spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the world's first football association was founded. Since then the game has grown in popularity across the world and in 1930 the first tentative 'world' competition took place in Uruguay. The modern World Cup, as we now know it, has been held since 1958 alternately in Europe and the Americas. Today, the FIFA World Cup holds the entire global public under its spell. An accumulated audience of over 37 billion people watched the France '98 tournament, including approximately 1.3 billion for the final alone, while over 2.7 million people flocked to watch the 64 matches in the French stadia. As you can see from the short history lesson 'the beautiful game' is more popular now than ever and as with the various FIFA titles EA hope to cash in on the celebrations with their latest sports offering. But if your team do get knocked out in the first stages, is this the next best thing?

Gameplay

Given that this is a World Tournament you can opt to play any team around the globe even If they haven't qualified, although teams like Jamaica (who qualified for the France '98 Tournament) are strangely absent. It's then a decision as to whether you wish to play in the full tournament or the qualifying stages. Fans of past World Cups can even indulge in the Global Challenge Mode where past games can be replayed with the objective being to achieve the same outcome using the same teams and criteria. So if you were 2-0 down in a game only to recover and win 2-4 then this is what you need to do. Medals are awarded for performances but strangely even though the game is the same you'll use modern day players. For fans of multiplayer games there's a four-player link-up, which sadly isn't wi-fi although judging by how the game performs on a single machine adding extra players would only cause more problems.

In addition to the main games there are a number of mini-games in which to practice your skills. These can all be found in the Skills Challenge section of the game and take you through free kicks, penalties and corners. There's even a World Cup Trivia Quiz split into easy and hard categories. The extras don't end here either, as success will unlock archive posters and artwork from games past and present.

Controls

I have to warn you that the learning curve is incredibly steep and it will take a fair few games before you really feel that you have the upper hand. If that isn't enough there are two different control systems available: arcade and 2006, which are displayed on both screens during the options menu if you needed any indication of just what you are up against. Which one you select is entirely up to you and we found both good and bad points with each. Just have a few practice games and see which you are most comfortable with.

Graphics

The visuals are of varying quality and while the front-end presentation and menus are wonderful, the same cannot be said of the in-game visuals. These are blocky and poorly animated with the frame rate not always able to keep up with the on-screen action especially when there's a group of players on the screen at any one time.

Sound

As we've come to expect from EA sports titles the soundtrack is really quite impressive and this latest FIFA World Cup offering is no exception. For starters there are a number of contemporary international tunes although if you hang around the options menu for too long you'll discover that most of them are on a rather short loop. The commentary and sound effects are also pretty good but as with the music if you listen to it a little too long you'll start to hear the joins.

Dual screen

This is one of the growing numbers of games where the touch-screen use feels like an afterthought and outside of the menu screens the bottom screen is only used to change your team's attack formation during games.

Final comments

There's certainly enough to keep the majority of football fans occupied for some time after this latest World Cup has finished with not only the competition itself but also some rather enjoyable mini-games and unlockables. Unfortunately you still feel that the DS hardware is simply playing catch-up with its more powerful console cousins and the resulting game doesn't really play on the handheld's strengths. Instead you get some questionable in-game visuals and animation as well as some unforgivable slow down in the frame rate, which can be incredibly frustrating around the goal area. It's still worth a look though but if you are a true football fan then there's a good chance you not only have FIFA '06 but also the recently released FIFA Street 2 and to be honest there's little extra here to warrant the asking price.

Pro: Great Soundtrack, Great Presentation.
Con: Steep Learning Curve, Poor Animations
Final score: 6.9

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