FIFA 07 (Nintendo DS) Review

See, the problem with this game is that EA haven't really bothered. It is basically a GBA game pushed about on two screens with a rather tedious touch-screen replay system tagged on for good measure. Needless to say, we're not impressed. Graphically this game is an odd one. The menu system and the general layout of all the interface is really nice and crisp and the sounds that accompany you as you set up matches and the like is pretty decent too, but for some reason the second you hit the pitch everything goes very wrong indeed. All the visuals go a bit strange and for some reason the players don't move in two dimensions. Well, they sort of do, but because of the D-Pad interface they only do it in straight lines and if you ever want to turn you have to do it at a very abrupt angle. Even Bolton play better football than this. We started off on World Class mode expecting to get our behinds well and truly kicked, but oddly enough we won...by four goals to nil. No football game should be as easy as this, heck, no game should be as easy as this.

As far as we can work out, all there is to gameplay in this title is running at different speeds and in different straight lines and then shooting. If you do it right you score, if you do it wrong, the opposition steal the ball and get confused before quickly handing it back to you on a platter. There is no depth, there is no subtlety, there is nothing to actually enjoy about this title at all. And for some reason there isn't even any pace, the whole game seems to crawl along with all the spark and excitement of Keith Chegwin's underpants.

Audio in the game is pretty good. There are a few music tracks for when you are browsing through the menu system and your clunky attempts to win during the game are accompanied by the dulcet tones of Clive Tyldesley which is rather nice as it happens. The ITV commentator has loads to say and whilst he sometimes gets a bit repetitive the quality of the audio capture and accuracy of the comments is pretty impressive.
Much like its GBA ident-i-kit friend, the DS version does however suffer from some rather odd in-game sounds. For some reason, the game can go all quiet and thoughtful with the aforementioned Mr. Tyldesley talking over a total lack of crowd noise or anything. Then all of a sudden someone loses the ball or intercepts a pass or shoots wildly off target and there is a hideous kind of hissing screech from the assembled virtual masses. We don't know why this is the case, but surely the development team have no comprehension of the word 'atmosphere'.

In a nice little touch you can create your own crowd chants that last about five seconds and can be accompanied by all sorts of sound-effects fun such as drums, clapping and those hideously irritating air-horns that people always honk merrily at England internationals. It shows that EA actually did put some thought into this game, but a mildly amusing sound feature does not a good game maketh...

But we digress. The main purpose of this review is to warn you against buying this game, and we have to get back to some of its faults. Shooting is very easy, too easy in fact. For example, if you just trot up to the goal (which the computer will let you do) and hold down shoot for the right amount of time you will ever score or the 'keeper will spill the shot right into the path of one of your players allowing them to score. The reliability of this technique is astonishing.