These days if
you are into footie gaming you likely either buy Pro Evo or Fifa every year,
well unless you prefer the managerial ones that is. Either way I remember the good old days of
Sensible Soccer on the Amiga, long before video game football had three
dimensions and photorealistic footballers faces (why oh why?).
Fifa 08 is
the latest instalment of the footie game from EA, it’s scrummed full of players
and teams, but is it any good?
First you
need to decide how you want to play; do you want to control a whole team and
take them through to success or would you like to take charge of just one
player on the pitch and play like a pro?
Well in Fifa 08, you can do both.
Whatever you decide, Fifa 08 feels and plays very similar to its
predecessor, EA do improve the game with every release but the updates are
small, you could be forgiven for thinking you were playing Fifa 07. Look closer and improvements are everywhere,
be it the AI of your team mates, the increase in goalkeeper difficulty or the
ever increasing range of moves to perform (trouble is, they’re running out of
buttons on the joypads nowadays).
I would split
Fifa 08 into two modes, arcade and managerial.
On the arcade
side you can pick a team play one of matches or tournaments and hone your
skills. Playing with friends is the best
part though, up to four people can play on one pc, via LAN or online.
The online
game is pretty good, the lobby is quite basic but once you get the hang of
things it’s quite easy to find open games or create ones of your own. The built in ranking checker can guide you as
to if your opponent will be of your skill level or one of the many people who
seemingly must be play 24/7 because they just are too good to even bother
playing against.
Frustratingly
setting up a private league or tournament with your mates is not so simple, you
have to rely upon the lobby to keep track of things and worse, have to schedule
matches on a strict one hour time scale which in my opinion offers no
flexibility. A really good private
tournament maker would have gone down really well here, let’s hope they improve
this for Fifa 09.
But the real
fun comes whilst being the manager of a team, taking note of their fitness and
training regimes and most importantly, keeping the board happy.
Fifa 08 is so large and has so many game modes that I don’t have enough time to
tell you about them all here.
Fifa 08 for
the PC uses the current gen graphics engine (PS2/Wii) rather than the fancy new
version created for the 360 and PS3, what does this mean? Basically it means that the graphics (by
default) look just the same as the PS2.
If you’re fortunate to have a good graphics card you can of course increase
the AA and AF to make it look a trifle better.
With a variety of camera angles to choose from, you can zoom right in
close and see the quite highly detailed graphics up close, it’s sure better
looking this way but I just find it hard to play on anything other than the
default tele camera mode. Unrealistic I
know, but then, it’s a bloody game so get off my back will ya?
The
commentary once again is excellent (well, apart from the mumblings of co
commentator Andy Gray); it’s varied and nearly always spot on. You’ll still hear the odd mistake (such as
being told the keeper saved a shot when really, it flew over the bar) but
considering the complexities of real time commentary calculations, it’s fair
enough. Having said that; with multi
core processors becoming the norm in computers and consoles nowadays, we really
should be seeing games like this optimized to take advantage of the extra power
these chips provide.
If you want
to get a great high quality footie game for the PC I can’t recommend Fifa 08
enough, I promise you’ll have lots of fun and it will be a while before you’ve
unlocked all of the hidden extras, such as bonus third player strips.