Review

When EA launched the Big label in the EA Sports range, their remit was a simple one: to make extreme versions of each sport they approached. This worked brilliantly with the SSX series, the little seen rally title Shox and the NBA and NFL Street series. So the natural progression was to approach the mega-selling FIFA series with the same attitude. The result was a total disaster, so when a sequel was announced we were less than impressed, but at least the only way for them to go was up!

FIFA Street 2 is a vast improvement on its predecessor. The licence has been used to create superb likenesses of all the players it features, only National teams are represented but there’s a decent squad to choose from, and the animation is of a similarly high standard. Unfortunately this is where the good news ends.

The biggest, and most important problem that it suffers from is a complete failure to get the simple things right. In previous Street games the designers have made sure that the sport itself remains simple to play and then added on all the show-off moves and tricks. Here, however, the tricks ARE the game and it’s impossible to score without using them. It should be easy to just pass the ball around and shoot but it’s not, and furthermore it never really feels like you’re in control of the action.

As you do perform tricks, a boost bar is slowly filled at the top of the screen and when this reaches the maximum you are able to perform a spectacular, unsaveable shot from a marked area of the court. This means that each game essentially follows the pattern of: perform lots of random tricks to build up your boost, run to the sweet-spot and shoot. There’s very little skill involved and subsequently, no fun to be had doing so.

The only saving grace is the trick mode played against a group of friends or on your own. Basically, you pick any player and perform combinations of tricks using the right analogue stick to boost your score. Each time you successfully complete a sequence you are given a few extra seconds on the clock with the aim being to keep going as long as possible. It plays a bit like Bust A Groove on the PSX and offers the only real entertainment that FIFA Street 2 can provide.

Like I said at the beginning: this is a vast improvement on the original. However, that’s not really saying much! You may be able to squeeze some worth out of it with some mates round and a few beers, but nothing more. If EA continue to improve at the same pace then the earliest we can expect a half-decent game is 2015.

About the Review

Platform

Sony Playstation 2

Developer

E.A. Canada

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Released

3rd March 2006