Read this reviews before You buy..."Too much flaws", Tuxtucis
Excellent:
1- The presence of Portuguese and Dutch championships, whose lack was the biggest flaw of previous editions of the series.
2- The presence of the minor divisions of the most important European championships (but...see bad n. 1) with the opportunity to be promoted or relegated.
3- The opportunity to see t-shirts before the match is very useful.
4- The chance to simulate more consecutive matches is a very good idea.
Good:
1- To score goals with the head is easier than in previous games of the series.
2- Free kicks and corners are real as they are never been before in the series (maybe except FIFA 2003).
3- The look of best players and stadiums is often very good.
Bad:
1- The UEFA Cup Final from 1998 is played in a single match and not in two matches; teams winners of an European Cup should must play automatically the following Cup.
2- Four English division are too much : it was better to place other another (or two) national championship (Israeli or Greek or Turkish or...) or to offer more teams in Rest of the World section (specially Eastern Europe's teams).
3- National teams are few and they can't play tournaments.
4- We cannot save replays.
5- Penalty kicks are too much rare (and they can't be kicked by the goalkeepers, while Chilavert and Butt do it).
6- T-shirts are more beautiful in the pre-match than in the match.
Very bad:
1- The game is too big. 64 megabytes ? The game often crash in my 256 megabytes portable PC !
2- We cannot create personal tournaments (it was possible from FIFA 99) and we cannot raise the blockade of new tournaments (it was possible in FIFA 2002 and 2003).
3-After a season often are relegated some of the best teams : it's absolutely unacceptable that at the end of an Italian championship go down Milan, Inter, Lazio and Roma.
4- Between the tournaments we can play, there are not Champions League and EFA Cup : we can play European Cup, only after a (long) national championship. Interamerican Cup doesn't exist.
5- Successive team managements in the option's screening not considers previous savings.
In substance, with regard to some important points of view, the game is a considerable progress to a great soccer game, but a big number of (sometime very irksome) lacks roughly lower the judgement.
"HOW ISNT THIS THE BEST GAME YET?!?!?!?", I REPEAT DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOUR COMPUTER IS REALLY SLOW!
ALSO IF YOUR COMPUTER ISN'T BUY THIS GAME, DON'T LISTEN TO ANYONE ELSE! THERE JUST MAD THEY CANT HANDLE FIFA 2004!
I admit that some people might say FIFA 2004 made a mistake but they didn't. I tried out Winning 11 (6) and it BLOWS! You don't know how easy it is to score on that (puh) cheap game! In FIFA, they make it an even challenge for beginners with amatuer. I sccored like 15-0 agains't Italy and Korea in FIFA WORLD CUP 2002 and in Winning Eleven I crushed Japan easily like 41-0! Meanwhile I bought FIFA 2004 for PS2 and computer to see if everyone said was true and guess what, They're LYING!. This game's graphics are pushed to the way limits, its not even funny. I tripped a player and he slid and guess what, he had stain all over him! This game is as real as soccer could possibly be. In Career Mode, depending on how well you do is how many people are in the crowd. Since im in K-League( Korean League) I chose Busan Icons and so far im 21-5-2 and my stadium looks PACKED every game but Uslan who is like 8-1-19 they barely have the front rows covered. This game also has background music from different countries. England:4, Japan:1, Germany:1, and some more. They have away and home jerseys you can pick. So you can wear a blue Suwon Blue Wings jersey if your away and White Suwon Bluewings if your home. The players rating are comparable but there must be a mistake on some. They put Song Chong-Gug at a rating of 54. He started and played every minute in World Cup 2002 for Korea and they got all the way to 4th place (Brazil 1 ,Germany 2, Trukey 3, Korea 4) ESPN announcers such as Ty stated, "Song Chong-Gug has played very well in this tournament" Cant anyone fix that. Also they make some players look kind of weird such as Ahn-Jung Hwan (they gave him a ponytail -_-). Theres three modes: Practice Mode, Career Mode (5 year coaching), and a tournament. But I don't get it, everyone says there is no friendly mode but there is. Just go to play now and thats the same thing as a friendly! Its just 8 letter difference! Id say give FIFA the best game of the year. If only they could add North Korea and add more chants to South Korea instead of just taehanminguk which sounds like "taehanmingok" just like in FIFA World Cup 2002. GOOD JOB FIFA, ILL BE WAITING FOR FIFA 2005!
"The worst FIFA game to date", This is undoubtedly the death blow to the FIFA series. Having bought FIFA 98, 2000, and 2002, I was looking forward to this game. I was disappointed. I've played 2000 and 2001 on the PC and the controls were fine on the keyboard. This is not the case here. I can't keep up with the numerous controls and what could have been a *fun* game turns out to be a frustrating piece of junk.
Besides the keyboard controls, the gameplay is sorely lacking. You can't really notice how bad it is until you reach the professional level when it becomes absurd. No matter what I do I can't get a pass into the box unless it's a cross (and then it's almost always too close to the keeper). No matter where you are on the opponent's side of the field there is always a defender right in front of you to block any pass or lob attempt. This brings me to my main gripe. The passing is just plain awful. How many times have I pressed "up" and "s" and my pass ended up at the feet of a defender to my right? Too many. Sprinting is terrible because once you've begun your run you're guaranteed to lose possession. Defending, while not as bad as attacking, is still a pain. The AI will almost always tear through your defense resulting in one or two defenders chasing an attacker as he runs into the box.
Enough of the bad points... FIFA has great graphics compared to its predecessors and the licenses are nice touch. The Career Mode isn't that bad, but it's entirely unnecessary. All that was needed was a simple season mode without all this prestige points nonsense.
Don't get this game, buy Pro Evolution/Winning Eleven instead.
"Last FIFA soccer I will buy", I just bought this game and after a few hours look at it I really don't think I will play it again.
First of all the game is impossible to control with the keyboard. I have been a real fifa fan and have owned nearly all of them and always used the keyboard with great success but the buttons are simply getting far to many. And why on earth can't you configure the controls??? Did the EA people forget it? I mean I have never seen a game where you can not configure the controls!
You can not configure the game speed like you could in FIFA 2003 which is very bad because the game is way too slow as default. At first glance it seems very easy to score with long shots and the shots look very unrealistic. And why did they take out the season play? I think the game is getting more and more to lok like manager game but the main thing should be gameplay which is very bad in this game.
And really the commentary need to change! I won't even speak more about it.
The 2 stars are for graphics.
I could go on and on in here but I won't bother. If you want to talk with about this bad game then e mail me at thorirbe@hotmail.com.
I'm gonna go and find some other soccer game than FIFA.
"Terrible--too FAST actually (see below please)", The graphics are terrible. FIFA 2002 was better. It is very bumpy (not smooth), even on the lower detail/pixel settings, and I have a brand new Pentium 4 with plenty of power, plenty of graphics power, correct driver, etc., AND I have downloaded the patch that was supposed to fix things. Each time I play the game, I have to start a game only to quit on purpose because the graphics mess up and the players are see-through and green. Then I have to change the detail setting to low (I have a powerful system, again, and I should be able to play on high detail), restart another game (low setting means there are no numbers on the players backs during game play and it basically looks like Atari 2600 quality graphics), then I have to quit again, change the settings back to medium (numbers are on players' backs), then start a 3rd game. Even then sometimes the players remain see through. If I made the mistake of starting a game in my career mode file, then if I quit I forfeit 2-0--can't just quit normally, so I have to choose to play the entire game with see through graphics or ruin my career mode. It is unbelievable!!!! I popped in FIFA 2002 for fun to see if I was remember correctly (I did not have 2003), and I was correct, it was much smoother, although without detailed players' faces. The only good thing about the 2004 graphics is the closeups where the players' faces look real. But again, the graphics during play are choppy and too fast, actually (I don't understand those who said it was too slow). It is super fast and unlike in 2002 it does not allow me the option of slowing it down (is this because here my powerful computer is kicking in but having a negative effect for another reason?). I mean, literally, a shot goes about 400 miles per hour for 50 yards if you look at it from a relative standpoint as it would look if it was real life (and the 10 minute clock goes about 5 seconds per every real 1/2 second and the players correspondingly are too fast). Why not slow it down to real seconds and real speed, like Madden 2004 football does? I should be able to put it on 45 minutes per half and have it go the real speed and still have realistic low scores, as, again, Madden 2004 football americano does. There, you can play with real 15 min. quarters and end up with real scores, sometimes 6-3, 12-9, 24-21, etc. and with fairly realistic stats. If this soccer game had 45 min. halves, teams would get about 70 shots off in a game and the score would be 12-10 every time (not real).
In sum, my major complaint is the graphics are actually too FAST, if you follow me. Even a lob pass or a clearance goes up and down (the trajectory of the ball) super fast. In 2002 it was smooth and more realistic, amazingly (2002 had its own problems such as being an arcade game, where, again, in 45 min. half mode, which WAS available, you'd have a final score of 25-24 or something like that).
2004 game solves that problem as far as difficulty in scoring (pretty real), but it does it by speeding everything up so it looks unreal, both the players and the clock (what I mean is it is like it is literally on fast forward in a VCR when you're playing).
Am I the only one with these problems (the see through player problem described above)??? Please let me know if you have a suggestion. I did, by the way, check my direct X 9.0 settings, other settings, etc., and everything on my computer is working fine (I am NOT one of those people who don't know about computers and have the settings not installed right or something )(oh by the way I did reinstall FIFA 2004 twice and that did not help either).
What I'm saying, in sum, is except for details of players' faces when you see them close up, the 2002 graphics were actually better in that they were smoother and slower. I mean literally the new game is too fast, if I may repeat myself. Literally a player can run 40 yards in about 3 seconds in real life, but it is like 25 seconds, literally, that have run off the clock on the game--like the game resorts to the trick of making the games last only 20 total minutes to keep it low scoring, but yet you still get off 10 - 20 shots in a game, so it still unrealistic, just that 75% of "down time" (passing it around and midfield play) chunk of the game that would be in a real game is just missing. This is NOT true in Madden 2004 football americano.
Why can EA get the soccer game to play at real speed--the clock would make one second be one second (like you're looking at a real clock, not one on fast forward), and the players and ball would travel at real speed too (slower), and the game could be 90 min. long and still result in realistic scores like 2-1, 3-2, 1-0, etc.??? They have hidden the continued unrealism (too easy to shoot, too often, and score) by simply taking 75% of the TIME away. The game lasts only 20 minutes in real time (10 min. half mode is the max you can play, but they have the clock run on fast forward so it pretends it is a 90 min. game--this does succeed in creating low scoring games--but by cheating with time, not making the play realistic). If the game play stayed exactly the same but the clock ran at real time, a 90 min. game would, again, result in scores like 25-24 (or 25-0 if you're beating up on the computer in amateur or even semi-pro mode, in which it is easy to prevent the computer from even getting off a single shot). As it is with the speeded up time, you HAVE to play not realistic (what I mean is you must push the ball downt he field right away every time--no time to pass it around or simply slow down and stand there for a few seconds as happens in real game--watch real games!!! (and yes I am a player of soccer in real life too). The AI is even worse--they immediately push straight for the goal every time--no time to dribble around or pass around a little because the game is about to be over in 10 minutes!!! I bet if you could take the time to count somehow, there are like 75% less total "touches" of the ball by any player's foot in the game, again it is all based on the speeded up time thing I'm trying to describe)
Slow it down, like the Madden game. It is like the Madden programmers are 10 years ahead of the FIFA programmers in sophistication (like FIFA is about the level of Madden in 1995 or so, if you follow me).
Does anyone agree with me?
Thanks.
