If only all of football was like this.
Pirouette after pirouette, defenders with ball-juggling skills and
lightning step-overs on a par with (pre-booze) George Best, and
midfielders that can actually strike the ball on target whilst wearing
an England shirt; magic as that sounds. Actually, it'd be rubbish
wouldn't it? No effort, no toil, no work ethic, no surprises, no payoff
for years of clinging to a shattering dream - just an endless supply of
fanciful skill and humble goalkeepers picking the ball out of the back
of the net. Christiano Ronaldo in a box, if you will.Fifa
Street 3 attempts to capture the adrenaline-infused magic of
showboating skill and frenetic attacking play, relegating the less
glamorous elements of the game to a lonely bench-warming slot as a
result. Like every Electronic Arts attempt at this formula to come
before it, it also utterly fails in doing so.
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Heavily stylised graphics are the order of the day
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Kaka looks a little too effeminate there...
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Now don't get me wrong, there is fun to be had here. The control
scheme is a step up from years past, with players that actually feel
fairly responsive this time round. Dribbling is easy to grasp, with
tricks handled on the right analogue stick, and flicks and modifiers
coming courtesy of the Triangle/Y button. It's easy enough to put
together a flowing move that encompasses knocking the ball off a wall,
flicking the ball up in the air and belting it into the net for
example, and due to the arcade sensibilities, this can be done with
pretty much any player on the pitch.
Attacking play then, is
fairly rewarding. Passing the ball around comes naturally and swiftly,
with high passes yielding spectacular opportunities for volleys and
diving headers, along with the ability to keep the ball alive in the
air if necessary. Shooting is handled fairly well, with the
now-standard power gauge in operation - and a variety of shot types on
offer that'd make Francesco Totti envious.
Of course it's all
about the scoreline, and playing with enough flair eventually fills up
the now-obligatory 'Game Breaker' meter, with the ability to launch a
couple of virtually unstoppable shots once it's activated. The Game
Breaker timer seems to last for a little longer than previous
iterations, allowing for the luxury of knocking the ball around the
park for a little while, before blasting a shot into the onion bag from
the half way line. If that's what you choose to do, of course.
Multiplayer
matches work fairly well, with the ability to chain together some
impressive sequences of skill to humble a couch-bound friend, and Xbox
Live play also benefits from the now standardised and solid EA
implementation.
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Players often spend more time in the air than on the ground
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Ronahdinho is probably able to do this in real life
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All of which sounds like it'd make for a great game, and indeed it
does, for approximately half an hour – but that's about all the time
that you'll need to get the most out Fifa Street 3. Put simply, there
really is no longevity to be found here. Skilful moves are ubiquitously
easy to pull off, with the result being a complete lack of motivation
to conquer any of the single-player modes or learn any advanced
techniques.
As a game with a focus on pure attacking play, you'd
also expect the defensive side of the game to be a little lacklustre in
implementation, but not quite to the complete lack of regard shown
here. Slide tackling (or tackling in any form really) is unwieldy,
unsatisfying and annoying against a human opponent, whilst the computer
AI has an uncanny knack of either staying completely away from any of
your players, or alternatively spending the entire game pulling
Maldini-esque tackles out of the bag on a regular basis. It just isn't
fun. On any level.
At least the game has a sense of humour
though. Graphics are stylised to cartoonish proportions, and watching
the ogre-like form of Wayne Rooney passing the ball up to the almost
camel-like veneer of Peter Crouch is entertaining enough. The courts
themselves are well-detailed with some interesting lighting effects,
but animation is painfully limited at times – especially so with the
goalkeepers, who apparently only seem to have approximately three
different ways to save the ball or tackle an oncoming opponent.
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Rooney looks just like Shrek. No change there then.
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The England squad is a little too well-equipped for this sort of thing
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All of which makes this another
lacklustre prospect for arcade-football fans. It isn't like EA is
incapable of pulling off this style of game either, with NBA Street
crafting a well-beaten path for an arcade sports title that oozes
playability, depth and polish. It just doesn't work here though.
Perhaps football just isn't meant to be this way. After all it's not a
game in which double-digit scorelines ever truly happen. Hell, even a
scoreline with a cumulative total of five or more would mark out a
particularly odd game. What people don't seem to get though, is that
the magic of football doesn't always come down to an individual trick
or a spectacular shot. It's the names of the workhorse players that get
sung on the terraces long after the pretty-boy strikers have moved on,
and in a world of increasing short-termism and shallow thrills, i'll
take a player like Gennaro Gattuso over the Christiano Ronaldo's of the
world, any day of the week.Top game moment: Cracking an overhead off the bar with Peter Crouch. Just because of the novelty alone.
