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FIFA Football 08 (Wii)

Wii Review

By Cube - 16th October 2007 20:42

"While these sound fine, they take a lot of getting used to and they don't always work."

Every year, FIFA comes along, adds minimal features, updates rosters, and sells a lot of copies. Last year marked the first HD entry in the series (well... for some consoles), but this year marks the first FIFA to use motion controls. This brings us two new control schemes, bonus minigames, and all the usual stuff you would expect from a FIFA title. Well, almost. But we'll get to that later.

FIFA is the controls. There are two control options: Family Play and Advanced. The first uses just the Wii Remote while the second adds the Nunchuck into the mix as well. In the advanced mode, the Nunchuck's analogue stick controls the player, Z causes the player to sprint, while the C button and shakes of the controller make the player perform tricks. The Remote controls ball-related actions. When attacking you can use the A and B buttons (or both) to perform different types of passes. You can also waggle the Wii Remote to pass in your desired direction. When defending, A changes player, and B tackles.

While these sound fine, they take a lot of getting used to and they don't always work. There's also half a second worth of noticeable lag for both the buttons and motion moves. Having the same motion for a goal-bound header and sliding tackle causes problems – it's often hard to see where exactly the ball is (in 3D terms) during corners, so every now and then you'll go for a header when the ball is on the ground – resulting in your player performing a sliding tackle and (if you're unlucky) getting a red card.

Couple this with the directional passing often not passing to the person you want it to go to, the player select not selecting a player in a good position, the game not registering some flicks of the Remote and your computer-controlled team-mates often going into bad positions and you have what can be a mess of a game. Luckily you will get used to it if you stick to it – you'll develop tactics based on how the game works and figure out the best way of using the controls. When this happens you can fully enjoy the game.

On the other hand, Family Play is a complete disaster. The concept sounds fine – you control passing, shooting and tackling, while the computer handles movement. And it should have worked well if EA had kept it to the computer controlling just the movement. The massive mistake they made was making the computer also perform passes and tackles for you. If a player is on a good run, the computer will often decide to ruin it by passing backwards. The matches turn into you battling your own team's AI instead of playing against another team. Very poorly done.

The proper football sections consist of a quick match, tournaments, challenges and online. Quick matches simply let you pit any two teams against each other, while tournaments let you pick a team and play as them through a whole league/cup. You can chose from any included national tournaments or create your own. Once this is done, you unlock a viewable trophy and earn some points to buy new kits, balls and night-time stadiums. There is also a special online tournament. You pick a team to support and play some fixtures. The results (from you and all their other "supporters") will affect the position of the team in the league.

Challenges come in Easy, Difficult and Custom (which needs to be unlocked by completing all of the previous types). Given a starting score and remaining time, you have to score as many goals above the opposing team as the game tells you to.

Online is a fairly simple affair. You must register on EA's site for a username, then play matches against random opponents (anyone or people about your skill level) or friends. Matches are relatively lag free and don't have the "hidden tactics" that makes Mario's football game so frustrating when playing online.

The game looks fairly decent – the players have a sufficient amount of detail and the grass looks rather nice. It's fairly clear, too (except for when the game forgets to give teams their away kits and you end up with two teams in the same colour shirts). It's nothing spectacular, but it does the job and runs smoothly. The commentary is mostly good, but (as always) sometimes says stupid things (the most common is the commentators congratulating a player's header when they head the ball to an opposing player). The menus also have licensed music from various countries, from artists such as Travis, The Automatic, Cansei de Ser Sexy and The Cat Empire.

There are also three minigames. The best one is Table Football, which works very well with the Wii Remote. The other two are fairly boring: One of them sees you slowly juggling a ball with your feet by shaking and pressing buttons and the other lets you wave the remote to hit targets. These games use Miis and Ronaldinho as a host.

Overall, FIFA 08 on the Wii is a decent package but let down by lack of modes (such as the management features that the other versions have), poor controls and some annoying gameplay problems. If you give it time, you should adapt, but the controls need a lot of refining. But then, there's always next year...

Comments

Auntnadia Says:
October 17th, 2007 at 04:40 \|\| Total Comments: 740

there are two things that ruin this game for me.

online mode keeps dropping out during games (usually for some reason when the keeper is about to make a save). it then usually counts as a loss against you.

secondly, it's very hard to perform the kick you need with the right power. sometimes you try to kick it out and the keeper rolls the ball to an opposing player, who inevitably scores.

K-Project Says:
October 17th, 2007 at 05:44 \|\| Total Comments: 12

I can't speak for the online section of the game, since I'm not hooked up, but while I agree with some points in the review, I'm still finding this tremendous fun. I've not really had any bother adjusting to the new controls - I've certainly not had any probs passing or shooting.

I dunno...the lack of modes is the deal killer for some, but I've found it just such fun simply playing the game and banging goals in that it's not been an issue for me. For me it's an 8, and that's purely from the point of view that I haven't stopped playing it since I got it at launch.

Rob_BWFC Says:
October 17th, 2007 at 08:01 \|\| Total Comments: 43

When the Revolution controller was first shown, one of the questions surrounded it was how would it cope with regular games and they said that there would be a shell to turn it into a more conventional controller. We were assured that there would still be plenty of standard control schemes as well. I assume that this turned out to be the Classic Controller.

Maybe these type of games should have no motion sensing controls and use the Classic pad, cos the controls just seem gimmicky and do not seem to have any advantages over other versions

Harribo Says:
October 17th, 2007 at 09:42 \|\| Total Comments: 24

Well I thought the controls were good but I'm a "cock" so what do I know.

D_prOdigy Says:
October 17th, 2007 at 13:12 \|\| Total Comments: 1596

I think PES looks far more interesting, and I don't even play footy games.

Solitanze Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 06:10 \|\| Total Comments: 1655

SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE your money for a more worthwhile purchase.

Libra Says:
October 20th, 2007 at 07:00 \|\| Total Comments: 175

...like Pro Evo, for example.

This game is tosh. But then I think all Fifa games have been.

Having [change player] and [pass] on the same button is daft - MEGA frustrating at times.

Recently, Fifa seems to be getting more like Pro Evo but it still can't grasp the fluid, sexy feel of it's master.