FIFA Soccer 2004

Rating:
Summary: play the sport and you'll appreciate FIFA 2004
Review: Having bought/borrowed PC FIFA games since '99, I say that the 2004 incarnation is the closest to the real thing. From the graphics to the gameplay. Players look, behave and play like their real-life counterparts. As one other reviewer wrote, it's like watching TV. True, it may be not as fun as other soccer games because it's hard to pull off those spectacular moves but very players can pull off those bicycle kicks, curving passes and goal-scoring headers with regularity. To fully appreciate and exploit the game, you must know the players' strengths and weaknesses, which the game faithfully represents. I managed to beat Real Madrid using the souped-up Chelsea squad via juggling the lineup and putting stronger defenders against the Los Galacticos. However, despite being a faithful simulation of the beautiful game, I am bothered by several things that prevent it from being, well, a beautiful game.

First, the controls. I understand that this game fully utilizes the analog stick of console systems. However, I'm playing the PC version using an ordinary gamepad and I cannot fully use the off-the-ball feature and can't perfect the free kicks and penalty kicks. Up to now, I can't bend it like Beckham. Another is the menu. It's very hard to navigate, much more cluttered than 2003. But the biggest beef about FIFA 2004, is the omission of a lot of teams, most notably, the Dutch national team. Yes, they didn't qualify for the World Cup 2002 but I want to see guys like Van Nistelrooy, Kluivert, Makaay, Davids, Overmars, Bergkampf and company play together. How can I simulate Euro 2004 without them? They managed to put in lower division teams of the major Euro leagues but neglected to put in the J-League and Champions League qualifiers like Lokomotiv Moscow. If there's a patch for the missing teams, let me know.

All in all, it's a worthy buy.

Rating:
Summary: A piece of crap
Review: The following reasons make FIFA Soccer 2004 a piece of crap:

1. No button configuration available. You can't configure your keyboard or gamepad to have a set of buttons that suit your preference, so you have to adjust to its default configuration. Note: button configuration is available with FIFA Soccer 2003, so it's a regression.

2. Poor control. As many other reviewers point out, the off-the-ball function is crap, your strikers could hardly get the ball if you use the off-the-ball button. This is a very serious problem in soccer game because most of the shooting chance in real life come from the collaborative movement and passing of players; with the off-the-ball function this ineffective, you're left with many fewer shooting chances, which makes scoring very difficult, even when you're controlling strong teams like Real Madrid or Juventus. Also, passing is inaccurate which sometimes makes you feel frustrated because the ball is lobed to somewhere you never intend. Direct freekick is another crap here, it's just impossible to do both the shooting power and accuracy right (it was possible, though with some difficulty, with FIFA Soccer 2003, so I'd consider it another regression). Movement of your teammates behind you is basically non-existent, so you're sometimes left with no support from behind; this situation is particularly clear if you are controlling a striker who is essentially at the forefront of offense with no other teammate ahead of him.

3. Fewer modes of game available. With FIFA Soccer 2003, you could choose a team and play a league season, just like what you do with NBA Live. With FIFA Soccer 2004? Sorry, you can't; you either play friendly games, tournament games (all being cup games like FA Cup in England), training sessions (which comprise training match, freekick and cornerkick practice, etc.) or a new mode dubbed 'career.'

Though there are such weaknesses with this game, it does have its strength:

1. Excellent graphics. Let's face it, no other soccer action game has got the level of graphic quality as FIFA Soccer series does; FIFA Soccer 2004 actually widens the margin even more.

2. Updated player information. Well, the crap new features aside, new player information is the only justification for releasing a new version of FIFA Soccer every year.

Conclusion: If you have FIFA Soccer 2003, as many FIFA Soccer fans do, just stick with it and don't buy the 2004 release, it's a waste of money.

Rating:
Summary: Too much flaws
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Moving in the right direction
Review: Fifa 2004 is a soccer/football game that is moving in the right direction. Its gameplay has moved away from the arcady feel of previous versions, and is now a pretty accurate representation of real-life soccer. The depth of the game is awesome, featuring a ton of leagues, teams, and players. The graphics are very good, continuing in the tradition of previous fifa games. And the new career mode enhances the replay/continual play value of the game.

However, Fifa 2004 is not without its faults, small and large. While the gameplay is more realistic than in previous years, it can become too static and frustrating. The new momentum and dribbling parameters create a realistic feel that prevent the game from resembling basketball more than soccer, but these same parameters can make controlling players physically and mentally tiresome. Much of the time it feels as if you're fighting against the controller in order to move players the way you want.

The single biggest drawback to this game, in my opinion, is the extremely poor menu design. I cannot stress enough how frustrating it is to try to navigate and organize these menus. I can't help thinking that this aspect of the game was ignored entirely. In fact, the menu design is so poor that it takes away much of the enjoyment of the career mode, where players are called upon to set up training regimes, make player deals, and assess team and player output--mostly through scrolling menus for statistics. If this part of the game design is improved for the next version of fifa, then this will most definately be a game to reckon with.

Rating:
Summary: What??!!!
Review: This is outrageous, the MLS over the argentinian, peruvian and colombian leagues, that is a disgrace, the people who crated the game obviously don't keep up with football and don't use common sense for the game, like giving a pass to nowhere when the player is right there, and why aren't there any skill moves, they exist you know? may not in the US but in the rest of the world, why not check it out from time to time...

Rating:
Summary: Where's the Brazillain League in Career Mode?
Review: Could have rated a 5, but one thing I don't understand. Why don't have the Brazillain League go with the Career Mode, not just for friendlies. Also why not other Latin American leagues, like Mexico, and Argentina. Is there a bias against Latin American teams? That I don't understand.

Rating:
Summary: Even though not perfect, this game is a lot of fun
Review: I disagree with the most of the reviewers. This game is a jewel on top of the previous releases. And to those of you who would like to hone your managerial skills, there is a "Total Club Manager 2004" around. If you are not satisfied with the uninclusion of some teams you will certainly find 'em in TCM and - the beauty- you can import them to FIFA 2004 and play'em there.
As for the game itself. FIFA 2004 have an exellent graphics, you can change music, and the game play is much more realistic, hten in the previous versions. Sometime the game leave you frustrated - players passing to the wrong directions, loosing the ball for no reason - but this is exactly like watching your team in real life.
Now there is the news:

The first release of the FIFA 2004 Creation Centre has been released by EA SPORTS today. You can download it from the Soccer Gaming Downloads Centre or any number of community FIFA websites.

Here is the feature list of what the first release contains:

Create new players

Player creation / editing - name, height, weight, skin colour, generic hair, face type, boots, position, stats

Kit editing - jersey number / name

Squad number editing

Captain selection

Change formations

More than one patch can be installed

Able to export just one team or one league and install that later on different computer without affecting any other team or league
Instructions:
Changes made in Creation Center will automatically carry into FIFA 2004

All changes need to be applied ('Apply' button) to take effect

All changes need to be saved ('Save' icon) to be stored - warning: there is no way to restore the initial default once a change is saved

'Reset' will cancel all changes made after the last save
The second release will be available around March and will include the following extra features:
Import/Export

Creating new teams/competitions

Importing of arts and sound
The first release of the Creation Centre 2004 is only 1.5MB.

Plus there is a patch, which can be downloaded from EA.com. This patch resolves some of the issues, plus adding LAN play, which was originally missing.

All and all great FOOTBALL game, enjoy it. And for 16.99 you can't go wrong :)

Rating:
Summary: Negative reviews seem annoyed by the realism
Review: A Gamer from Miami wrote:

"Graphics look good, players look real but its all useless because you can't play soccer as it is meant to be played, headers suck, the goalkeepers are robots stuck in the goal line."

Erm... have you ever seen a real soccer game? From your description of the 'bad' things in FIFA 2004 I'd get the impression that this is a great simulation of soccer. However, as usual with computer sports simulations, this one suffers from the same 'arcade' feel as all the others. 10 minute maximum for halves that really take 45 minutes?? I dunno, maybe real 90 minute soccer would just be too boring, but I'd like to have the option to try it anyway.

FIFA 2004 has an adequate set of stadiums, but no more than that. This prevents the player from getting any real sense of depth. The game claims to have a large repertoire of individualized crowd chants, but so far I haven't really noticed them.

The control interface is somewhat annoying: getting shots on target seems more a question of luck than skill, and free kicks don't work as the manual says they should. The management user interface is clunky and un-intuitive, but I'm beginning to get used to it, so it's not too bad after a bit of practice.

All in all, I don't think this is any great advance over older titles. It has nice graphics, but the depth that was in older FIFA titles is just not there. It's fun, but it's still lacking in realism and ease of control. With older titles selling at a significant discount, I'd advise gamers to settle for FIFA 2003 for a couple of months until this one drops a few dollars in price.

Rating:
Summary: cool but too irrealistic
Review: EA Sports ave donne a good job in making this really addictive game but the goals are sometimes much too irrealistic as you can score from yards away from the goal + some players are much better than there real capacities(ex:P.Kluivert who isn't a wicked player is, in this game, nearly as good if not better than Henry or Zidane or Beck's).Also the refereeing is unfair as there's a foul when there shouldn't and sometimes there isn't when there should + youre team gets much more red cards than the others.Otherwise it is very good with a lot of options and competitions.The graphics are fantastic and the sound of nthe crowd and of the game makes you really feel in it ,playing.

Rating:
Summary: Last FIFA soccer I will buy
Review: 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 [e-mail].

I'm gonna go and find some other soccer game than FIFA.