Fifa 07

Ok, a review of an old game that likely people won’t touch but hopefully, this can be seen as part of an evolutionary review of the fifa series on the xbox 360

Fifa first saw light on the 360 with Fifa : Road to World cup… a launch title and exclusive to the 360 was EA’s tie in for the then impending world cup..
Having played this ages ago, it had easy achievements that where obtainable in a few short hours.

Whilst Fifa : RtWC and the later fifa:2k6WC are considered to be cut down versions of the full game. Fifa 07 was the first full release cycle on the 360.

Coming at it from the current day, where Fifa 10 is the big dawg, you can see there has been “tiny steps evolutionary progress” on the game.
At the time, PES6 was its main competition and the fanboys where still split into two decidedly different camps: Fifa with officially licensed names or PES with its better technical gameplay mechanics.

Fire up the game & it’s the usual gumf of saving locations.. 4 of them.. when I have a single HDD.. At what point will game designers realise that if you only have one device then everything will get stored on there… Give an option for ‘Save or don’t save’, not save but which singular device.

Leave the game at the main menu whist the game is connected to the internet and the game will download a podcast of sorts from Talksport. Sounds great, except it cannot be turned off… and hasn’t been updated. It’s that cunt Trevor Brooking talking about how the English Midfielders are not good enough… Oh and Samir Nasri has just signed for Arsenal…

Menu options then, Manager Mode, take control of a team. It’s a cut down version of football manager on a PC from a number of years ago.. Other than the achievement available for it, it’s the start of a mode that has expanded with the newer releases.
You could see the potential, but as it is currently (in Fifa 07) its just a shallow addition that offers little

The core game play is obviously football, and all options lead from that... There are challenges to be completed (not required for achievements)

Online games (deader than Elvis). Any games played in this don’t count towards achievements – really EA, what was the point in making an online segment for this?
Anyway, couldn’t test the net code for this.

Leagues are well counted for with the majority of decent leagues and associated teams available. Same with cups

The other option is kickoff, which is a single match against two teams.
However by default the initial team is always Man U Vs Man city. No options to change that available. Why those teams? Why that league? No idea… EA are cunts

So there’s the options; onto the game engine.
EA have tried to nail a TV presentation effect for the game. It starts off with a murky camera shot of the players shaking hands in the tunnel & I really can’t remember if they tried to advertise that the models looked like the players… but they all look like mutated offspring between the player named & a brick. – the size of the chins on some of the players with their fish mouths.. Jim Henson would have loved the idea!

Many different named grounds are available, but with the normal view the grass looks the same, and the only difference is when a substitution is made (cut scene) & it tells you the name of the ground.
How does it play? Actually not bad… the ref is very hit and miss on what is considered a foul, booking, or red card (or hell, even not giving anything at all)
EA recently allowed for 360 motion control in fifa10, and fifa 7 allows for 8 (or maybe 16) motion points for the players... however, move from running straight across to upwards too fast, there’s every chance your player will ignore that & carry on running forwards. – The downside to the fifa7 control is that it has taken EA 3 years to spot that it’s a bit wonky and broken.

If the opponent has the ball & you have two players near him. The default player selection is usually the one in the worse position. That’s fine, you can change player selection, except the game will have you select someone off the pitch, so you select again.. Its someone else.. by the time it cycles back to one of the two original players, the ball is a good 30 yards from the original spot so you have to go through the shitcaboodle again.

Achievements,
Ok. So its 2010, and I’m playing 07’s version.. must be for the achievements… correct!
What look easy on paper, are! They are just a grind...

The first one.. win a 50 game streak… seriously? – its not hard if you where going for it, but it’s a stupid idea. To make it worse, this one includes 2player games… so you could be playing single player & keep winning.. & a friend fancies a game & beats you.. congrats back to the start.. blimey.. a cunts trick EA

Win 60 games with a 4 goal average.. ok. So when you get the game you wont score a lot (or lose) that will knock your average down… so you need to play a lot of games with more time to get more than 4 goals per game?? Again pathetic idea EA.

The longest one to take is 300 games won, ok not too difficult.
Then theres the 50 games won with a position as Man O’Match

Ok, not difficult are the two above but lets dig out some numbers.
The minimum half is 4 minutes… and with injury time & cutscenes I make it that the average game & loading is 13 minutes long

300 games is 65 HOURS… when this came out, did EA not think that people would prefer to play online, or against local friends??

In Summation
As an evolutionary progress; as all of EA Sports games are; it would be more of a problem if fifa 7 did things better than a later version, to that end EA are at least doing things correctly.
Having not played fifa 8 I cannot comment if that is true of the same, but fifa 10 is much more a better, more encompassing game.
Holding a 3 year old game to current standards is not a fair descriptor and given the progress its sequels has made, I wonder if the high regard 10 holds currently will be maintained when people are playing fifa 13.

EA should have least gave the option to turn off that EA radio thing off.

Well what a good review, i do like to know all about the progression of Fifa, but yes Fifa 10 is brilliant, and knocked PES off the top

I am not really into football but i have to give credit where its due this is a great review mate

nice one ms ross would be nice to see some reviews of older games that got overlooked but are a good play and are now cheap
dead space and viking were too games for me that were overlooked and i rreally enjoyed them
good review as well

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OOOH GUNS GUNS GUNS

good god! who edited my post to add that ugly fucker to the top of it!?! (I'm talking about that pie eating cunt Rooney)

Cheers for the words y'all, I was originally looking at it as a review of the game itself & realised it was two things :
A) outdated & pointless (because of the age & serialised nature of the franchise
B) Something new - IGN & other sites review games in their solidarity & comment on their individual merits.. nothing wrong with that, but in a series its often good to look back & see where current came from..
(being a lover of retro-gaming, you cant blame me for that)

Even review sites don't seem to cottoned onto this & reference previous games too much in reviews.. It would be interesting if they did! (maybe their 'management' aren't allowed?)
(perhaps an idea for the site?)


As for other reviews, ive a couple I had written a while back & Ill put up.. as for the two youve mentioned bolty:
Viking - Never played,
Dead Space - "Jumpy-Scary" for about 3 -5 levels, then becomes humdrum on the scares (you'll see them coming most of the time), but still a good game right through to the end.