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2006 FIFA World Cup

Retail Price (not our price): $29.99
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Release Date: 2006-04-24
Manufacturer: Electronic Arts
Platform: Xbox 360 (Wrong platform? Click here!)
Format: Video Game

Features:
• Stunning visual representations of the world's superstar players&all 12 official stadiums
• Steer your favorite team from qualification through to a virtual reproduction of the Final tournament in Germany
• Close to 100 of the world's most recognizable players, all faithfully recreated
• Test your abilities in Global Challenge, a series of historic scenarios recreated with modern teams
• Live through the agony of the dreaded penalty shoot-out

Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):

1) Product Description
2006 FIFA World Cup Germany is the exclusive official game of the2006 FIFA World Cup. Play as one of 127 authentically recreated national teams from around the world. Create your own FIFA World Cup history by winning the World Cup with any nation of your choice. Players now behave and react believably to every situation on the pitch, bringing you closer to the action than ever before. For the first time ever in a soccer game, players exhibit life-like body movement and facial expressions. Watch as players express the full spectrum of emotion from elation as they blast home the winning goal to venting their anger at decisions that go against them in critical match situations. Experience every detail of life on pitch -- you'll see and interact with a living world, right down to the individually rendered blades of grass on the pitch. Intuitive interface - new menu system lets matches flow seamlessly while the player makes tactical changes and substitutions on the Ultimate in online play -- play gamers from all around the world in instant peer-to-peer matches, with Xbox 360's native multiplayer technology

Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

1) amazing game!   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
Now that the world cup has come and gone, I still continue to love this game. I had never played a soccer game before in my life, but I tried this one out and it definitely hooked me in. The controls are easy to learn, and it's fun to get to learn the rosters of different teams since the graphics are so good you can easily learn what players look like.

2) Played this game for 2 months now, and it's not that great   [Rating: 2 out of 5]
I've played many EA FIFA soccer games, starting with FIFA 95 (I think), and this got to be the worst of all. In general the game just doesn't feel like it was well-thought out.1, the graphics aren't impressive. This being a XBox 360 game I think we all deserve nicer graphics. 2, the game menu is very time consuming to navigate. It seems that if you select any item on the menu, it will ask you again and again if you want to save the settings to the harddrive, when the harddrive is the only memory device attached to the XBox 360! After you finish a tournament game, you must go through 4 questions in the menu. "Do you want to save the tournament?" (Yes) "Please select which storage device" (The only storage device you're showing me, the harddrive, please) "Do you want to save your awards?" (Yes) "To which storage device?" (Again, the only storage device, please). And all this happens after the computer asks me which storage device I want to use when the game first loads. 3, speaking of time time consumption, the game force you to watch a lot of animation. Whenever you or the computer makes a sub, the game puts on this stadium scene for about 10 seconds, and you can't skip it. Admittedly, those are the only nice graphics contained in this game. Perhaps that's why the producers really wants you to appreciate it! If you play on Xbox Live, your human opponent can force you to watch a truckload of animation as well, such as 30 seconds of opening scene and 30 seconds of closing scene. 4, This bothers the most. The AI is so dumb that it made me smash my gamepad in anger more than once, and I'm not usually an angry type. When you try to pass the ball to a wide open player the AI decides to pass it to another player guarded by 3 opponents. Or when one of your players is the person closest to a free ball but he won't do anything other than just standing there and watching the opposing team to take it. Or when the ball lands in the vicinity of a player, you hit the "switch player" button, but control is switched to the player second or third closest to the ball. You keep hitting the button and it just won't switch to the player who is closest to the ball who, of course, is just staring at the ball. I also like how when you make an offside pass, the computer doesn't tell you it's offside until after you dashed for it for 5 seconds and touches the ball.5. Oh, and more design flaws. Sometimes the goalie makes a save, but unfortunately, his whole body AND the ball are both in the net already. But the computer does not detect the score, and the game goes on. I've seen this happen more than once on Xbox Live. Also, when you are very near the end line and thus have a very small angle relative to the goal, it's pretty hard to score a goal, right? Not so. If you do a chip shot at a very small angle, the goalie gets very confused and will not catch the ball - never.These are the annoying little things I can think of right now. I love the sport and used to love soccer video games, but unfortunately this game has turned me completely sour. With little things like when the England scores a goal against France, the stadium crowd goes jubilant and joyfully wave French flags, it just feels like EA didn't care at all. There are so many annoying little things that could have been easily fixed.Bottom line: This is the only soccer game for the 360 thus far. Buy it if you must have a soccer game in your collection. Otherwise, I would wait until Winning Eleven comes out. I can't wait to abandon the EA line now!

3) Great Game   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This game is very fun. It really shows you how hard it is to make it to the World Cup. The game is very challenging and one mistake can make you lose.

4) Fun gameplay, great atmosphere.   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I'm an American who played soccer when he was a kid but really doesn't watch much on TV aside from when the World Cup rolls around every 4 years, so take my review w/ a grain of salt. However, that said, I think FIFA World Cup 2006 on the Xbox 360 is a VERY fun soccer game. I'm told that the Winning Eleven series (which unfortunately doesn't have an Xbox 360 version yet) is a more accurate soccer simulation, but I never felt like FIFA WC 2006 was too arcadey. I think it does a good job of emulating real soccer. The animations are very good, the details in the players and stadiums are great on the 360 in high-definition, and the announcing and other sounds are very well-done (when I was playing a game, my wife thought I was watching a real World Cup match).

5) Simply, a must-buy for any fan   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I haven't played the aforementioned ROTC, but I have heard about its numerous flaws. I must say that this game simply cannot be compared to ROTC; it really is very good. The main menu leads you to: play now (generic exhibition game), 2006 World cup, other game modes (practice, global challenges, penalty shootout). You can also check out video clips of all the German cities and stadiums in the actual world cup, but they're pretty boring unless you really like seeing trains move around through Stuttgart or something with really bad music in the background. Anyway, you can also buy certain things with points you earn in games like different balls, classic players (like Beckinbauer, but Pele is missing sadly), cheats, and uniforms (only for Germany, England, France, Spain, and maybe someone else... I forget). On generic games: These are really customizable. You pick your team, opponents team- there are 127 playable countries, uniforms, half lengths (the default setting is fine), cheats, ball, starting lineups, sttadium, and a bunch of other stuff which I usually leave alone. The loading screen pops up with a fact about one of the countries like the fact that Liechtenstein has no female prisoners (!!!) and the World Cup records for the country. The game starts and the countries national anthems play, but it's unrecognizable for whatever reason. I find that the game has the ability to be played like a real soccer game- if you want to lose. The real best way is to try to get on fast breaks so its 1v1 against the goalie, or run up the sidelines and cross it, and hope that one of your guys can head it in. The reason for this is that normal shots from far out don't work too well, because the goalies are too good. You can hit an absolute cannon to a corner and the goalie will dive and save it. However, if you get up close, the goalies are absolutely worthless and have a range of about 3... Yes 3, not 3 feet, but about 3 inches in the way they feel like flopping on the ground. But, for the most part it is fine, since in a real life situation, the player will almost always score in a 1v1. On Practice: This is pretty helpful, but not really fun. If you start a game, and find yourself getting the ball stolen from you a lot, or you can't score, just go into practice, make the other team play shorthanded and try to make some plays. On Global Challenges: These are historic scenarios from the World Cup or other cups/qualifiers. These range from absurdly easy to seemingly impossible. Be aware that you cannot change the difficulty. For instance, one scenario has you, New Zealand, attempting to score 5 goals in the final 30 minutes against Figi. This seems really hard, but it isn't, because Figi is made into trash in this scenario. You can run up with the ball and nobody will really try to stop you. Others like the infamous Australia-Solomon Islands are impossible. Solomon Islands is a terrible team, but they somehow have amazing skill in everything in this scenario. These scenarios are really fun overall though and give you experience with certain teams.On Penalty Shootout: Easily my favorite part. It's just a penalty shootout, like the name would suggest. You pick the teams, and the order of the kickers and it starts. It's very simple with a power meter on offense with a little bar moving. If you fill up the power meter past the bar, your kick will miss (unless your guy has good accuracy, then you can afford to go a little above the bar). On defence, you move the analog stick to where you want the goalie to dive. These are really fun! Try to get yours to last as long as possible. Once, I had it so long that my goalie had to take kicks twice.On World Cup: You can decide whether to use the actual world cup, or start your own. Pick a team(s) in a region and play in the qualifiers in the actual groups the world cup was in. I find that, generally, the same teams seem to qualify, so it's pretty accurate for the most part. Once you qualify (I always have), you will be sorted into groups and play in the World Cup! I have won with Spain in my first Cup, and I have just qualified with Cry-naldo and Portugal, and Israel in my second cup. Don't get frustrated with the global challenges, just have fun!