2006 FIFA World Cup Germany Review (DS) By Wriggy

Review

7 / 10
24 Jun 2006 at 22:24

Review by: Wriggy

The World Cup has kicked off with 32 teams fighting it out for 2 places to fight for the best trophy in the world. Only the best will take home the World Cup trophy but when people aren’t watching the World Cup, they are playing EA’s FIFA World Cup 2006: Germany game on all the consoles but my brother got the DS version so I thought I’d have a go.

You can play as any of the teams in the World Cup but the only thing is that some teams are missing players (no Theo Walcott). Maybe EA could have waited a little longer to find out the teams before releasing the game as for real football fans, even if you don’t win the World Cup in real life, you can still win it on the game with the same players.

If you don’t want to play matches, you can do challenges. These include Free Kicks, Penalties and more. For every time you try you get a score which gets put on the Leader board if it’s high enough. This makes the game challenging and makes you determined to try your hardest and to win. If you’re not the type for actual game challenges then there’s a trivia game. The trivia is based around the World Cup and requires a bit of knowledge. I like the idea but it can be quite boring so maybe a bit more is needed.

I like how the radar is on the touch screen as it is useful to have a quick look down onto a bigger radar then having a long look down at a tiny radar. There is also a formation change and team options selection on the touch screen to use instead of pressing start and then selecting your option.

Freekicks on the game are quite hard as you don’t know what part of the ball you’re hitting it so you could be hitting it at the bottom and it going really high or at the side and going too far to the right or left so it could be improved but I like the bar at the bottom as it is clear.

The game looks much better than the previous game for the DS (FIFA Street 2) which is good because FIFA Street 2’s graphics were a bit of a disappointment. The crowd actually look real (which is strange for a FIFA game).

The game has an awful amount of flickers which is really off putting and sometimes the game feels really slow.

Overall for FIFA World Cup 2006: Germany on the Nintendo Dual Screen:

Graphics: 7 – Needs improving as there are no faces and they sometimes look like Gameboy Advance graphics.
Gameplay: 6 – Lots of flickering in the game and animation is poor.
Lifespan: 8 – Lots of challenges and things to be doing but once you’re bored of it you’ll probably get rid of it.
Online/Multiplayer: 5– No WiFi but it’s annoying that to play someone you both have to own the game.

Overall: 7 – It’s a good game but you won’t be playing it very long as when the World Cup finishes and the new season begins, you won’t care about International teams until Euro 2008 though it’s worth checking out if you’re a football fan.

This game is also available for XBOX, PlayStation 2, XBOX 360, Gamecube and PC which it does run better on so I would recommend getting the game for one of those consoles as the graphics are better and there aren’t many/as many flickers. You can also take it online on the XBOX, PlayStation 2, XBOX 360 and PC versions to get more out of your game.