Information

FIFA box

Reviewed On: DS

Available On: DS

Players: 2

Rating: G

Genre: Sports


Developer: Exient

Distributor: EA BIG


Release: 28 February 2008


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In Short...

"Another painfully average DS sports game. Strictly for beginners."




















































FIFA Street 3 is, as the name suggests, the third in EA BIG’s series of arcade-style football games. It is a 3 on 3 (plus Goalie) game where there are no rules and games are won with tricks and fancy moves. Now, before we discuss anything about the game, the first thing I want to mention is the strange choices made in regards to the game’s cover athletes. For a game that’s about flair, skill, and outrageous tricks, why did they go with the tough, blue-collar defensive midfielder Gennaro Gattuso, the stupendously untalented Peter Crouch, and the guy who’s pretty much been in a form slump since the ‘06 World Cup, Ronaldinho? Admittedly, Ronaldinho is still one of the world’s best tricksters, but I’m baffled as to what Crouch and Gattuso have ever done that classifies as ‘street’ (except for ‘Peter Crouch is so bad, Liverpool and England should kick his arse out onto the street’). But in the end, it’s like EA BIG weren’t quite sure what sort of game they were trying to represent, and after playing the actual game, it’s like they didn’t even know what kind of game they were supposed to be making.

Let’s start from the beginning. You can play an exhibition match or the Street Challenge (more on that later), or you can play a multiplayer game. There is also a Kick-Ups minigame which will be discussed later. As far as the exhibition match goes, there are quite a large number of teams available from the start, consisting of international teams and themed teams (no official club teams). It seems like either the game has been localised or EA had some trouble getting some national licences, because, while we get teams such as Australia, New Zealand, and China, we miss out on some big-name teams such as Argentina and The Netherlands. However, all the other big teams- Brazil, England, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Germany, Czech Republic etc.- are there, so it’s not so bad.

The themed teams are interesting, as each one consists of a group of players based on certain attributes. There’s a stocky team, a short team, an all-strikers team, an all-defenders team, and so on. There are 24 themed teams along with the 18 national teams, but strangely enough, there is no ‘FIFA Street 3’ team where you get Gattuso, Ronaldinho and Crouch as your starting line-up. Or maybe it’s an unlockable bonus team that you get from passing the Street Challenge or something, but either way, it’s not in the initial selection.











Not pictured: Peter Crouch sucking.

Once you’ve picked your team and line-up, you’ll get to choose the rules. You can either play a timed match, where the most goals at the end wins, or you can have a goals match, where the first team to reach a specified score wins. You may also choose between button or stylus controls. And this is where things get complicated.

Button controls work really well, but forget about trying to pull off any tricks. The trick input is ridiculously unresponsive, and whenever you do nail a trick, it usually feels like pure luck. This turns the trick system into a fumble-a-thon that doesn’t convey the smooth trickery and jaw-dropping creativity that street football is based on. There’s also no freestyle element to tricks because they all require pre-determined button combos to perform, not like in the console versions where you can use the second control stick to manually direct the ball.

On the other hand, the stylus controls are absolutely beautiful for pulling off tricks (still pre-determined combos though), but now the fundamentals suffer. The touch screen controls are not very well thought out and you may find things getting mixed up (ie. switching players when you wanted to challenge for the ball, shooting when you didn’t want to, etc). There’s also a severe lack of precision- to pass to another player, you have to ‘look at the player’s placement on the top screen and then touch the Touch Screen in a similar location’ (actual quote from the instructions- no I’m not kidding). What the? Wouldn’t it have been easier to put the action on the bottom screen and touch the actual player you wanted to pass to? Or how about a Geometry Wars-style indicator on the touch screen that would allow us to pass in a direction relative to the player in possession? Hell, I would have even settled for a list of names down the side of the screen and you touch the name you want to pass to. But no, instead we get an empty touch screen and an instruction to guess the pass, and try as I might, I found myself passing to the wrong player many, many times. As if that wasn’t bad enough, aiming a challenge (slide the stylus in the direction you want to challenge) is a massive inconvenience, and the shooting command (slide the stylus towards goal) isn’t very user-friendly either.

Once you’ve gotten your head around that, also consider that the tricks aren’t actually that useful. Most of them either slow the player right down, leaving him prime for a challenge, or flick the ball away, where it can be picked up by another player. I often saw an opponent doing a trick as a prime opportunity for a turnover, which is probably not their intended effect. After all, the console versions provide tricks that make it more difficult to lose the ball! Also, the game does not contain any wall tricks (not even a token wall-run move), which doesn’t sound like much on paper, but in practice it really does give the feeling that you’re severely limited in terms of trick options. All of this means that you’re usually better off forgetting about tricks and just playing straight football. And here we find yet another problem.

FIFA Street 3 suffers from a similar problem to the console versions- it’s too easy to score goals. I first tried the tactic of juggling the ball a couple of times before shooting, and just like in the console versions, it results in a goal about 2 out of 3 times if done right. Then again, it’s not as easy to perform on the DS because the juggle function has changed, and you can no longer charge through defenders while flicking to ball to yourself. So then I tried crossing the ball to another player who would then shoot or head the ball, and discovered that this works a lot better on the DS and will net many goals. Eventually, I discovered that shooting from inside the penalty box was worthless, and taking shots outside the penalty box was an easy way to score. This meant that most games boiled down to stealing the ball, dribbling around some defenders, charging forward and blasting in goals from outside the box.



This would be pretty cool if the AI put up a challenge, but unfortunately it doesn’t. The AI seems obsessed with getting as close to goal as possible before shooting, which seldom works, as well as trying lots of tricks and generally not making things too difficult. Once you get used to playing the game you’ll be smashing the opposition without the need for any tricks. Just to test this theory out, I chose the worst team in the game (New Zealand) and took on the best team in the game (the Classic team featuring Gascoigne, Zico and Cantona), and it wasn’t long before I was thrashing them like a government mule. A thorough check of the options menu revealed that, sadly, there are no other difficulties, so if you find the game to be too easy, you can’t pump the AI up to Extra Hard or anything like that. I get the feeling this game would be heaps more fun in 2 player mode, but unfortunately there was no-one online when I tried having a Wi-Fi match so I wouldn’t know.

The Street Challenge mode is a bit more entertaining and challenging. It gives you a bunch of challenges with specific goals, and this provides some variety in the gameplay. In fact, there is a lot more variety here than in Exhibition mode, since you get games where the first to reach a certain number of trick points wins, or you have to win by a certain margin, or you have to score the most goals as well as having the most trick points, and so on. It’s a shame the Exhibition mode didn’t contain the options to create custom matches as varied as this. However, the aforementioned control issues prevent the Street Challenge from being as fun as it could have been. I ended up switching between stylus controls for trick challenges and button controls for scoring challenges, but if you can actually master the stylus controls, you may be able to have some real fun with this mode.

The Kick-Ups minigame is an entertaining diversion. It basically involves pressing indicators on the touch screen in time to a song, and the closer you match the song, the higher your score. It’s fun for a while, but when you consider that the DS already has an incredibly popular series of games that follow this format (Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan), it seems a bit pointless.

While the game suffers from some gameplay issues, it wins in other areas. The graphics are pretty decent, and while they may not be very detailed, the environments all look significantly different, the animations are really smooth, and the players can be distinguished by their physical attributes. The soundtrack is also pretty cool, containing 6 official EA Trax, and if you like catchy, repetitive dance-pop songs, you might fall in love with the soundtrack as I did. Seriously, after playing this game I had ‘Disco Punk Electro Funk’ by The Tigerpicks stuck in my head for days…

FIFA Street 3 is not the worst game I have ever played, but it is a large disappointment. The framework is there for an enjoyable game, but the package is just not polished enough and ends up being more frustrating than fun. A street game should be fast and fun, with spot-on controls, fancy tricks that are also practical, and arcade-style gameplay that also provides a fun challenge. This street game may look and sound like one, but with its lack of challenge, clumsy controls, laughably bad tricks, generally poor game design, and Peter Crouch on the cover, it ends up being rather low on street cred.

By Mr_M



The Verdict

 Graphics: B- Not spectacular, but they do the job. Environments are distinguishable and animations are very good.

Sound: B+ Sound effects are average, but the soundtrack is tops!

Gameplay: D+ Scoring heaps of goals can be fun in short bursts, but poor controls, dumb-as-rocks AI and a useless trick system brings the experience down. Might be better in 2 player mode.


Overall: D+

Another painfully average DS sports game. Strictly for beginners.











































































































































































































































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