With emphasis on the cinematic you are lead into the stadium with long sweeping shots of the crowd, the players running out and the booming operatic sounds of the Champions League anthems and shots of you (the manager) geeing the players up. Taking your team into action for proper is the best bit of the game, and EA present it very well indeed. So after a few hours of play our Liverpool team read like this: GK: Dudek, RB: Finnan, CB: Campbell, CB: Hyppia, LB: Risse, RM: Ronaldhino, CM: Gerrard, CM: Alonso, LM: Nedved, CF: van Nistelrooy, CF: Cisse. At various points you will have to clear out some of your less talented players (au revoir Vladimir Smicer and Igor Biscan) in return for some slightly better ones (bonjour Ronaldinho and Ruud van Nistelrooy).
Most of these entail winning games, but there are some trick cards hidden in the deck. The actual season itself is made out of 50 different tasks. Nice as it is, when you start hearing the same stupid comments for about the fifth time, teeth start to grind a little. "Oooh, that player had a cracking game, I can't quite remember his name but he played so well" muses a caller on the show, conveniently not having to name the player as part of his beautifully scripted banter. So instead of EA's normal selection of awesome muzak you now have to put up with two idiots making irrelevant comments about the game you just played: "So many goals there, it was almost a cricket score" announced one pundit after our 2-1 win over Basle. When browsing through the menus during the post and pre match periods, making changes to your squad and suchlike you are accompanied by 'EA Sports Talk Radio'. Emphasis in UEFA is certainly on all that is cinematic about football. With all that faff out the way, the season proper can start. After beating Newcastle on the last day of the season to get the vital three points needed to get into Champions League, along comes Roman Abramovic a new billionaire owner, insults everything that Liverpool FC stand for and promptly forces you to sell half your squad, replace it with overpaid foreigners and then play in friendlies against such footballing giants as Rangers, Aberdeen and some Norwegian team we dare not type. Once we had lowered our cynical eyebrows for long enough to get into the game we were pleasantly surprised as to what we found.įor our first season we chose to take control of Liverpool. In more than a nod, wink and nudge towards a certain Russian billionaire taking over a certain London based 'football club' you are set in the following scenario: in the Champions League, new billionaire owner and huge pressure to succeed or you will get the sack (ala Claudio Ranieri).
The main bulk of the game is set in The Season mode.
So, here we are at UEFA Champions League 2004/05 and we have to say this is probably the best ' FIFA' game so far. Once again, FIFA had stepped up a gear, but sloppy player AI and predictable computer teams meant for frustrating times. FIFA 2005 was better still, with the much lauded 'great first touch' feature coming into play.
FIFA 2004 didn't do too badly, but after a few weeks of play any idiot could score ten goals against any opposition on World Class mode, somewhat ruining the challenge of the whole occasion.