EA has released new screenshots of FIFA Street 3 that is being developed for the DS.

The game is scheduled for North American release early next year on February 19 and will also be available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Hit the jump to view more images.

Electronic Arts has released a new set of screenshots today of FIFA 07. Gaming Horizon will have more on this title as it becomes available.

]]> Fri, 08 Sep 2006 11:11:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/ea_announces_fifa_cover_athletes http://www.gamebump.com/go/ea_announces_fifa_cover_athletes http://www.gamebump.com/go/ea_announces_fifa_cover_athletes# Electronic Arts has announced the upcoming cover athletes for FIFA World Cup 2006.

The company has announced that 10 different players will grace the cover of the game depending on where you live. Zhi Zhen, China, Frank Lampard, England, Lukas Podolski, Germany, Alessandro Del Piero, Italy, Jamie Lozano, USA, Canada and Mexico, Simao, Portugal, Arjen Robben, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg, Ricardo Cabanas, Switzerland, Xavi, Spain and Claudio Reyna, USA, Mexico and Canada.

"We are thrilled to have the world’s top athletes representing 2006 FIFA World Cup in each of these countries,” Clive Downie, vice president of marketing at Electronic Arts said. 

“This is quite an honor to be the new face of FIFA Street 2,” Ronaldo said. “The game mirrors the same ideals and philosophies that I use in my approach to everyday football. I played on the street growing up where I had many one-on-one battles, so it’s exciting to be a part of the EA SPORTS family and contribute to a style of football I’ve been playing all my life.”

FIFA Street 2 is rated “E” (Everyone) by the ESRB with a MSRP of $29.99. ]]> Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:30:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_fifa_06_road_to_fifa_world_cup_360 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_fifa_06_road_to_fifa_world_cup_360 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_fifa_06_road_to_fifa_world_cup_360# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Aaron Thomas.

If you’ve been following the Xbox 360 launch titles from EA Sports at all, you’ve probably gotten used to hearing the same criticism over and over - “It looks great, shows what next-gen sports game are all about, but it’s missing tons of features”. FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup is the exception to the rule, but not in a good way. It looks pretty bad, doesn’t do a single thing new, and not only is it missing tons of features, it’s missing tons of teams as well.

Not content to release only one FIFA game a year, EA uses the looming World Cup to milk the FIFA license for another title every four years. Here you’ll take one of 75 teams through the process of qualifying for the World Cup, playing a few tournaments and friendlies on the side. When you’re done qualifying with one team, the only thing left to do is qualify with another. If it sounds underwhelming, that’s because it is.

At first glance, World Cup is a nice looking game. The stadiums feature a lot of detail, the graphics are colorful, and the pitch looks nice. Player uniforms are accurate and flow in a realistic fashion as the players run. One you really spend some time with the game, however, you’ll start to notice that the game actually looks quite poor.

The commentary is as usual done by Andy Gray and Martin Tyler. The duo is generally on point with their comments, though there doesn’t appear to have been anything new added between the standard version of FIFA 06 on the Xbox and the World Cup version on the 360. The crowds are lively and cheer on their teams with all their hearts, singing like there’s no tomorrow.

Wow... where to start? One of the game’s biggest problems is that it only has 75 teams, while the Xbox version of FIFA 06 (not the World Cup version) had about 500, and while 75 teams might seem like a lot, it’s missing well over 100 International teams, so you can only qualify for the Cup as a European team in the official sense. You can make a makeshift qualifying pool with other teams from around the world, but seriously, you shouldn’t have to. Oh yeah, if you were hoping to take your team all the way to the championship; you can’t. You get your team to the big dance and then it’s game over.

There’s no FIFA Lounge mode, you can’t create players, and nor can you transfer them.

Even the gameplay, which is usually the franchise’s strength, is not up to its usual standards. Goals are far too difficult to come by, and it’s not because the computer plays any smarter; it just sends four or five guys at the ball every time you touch it in the attacking third. Ball fakes aren’t very useful, shots are woefully inaccurate, and it’s tough to break an animation once it has started. Another notable flaw includes the computer not recognizing goals being scored, even though the ball is well across the goal line. There was such a lack of attention paid to detail in this game that yellow cards aren’t even yellow – they’re red.

World Cup does a few nice things from a visual standpoint, but for the most part it’s quite underwhelming. The players, especially the Caucasian ones, all look like they’ve got the flu and decided to combat the illness by getting high right before the match. They look pale, nauseous, and they’re covered in sweat. An odd glow also surrounds them, which makes their appearance look even more plastic-like and unrealistic. There aren’t a whole lot of interesting animations, outside of some nice looking ball fakes. There’s very little emotion shown by the players, the goal celebrations are weak, and the crowd is hardly ever shown. It seems that the flag waving, flare burning fans from previous games were smart enough to avoid this one.

The real killer, however, is the game’s pathetic framerate. Normally a lousy framerate in instant replays isn’t a deal breaker, but when they’re this choppy, you can’t look past it. The poor framerate carries over into the actual match play from time to time, though it was hard to pinpoint what caused it. Some matches were fine, while others were choppy the whole way through.

The online mode is as bare-bones as the rest of the game, and it doesn’t even work very well to boot. There’s tons of lag, which makes the game’s heinous framerate even worse.

Unless you’ve got an urgent need to launder $60, there’s not a single reason to go out and buy FIFA 06 for the Xbox 360. Go out and by the far superior (and cheaper) FIFA 06 for the PS2 or Xbox – both versions are excellent. Perhaps if EA had bothered to get all of the International teams, rather than a measly 75, they might be able to get away with this specialized game. Because they didn’t do that, your $60 will buy you a bare-bones title with a terrible framerate, poor online play, and sub-par gameplay.

If you’re just a casual soccer fan, it’s fun for a bit, especially if you play against friends.

The stadiums are nice looking. The framerate is just awful. Player models aren’t great.

The commentary is okay for now, but it had better be re-done by next year. Crowd noise is good.

There’s just too much broken about the game for it to be much fun.

Haha. No, there’s not much here to warrant a replay.

]]> Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:55:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/ea_reveals_xbox_360_launch_lineup http://www.gamebump.com/go/ea_reveals_xbox_360_launch_lineup http://www.gamebump.com/go/ea_reveals_xbox_360_launch_lineup#

“As launch titles, our four EA SPORTS titles for the Xbox 360 will give consumers a next generation sports experience from the time they take the shrink-wrap off the games and the console out of the box,” said John Schappert, Group Vice President and General Manager EA Studios. “This first round of games is what the hardcore videogame consumer wants, and we’re delivering that with these EA SPORTS launch titles.“

EA’s four EA SPORTS launch titles for Xbox 360 are:

• FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup
• Madden NFL 06
• NBA LIVE 06
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06

The launch of the Xbox 360 looms near and you can count on EA’s major sports franchises to make the leap including their latest entry in FIFA soccer series - FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup.

The biggest and most obvious difference between this one and the current versions of FIFA 06 is graphical. A lot of the screenshots from 360 launch titles aren’t overly impressive, instead looking more like really good looking Xbox games. FIFA 06, however, bucks that trend and shows off some very impressive character models. Now, when actually playing on the pitch, they aren’t photo-realistic, but they are definitely more detailed than in any other soccer game to date. What this does is makes the players actually recognizable to gamers – Beckham looks like Beckham, Henry looks like Henry, etc.

The added graphical power also allows the development team to add lots of subtle details to the players as well. They’ll move with more life-like animations, show tons of expressions thanks to new facial animations – the players will actually show personality by showing elation when hitting a game-winning shot in stoppage time or despair after committing a bad foul at a critical time.

Another difference between the 360 and current versions is that the 360’s FIFA will concentrate on the qualifying rounds leading up to next year’s World Cup tourney. This, of course, means that there will be no focus at all on club teams which may alienate quite a few fans. This probably won’t have fans in the states crying foul, but I’m sure it will anger more than a handful of fans across the pond.

Beyond those two major differences, the game looks to play the exact same way. That’s not a fault, however, as the FIFA series has played quite a good game of football, only rivaled by Konami’s excellent Winning Eleven line.

While controlling the player will feel a bit different due to the revamped physics engine, the overall gameplay should be very familiar to vets. The right control stick can be used to perform all sorts of moves and jukes, similar to NBA Live’s trick stick except all the tricks here involve dribbling with the feet and not with the hands. Also, as with Live, the D-pad can be used to call pre-set plays. For example, hitting left may set up a play involving a cross and then an attempted header.

Lastly, thanks to the continued support of Xbox Live on the 360, you’ll be able to partake in peer-to-peer matches easily. If you anticipate that this title will sell considerably well in Europe, you should find plenty of other soccer fans to play with and/or against.

On the surface, FIFA 06: Road to the World Cup for the Xbox 360 doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from the current FIFA 06 other than the graphical facelift and the concentration on World Cup qualifying. That, in a sense, is true as FIFA 06 won’t be one of those killer apps that will have you pining for an Xbox 360. With that said, however, if you happen to pick up a 360, have some extra cash to spend, and are a soccer fan or a fan of sports in general, then you may want to consider picking this up. ]]> Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:14:40 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_fifa_soccer_psp1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_fifa_soccer_psp1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_fifa_soccer_psp1# This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

The world’s most popular sport will make its way to the PSP come launch time. So, how will the miniaturized incarnation of EA’s acclaimed soccer series fare on Sony’s new portable? Well, if you judge on screenshots alone, then I would have to say it’ll make the transition just fine. Despite being so much smaller and having less power than the big brother consoles, this game is pushing near-console quality graphics, which is all the more impressive for a launch title. Just imagine what EA can do with this experience under their belt.

Graphics, however, are not the only thing that make or break games. Luckily for you, the gameplay and variety of options haven’t been short-changed for the aesthetics. FIFA Soccer for the PSP still offers the same game modes the console versions do – Quick Play, Season, Tournament, and Challenge. The first three modes are self-explanatory, and in Challenge, you are given a game situation that needs to be overcome, such as coming back from two goals with less than ten minutes remaining. Sports game veterans should be familiar with these. EA, however, takes advantage of the license by adding a new mode called Mid-Season Scenario Mode, and it’s exactly as it sounds. By selecting this mode, you’ll be thrown into the middle of the 2004/05 season with real-time team standings. So, depending on which team you choose, you’ll either have to climb your way up the standings or hold off the pack nipping at your heels. EA makes further use of the license by also including some real-life cup tournaments like the MLS Open or the English League Cup.

The "first touch controls" EA introduced in the console versions make an appearance in the PSP version as well, but it’s been altered a tad because of the PSP’s lack of a right analog. Instead, the D-Pad is used to activate the "first touch" tricks. It may feel awkward having no control over your player while doing so, but it can’t be helped control-wise, at least not yet.

FIFA will also take advantage of the PSP’s wireless capabilities by allowing players to play others head-to-head. What makes the deal even sweeter is that you can play against other players in any game mode.

One little PSP-only extra is what they’ve dubbed "EA Pocket Trax". This new feature allows gamers to listen and watch music content via a built-in player.

If sales of FIFA on the consoles are any indication, then the PSP version of FIFA Soccer should be just as successful. It offers a multitude of game modes, wireless multiplayer that lets you play in any of the game modes, and all the other features of the console versions all in the palm of your hand. If you’re a soccer nut, or even a sports fan in general, and you plan on picking up a PSP later this month, then you may want to consider giving this game a purchase.]]> Fri, 18 Mar 2005 13:50:00 -0600