 Overview
Are you ready for some futbol? When I first received this
game I was not looking forward to reviewing it, let alone playing it. I have never watched
nor played soccer in my life, so it sat on my shelf for a couple of days. My husband, who
also hates soccer, finally volunteered to try it out one Saturday morning. After about an
hour he came out of the den and said he had to go to the store. When he got back he showed
me what he had purchased: a 3Dfx board. After 10 minutes of installing the board he was
back at it. Three hours later, he said "You gotta try this out!" So I did. What
I found was an incredibly fun, addictive, easy-to-use game that we now fight over when
it's time to decide who gets to play next. No wonder our readers selected FIFA '98
as the sports game of the year, even though it had only been out a couple of weeks!
The basic idea is, you pick a team and try to take it to the
World Cup finals where you will be tested by some of the greatest teams in the world.
Sounds easy, right? Wrong. There are so many teams and so many variables that picking a
team is just the beginning of what will be a very nerve-wracking experience, but I mean
that in a good way.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
To be honest with you, when I buy games, I usually look at the
maker first. Have they disappointed me in the past? EA has continued to impress me by
giving me things that no one else has, and at a high level of quality, so I knew going in
that FIFA '98 at least had decent odds of being a good game.
Gameplay is very similar to the actual game of soccer (or
futbol), in which you must move your attackers downfield while being careful not to leave
your goalie alone. I used a Force Feedback joystick at first, but it was so distracting
that I pulled out my old reliable gamepad and went at it with that. It quickly became
apparent that this game, more than any other I have played recently, is like two or three
games in one. It is of course soccer, but it is also like chess. You have to have a
strategy both before and during each game, and that is what separates this game from the
other sports games available.
Also, you can customize each player by taking
points from some attributes and transferring them to others. For instance, I took a
defenseman and gave him better ball handling, while subtracting from his scoring ability.
What I got was a much improved defenseman who was very hard to take the ball away
from. You can also customize players' faces, uniforms, and hair. While those things are
not really relevant to gameplay, the option to do so made me feel like I made my team,
giving it a more personal feel.
If you don't want to take the road to the World Cup, you can also
play league play for more of a regular season, or you can go on the Internet or a LAN and
play against your friends. On a LAN, you can actually have full teams of up to 20 players
being controlled by human opponents, and by modem you can have up to 8 in the game at
once. It's a much expanded multiplayer format from most of the current sports games, and a
welcome one as more and more people have Internet access.
 As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of teams to choose from:
172 from six different zones in all. And unlike some games where everyone plays similarly
and just has different uniform colors, there are detailed stats for over 4,500 players,
all with motion-captured moves and many with individual signature moves!
Graphics
What amazed me the most about the graphics in FIFA '98
was the field. EA has spent a lot of time on the players and how they move, but has also
spent time on the stadiums and fields. For instance: along the front of the goalkeepers'
lines there were wear and tear marks as if there were really people playing the game. I
hate it when a field in a game, whether it be football, baseball or soccer, looks like a
flat, unchanging shade of green. That was just one example of the graphic detail which EA
has incorporated into the mix.
Because I realize that most people do not have the system that I
have, I used my back-up system on one test and my high-end gaming system on the other. I
recently acquired a Pentium 133 in an auction, so I tried it out with this game.
Surprisingly, it wasnt bad, even given the graphical demands of FIFA. It was, of
course, slower than my "monster" system, but it didn't suffer as much as I
thought it would. The graphics were still smooth, and there were no choppy renderings.
On my gaming system, a Pentium II-266 with a Viper 330 in an AGP
slot and a Monster 3D card, I found one of the most compelling reasons to buy a 3Dfx card:
everything from the players, to the stadiums, to the smallest details all seemed to be
even smoother than without 3Dfx, which to me would have seemed impossible. But don't
worry; if you dont have 3Dfx, the game is still the best graphically rendered sports game
out there.
Before I forget, one of the other things that impressed me was
the player movement. Gone are the times when the players you weren't controlling stood
still or just sort of jittered around. Now you have guys running to help you when there
are two defenders on you and others setting themselves up in front of the goal waiting for
a header! Be careful, though; when you are controlling the ball, only one tap is necessary
to pass—more than one tap could make the next player pass it where you don't want it
to go. On my gamepad the controls were as follows: thumb pad for movement of the player, A
button for high passes, B for passes to yourself, C for low passes, and D for taking a
shot at the goal.
Audio
There is no music during gameplay. Instead, you have a NEW 40,000
word play-by-play color commentary script. If you play sports games, you know that 40,000
words is not a lot and that the commentary can get annoying. So EA includes volume
controls on every aspect of the game, from commentary to in-game sounds (bodies crunching
up against one another). I found on both systems that the sound quality was equal, and the
standard up-tempo EA soundtrack in the menus and elsewhere gives a nice, fast-paced feel
to the game.
 System Requirements
Windows 95, 100mhz Pentium class or compatible (Cyrix, AMD), 20
MB minimum hard drive space, DirectX 5.0, 16 MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, Hi-color capable 1
MB PCI video card with Direct Draw 5.0, sound card with DirectX sound driver, keyboard;
mouse and standard joysticks or gamepads supported by Windows 95.
As with any of the new games, the more stuff you have in your
computer the better the game will run; but as I said earlier, it doesn't make much
difference with this game. It looks and plays great either way.
Bottom Line
As a hard-core gamer, I do not take my approval or disapproval of
games lightly. My family and friends rely on me to give them an honest and unbiased
opinion of the games I play. So the bottom line is: if you love the game of soccer,
you will love this game. And if you don't like soccer, or even hate it as I did,
chances are that you too can be converted, as I was. I give my word that this game is not
only fun, but addictive. FIFA '98 rates a 96 overall -- simply the best
soccer and sports title on the market. Well, gotta get going now, I have a game against
Argentina to prepare for ...
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