FIFA Soccer 2004 Review

There is also a huge variety of stadiums and field types, and if you're on a muddy, wet field, you'll see your players clothes getting dirtied. The stadiums are always impressive, and each year new details are added, be it more flags with the team colors, or better looking architecture in the stadiums themselves.

Sound
Ah, the music, my favorite section. FIFA Soccer 2004 offers one of the most diverse and impressive soundtracks of any game in 2004. What started out in the late 1990s with Blur as an experiment has turned out to be a hugely attractive feature set for the FIFA series. The soundtrack offers more than 35 songs that appeal to a range of demographics. Kings of Leon's Red Morning Light and the Dandy Warhols' We Used to be Friends site side by side with the latest from Radiohead's Hail to the Thief album (with Myxomatosis). I never thought I'd hear Radiohead in a soccer game, but I'm even more blown away that the Stone Roses' Fools Gold is in here. Frickin' cool. And so is The Jam's Town Called Malice. Wow. The game lightens up with the likes of Caesars' Jerk It Out, and it's filled with cool Latino vibes to appeal to one of the series' most fervent demographics.

Using a different technique to capture sound in this year's version, EA drew in rabid soccer fans who knew their team's theme song perfectly. Using a small group of maybe four or five people, they duplicated these chants to make them sound as if hundreds of fans were singing them. You won't believe how many are in here. (All right, there are more than 300 new crowd chants.)

The announcers John Motson and Ally McCoist give the game a level of authenticity, and they're comments follow the line of play better than most games do. As with all commentary, they're not so good when it comes to quick play-by-plays and they do end up repeating themselves a few times in the game, but overall I have no major qualms with the commentary.

Technically, the Xbox version supports Dolby 5.1, while the Cube and PS2 versions support Dolby Pro Logic II. And for those folks with a USB headset and a PS2, you can jump online and chat away with your fellow soccer players.