FIFA Street 3

What it might take is just one look at the cover of FIFA Street 3 for you to either get excited or get completely turned off. Peter Crouch, the first of three men on the cover is tall, slim and already anticipating your long crosses to head some right home. Ronaldinho is fit (for a change) and actually looks good with his powers clearly being the attractive looking tricks and his dribbling skills. Finally we have a polar bear in blue. Or in other words the Italian gentleman Gattuso who is clearly bigger then his real self, but that’s for a good reason though considering the amount of power he will be bringing to the table in FIFA Street 3.

In FIFA Street 3, the focus is on experimenting with the different attributes for each set of players. Each player can either be a playmaker, enforcer, trickster or finisher with an icon on the top of the player indicating what exactly he does best.  The concept on paper sounds great, mixing the talents of the world’s current and past legendry footballers is promising. Sadly, however, the game does not deliver on the promise. The gameplay is weak, the characters attributes get boring quickly and the game offers very little when it comes to single player game modes. So why buy FIFA Street 3? Why even bother with reading the rest of this review? Simply because that even with all its defects and problems FIFA Street 3 is still a load of fun to play and enjoy. 

FIFA Street 3 is nothing like any other real football game on the market right now. The controls are a bit different and the goal or idea of winning a game is poles apart from what you might expect from a football game. At the end of the day in both FIFA 08 and FIFA Street 3, scoring more goals then your opponent is what wins you the game. The difference is that in FIFA 08, tactical planning is what gets you a win while in Street 3, being flashier and showboating is how the game is played. Depending on what option you choose before the game or what a specific challenge demands from you, winning a game can depend on many factors. For example, the first team to reach 3 or 5 goals or whoever scores more in a time limit wins the game. Other options include counting goals that are scored only from headers and volleys in a game.

 Every pass and dribbling trick you perform will add to your game breaker meter. Once the meter is full you will be able to trigger the game breaker, boosting your team’s stats along the way. This is probably the most welcome addition to EA’s Street games. Instead of having the game breaker subtract points from your opponent and awarding them to you, you actually have to earn the goals this time around. 

The offensive game in FIFA Street 3 is what this game is all about. It is flashy and fun and you will really enjoy passing the ball around while performing eye catching tricks. Taking away from all this gameplay excitement heaven is the defending part of the game. Once you lose the ball you will have to say good bye to easy flowing football and welcome the frustrating tag style football. Both tackling mechanism are as useless and soft as they look. The opponent will be dodging your tackling attempts left and right as if you are invisible at times. The result is completely different depending on who you are playing against. If it is the computer, the ball will most likely end up in the back of the net in a cheap lame looking goal. If you manage to find a friend to play this game with you however, the goal will be far more humiliating considering the amount of tricks your friend pulled off on his way to the goal.