Soccer fans rejoice! The PSP has gotten its second soccer game since its release, so you folks will be bursting at the seams with pleasure like a jelly-filled donut topped with sour cream and licorice-like sprinkles. Sports games are very popular on any console, so EA Sports has decided to dip their money vacuum into the PSP market with the release of FIFA Soccer. This title is remarkably similar to other PS2 soccer games, with stupendous graphics, tubular tunes, and really realistic real-like realism and realness.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in FIFA Soccer are as amazing as a free helicopter ride with Batman and that weird sound-making guy from Police Academy. All of the players, the teams, and the arenas are carbon copies of real-life people and places, and are displayed with painfully accurate details. The weather can be sunny, rainy, or anything in between, but rainy game days are the coolest to play in.

When you start a match, you get an awesome-looking flyby of the arena you’ll be playing in. When you choose to start the game, you switch to a top-down view, where you can see a good portion of the field and many players all at once. This view is decent-looking, the players are a little small and it’s hard to make out certain details, but it’s more for playing and it’s necessary to give yourself enough seeing room to move your players about and pass the ball. However, if this view style isn’t your cup of tea, you can open the Pause menu and manually change the camera type. This is a far out feature, for it allows you to have control of what you’re looking at during play. You can have your camera in its default position at a top-down, tilted view, or you can make it slide along the sidelines, or even follow the ball up-close. Mix in a few other camera modes, and the ability to adjust camera height and zoom, and you’ve got a recipe for phenomenal visual control.

In between play periods, like when the ball goes out, you score a goal, or someone fouls, you usually get to see some close-up action of the players talking amongst themselves or congratulating one another. These scenes give great attention to detail, and all the players’ faces are as accurate as if you were looking at them in real life. Also, whenever you score a goal, you get nifty slow-motion replays from many angles where you can watch the ball slowly moving towards the goal, the goalie slowly trying to block the ball but ultimately failing, and your shooter cheering with uninhibited joy like he just got a gold star from Ms. Johnson for properly spelling “cat” for the first time.

FIFA Soccer also has a splendidly delicious soundtrack. There are about 37 songs that you get to listen to while browsing through the menus and configuring your profile or teams. The types of music range from mellow rock to electronic to upbeat Spanish groove tunes, with artists like Franz Ferdinand, Flogging Molly, Dogs Die in Hot Cars and Elkland. There is a menu where you can listen to each song individually, and the game provides a soccer-oriented visualization when you do! The game even has official music videos for 2 songs that you can watch while you listen.

While playing the game, instead of listening to music, you get to hear the announcer for the game speak. The soothing English voice provides commentary on a whim and calls out your passes and shots right as you make them, and it really makes you feel as if you were watching a real soccer game on television.

Controls

The controls in FIFA Soccer are easy to learn and straightforward in their use. Typically one button does one action, so you don’t have to worry about combinations of buttons. However, the buttons do different things depending on whether you’re on offense or on defense. It can take a bit of time to learn what button does what and when, but on the loading screens you can see a refresher of the controls. Once you have a good idea of the shoot and pass buttons, it isn’t too hard to play offense. Defense is a little tougher. You have a normal tackle to steal the ball, and a slide tackle. While the slide tackle is a favorite of many soccer players, you must be very careful when you choose to use it in FIFA Soccer, for it can easily land your player a foul from the referees. However, some players may decide that the foul is worth the sweet, sweet satisfaction of making your opponent fall flat on his face.