You can spend more time going one-on-one than developing plays and passing strategies.įeatures and frills have always been among the most impressive in sports gaming, so this minor additions doesn’t matter much. So the temptation to try highlight runs is always there, especially when you’re playing with a national team with highly skilled players. A guy like Michael Owen can work wonders. Pulling off acrobatic stunts isn’t a sure thing, but they succeed pretty often with skilled players. EA Sports has taken the great idea behind First Touch too far, making play more arcade-like. Finesse players now have the ability to flip balls over their heads and spin defenders like tops. As a result, games flow better and way-cool acrobatics are opened up. This eliminates past passing awkwardness, in that you no longer have to stop and start if you take a pass facing the wrong direction. If the move is successful, you’re off to the races. Just push the stick in the direction that you want to dribble. While the stick does control the usual arcade-style deke moves, it also lets you direct a passed ball before taking possession of it. It isn’t as gimmicky as its siblings, however, as it makes a real improvement to a core part of the game. At first, it seems similar to the right-analog-stick control schemes that have been popping up of late in FIFA’s sister EA Sports series. This strategy is even recognized by the computer, as it rotates the ball between its players constantly.įirst Touch Control livens things up a bit. Hold the ball longer than three seconds and defenders will have you run down or hemmed in, so you’ve got to constantly push forward and send teammates on runs.
If you want to find the back of the net when playing on the challenging difficulty settings (Pro and above), pinball passing is the only way to go. Take even a few seconds to plan a run, or even briefly consider your chances on getting a searching pass between two defenders, and you’ll usually be stripped of the ball. A bigger problem is that some of the old issues weren’t fixed from the previous version, meaning that those pesky annoyances are back as well. So it goes without saying that if you’re happy with FIFA 2004, there is no reason to upgrade. While there’s nothing unforgivably wrong with FIFA 2005, this edition edition has so few new features that the publisher might as well have just shipped the same package as FIFA 2004.