FIFA Street 3

March 24,2008 - FIFA Street 3 oozes style. Jazzy tunes pipe through the speakers during an intense game, a slick art style captures the essence of the action, and varied locales insure an interesting backdrop to each match. But it’s not all gift wrapping, with gameplay that is both fun and challenging; a nice blend of arcade and simulation that doesn’t gift wrap every match or dumb it down like EA Sports Big’s NFL Tour. Its sole mistake is a lack of abundant content and value that would make it an easy “Buy” recommendation, and instead relegates it to a fun weekend rental.

FIFA Street pits two teams of five against one another on various locations around the globe ranging from beachside playgrounds, to oil rigs and a Tokyo rooftop. The teams are grouped by similar skills and talents. So there will be a team featuring primarily shooters, and another composed primarily of defenders, and other similar groupings. It actually works well since you can see the how the different play styles really change the way you play the game.

While the game is sadly short on single-player game modes, the lone mode called the FIFA Street Challenge adds a level of variety and challenge to the game that really defines its experience. Most will see the lack of any kind of career mode rather disheartening, and while it does subtract from the overall value of FIFA Street 3 as a purchase, there’s no denying that the Street Challenge is a very strong mode.

As you progress through the FIFA Street Challenge, you’ll have to complete a variety of different objectives in order to win the match. While they are all derivative of the same format – score more goals within this time limit, score this many goals only by volleys, headers, or gamebreakers, etc – it is really the different teams you face that makes things interesting. Some are faster than you, other are slower but stronger and aren’t as susceptible to being beating on trick moves between their legs, and others will flat out test your skill in every facet of the game.

Once you reach the final challenger in the Street Challenge, you will know that your skills were put to the test, and that level of difficulty adds a sense of accomplishment to your victory. While the Street Challenge is fairly easy just starting out, it becomes pretty brutal by the end is well worth the effort.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot to the actual gameplay. In a sense, there’s a bit of false advertising with FIFA Street 3. If you’re expecting a lot of cool and crazy tricks, then stop because there aren’t that many. In reality there are only a handful of tricks, and by the time you take on the last challenger they’re almost completely negated by your opponent’s ability to stop almost every trick midway through. And when we say stop almost every trick, we mean they will stop just about everything to the point of intense frustration.

And defense is just as important in FIFA Street 3 as offense is, if not more. In both the Street Challenge and online multiplayer you will face opponents with really good offenses, and your victory is far more dependent on your ability to steal the ball from them mid-trick than it is to set up good scoring opportunities.

It’s in the multiplayer that FIFA Street 3 gains its worth. If you’re really into soccer and you plan on playing either with friends locally or online, then go ahead and purchase the game. Both versions of the game can run with 8 players online, while locally a total of 4 can play at once on the 360 and the extremely odd 7 players on the PS3. There’s a World Challenge mode where the 18 national teams in the game are used to create a tournament, and the real killer is Playground Picks where two captains choose 5 players each from a national team to form their respective teams. Playground Picks almost always results in interesting matchups with different kinds of players on each team, and is a sheer blast to play.

While slim on modes, the sum of FIFA Street 3’s individual parts makes it recommendable to anyone, including those who aren’t too hot for soccer. It’s not particularly great and it’s only a rental if you only really plan to go solo, but it’s certainly not bad by any means. If you’ve been teetering on whether to buy it or not, then give it a spin and you might have a good time if only for a weekend

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