£An answer didn't stay away long. As always the menus are nicely done, it only looks like some options have been forgotten compared to the previous games. Maybe we need to see this title as a Gran Turismo 4 Prologue, a teaser to the real thing that FIFA 07 has to become. Sadly enough we still have to wait quite some time for that and the 06 version costs enough for us to expect a filled disc!

The Road to the World Cup is literally what you get. Clubteams are nowhere to be found and on top of that you only get 72 teams of the +/- 200 that started the qualifiers. That you won't miss a large part of the small countries is a fact, but it does mean you can only do the qualifiers with the European poules. And once you've done those, you can put your shoes in the closet: the world cup itself isn't present in the game. Some additional friendly games and some fictive tournaments can't replace this lacking.

Next to this main chunk you can play some seperate games and adjustable tournaments and competitions, or even test your chances against human opponents through the online part. Technically there's nothing wrong (little lag, early quitting gets penalised) and the Live leaderboards give you some info on your achievements as well as list you alongside your friends and top player. Still, this doesn't sound like a loot of possibilities.

Graphically the game disappoints less, although again you can't speak of a major leap forward. The realistic animations on the field are an added value though. You immediately recognise the stars of the green by the way they take a ball, run or kick towards the goal. Also here, just like in NBA Live 06, the muscles are almost individually recognisable, you can almost call the faces fotorealistic, and shirts and pants finally move along. And yes, sweat is present and luckily the makers succeeded in getting rid of the plastic look... mostly. In HD the images, animations, movies and models have clearly gone to the next level, if it weren't for one major disturbing element: there's too many effects that make it look like a photoshop tutorial. The reason for this is unknown to me, but it does result in a lot of ghosting, strange borders and unnecessary pixels.

The most important thing however, which any Pro Evolution Soccer fan will tell you, is the gameplay. Although I constantly try to stay objective on this debat between EA and Konami, the first constantly seems to miss the ball. The regular FIFA 06 was a huge step forward and brought the franchise to the level of PES5, but it looks like a completely different team has created the Xbox360 version. You never get the feeling the game reacts well to your input, passes are sturdy and on top of that, your friends don't really seem to want to play soccer along with you.

Surprising, seen the history of FIFA, is that I found the game a lot more difficult than PES. First first games were pathetic and I hardly got a chance to shoot at the goal. Luckily, after some practice, things improve, but it never feels real. Calling this FIFA 05 arcade is not possible, but you can't really call it realistic either. The conclusion is simple: this is a thin game when it comes to gameplay, especially with the aforementioned competitor which doesn't grow more and more popular each year without reason.

A word on the commentary can't be left out and there's little bad to say about it. Nice are the little things that sometimes are told, but some more wouldn't have hurt as at the moment the same information gets repeated a bit too fast.