FIFA Football 2003 (GameCube) Review

When you first put the disk into your purple box of wonder you are greeted by a lovely little movie clip featuring some of the worlds top players kicking the ball around in amazing ways, while listening to some of last years top rock songs. Once this is over a futuristic menu loads and you have the option to start a club championship friendly, a club championship season, open the options menu, access some extras EA have stuck into the game (which are just advertisements for other games) or load a previously saved game.

If you want to get stuck straight into the game you should choose to start a club championship friendly. You will then be asked to select your difficulty level, both teams, which stadium you wish to play in and how many players you will have playing that particular game.

While it may look pretty, this is not the only good thing this game hosts. It has a completely reworked engine and much better player AI than any of the previous titles so you can no longer meander across the whole field, casually avoid the defenders and kick a goal.

But FIFA's strongest appeal is the multiplayer mode. With four humans playing on the same team this game can get extremely frantic with everyone fighting to get their own share of the ball. After all most FIFA games' stronghold is the multiplayer and this game is no exception.

One of FIFA's only cons is the fact that the tactical options are far less in depth than the previous titles. That is no huge downfall though as many gamers found it to hard to contemplate anyway. That's not to say that they are all gone though. There are still many things to keep a hardcore soccer player fiddling with.

Something that quite bothers me in FIFA is the fact that the players look slightly detached from the field when they run. It can be disorientating when trying to attack someone from behind and not knowing exactly when to do that all important slide tackle.

Another problem with FIFA is the goalie. Oh its horrible to see the other team dribbling right up to him and kicking a goal without him even moving. EA sports could have at least made an attempt to make the goalies smarter than your average mouse. But despite all these little quables. Fifa is a fantastic game, and a real multiplayer gem.