FIFA Street Review [XBox 360]
No it isn't as deep a game as FIFA 12, but EA Sports' reboot of the small team, big flair sibling Street franchise packs in a lot more fun.
rating:4
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In the grand tradition of unnecessary disclaimers, this review starts with the assertion that the "Street" of the title doesn't really refer to where the games are played: yes the stadia of world football are replaced with parks, indoor arenas and car parks, but Street is about an ethos, an underground cool that supposedly takes away the ostentation and superfluous ceremony of big stadium football and reclaims. Who it reclaims it for exactly is up for debate: there's obviously an attempt to recapture the after-school, play-til-your-Mam-shouts spirit of backyard football, thanks to the Futsal-like game set-up (small teams, with the impetus on individual flair), but it's still packed with superstars, and there is a typical slickness that sort of undermines the faux-grittiness. This is EA Sports after all. It would perhaps have been a more shrewd move for EA Sports to have named this FIFA Futsal, given the spirit that the game is presented in - but then this latest addition to the behemoth sports title publisher is a reboot, dragging an earlier version of the brand into the modern market where it will hopefully enjoy better success than it did between 2005 and 2008. And the Futsal idea would probably have alienated too many of the casual fans who will have been sucked in by the strong advertising campaign that has backed the release, and really, the five-a-side here isn't really Futsal per se. Saying that, the Futsal brand of football is available as a playable mode, along with conventional five-a-side (both have five players per team), Panna Rules (two-a-side, with mini-goals like those exceptional Nike adverts with Eric Cantona) and Last Man Standing which is similar, but with larger teams. There is more than enough variation to make Street an entertaining endeavour, though there is one over-riding theme that runs through all game modes - the fore-fronting of skills and flair.
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Make no mistake, I love the game, and precisely because of that greater fun element. There is something very enjoyable about making a fool out of an opponent with some ridiculous skill or other, and it's not something that can come this thick and fast in the full FIFA 12 game. Online games in 12 between veterans invariably end as wars of attrition, which is of course still entertaining in its place, but I'm far less likely to play multiple games back-to-back with FIFA 12 than I am to spend a lot of time immersed in a more varied gaming experience led by narrative for the simple reason of diversity in experience. For that reason, I prefer to think of FIFA Street as a companion to FIFA 12: a pleasant diversion from the monotony of match-play that offers something completely different, but which crucially has my interest in fun as a chief concern. That is not to dismiss the game as a superficial one, because this is certainly the finest FIFA Street game yet released, and there is a lot to be said for the gameplay - and besides, the idea that fun has to mean superficial is one of those critic-led fallacies that simply infuriates.
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