Reviewed: 2010 Fifa World Cup: South Africa (PS3, 360)
With one of the biggest sporting events taking place this summer, a game to accompany it, was inevitable but instead of the usual dross 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa actually serves up a playing experience on a par with EA Sports big football series.
Initially the only real obvious difference between the game and FIFA 10 is the vibrancy of its presentation. Menus are much more colorful than that of the some what subdued looks of FIFA 10. However once this initially shock is out of your system then the differences aren’t completely obvious. The same modes are mostly included albeit, World Cup South Africa as you would expect focuses solely on international competition and as such doesn’t feature all the domestic leagues of FIFA 10. With this in mind and the fact the game revolves around this summers football extravaganza means the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa may have slightly limited lasting appeal.
The game allows you to play the full World Cup tournament, including qualifying or just part of it. The game also features the story of qualification mode that we saw in UEFA 2008. If you’re unfamiliar with that game than think of the Virtual Pro mode in FIFA 10, you can even import your pro from FIFA 10 into World Cup South Africa. So far the game doesn’t seem to offer that much more of interest than FIFA 10, in fact it includes less teams, players and competitions however it does offer some tweaks that improve the football action over that of FIFA 10.
Matches have been made more realistic in a number of ways, firstly players jostle with each other a lot more and it’s not uncommon for defenders to try pulling on you to prevent you from making breaking runs. Also players tend to band and bounce off each other a lot more, often resulting in losing control of the ball which can lead to the odd tense moment. All this contributes to making the playing experience on offer in the game quite a bit more realistic than that on offer in FIFA 10. Whilst it does make it harder to score it does make the whole penalty process much more interesting.
These aren’t the only differences between the two games, World Cup South Africa poses much more of a challenge and matches tend to be much closer, especially with equally matched teams. This in all honesty made World Cup South Africa far more interesting than I thought it would be, often serving up some interesting results. Something which also contributes to the challenge on offer in the game is the fact that referees are very strict and the most innocuous looking challenge can and often does result in the referee waving a card at your player, something which we will probably see at this years tournament.
The biggest change however comes with the games penalty taking system, at the bottom of the screen a colour coded meter gauges your players composure. Hit the green and you’re more likely to score anyrthing else and there’s a good chance the ball will go screaming past the post. This new penalty system also allows you to easily perform actions such as stopping during your run up and excecuting chip shots.
Visually the game is largely in seperable from FIFA 10, it does have more of a TV haze about it and I would go as far as to say the stadium lighting effects are much better and realistic but other than that there’s very little to seperate the two games. Sound wise there game follows the style of FIFA 10 as you would expect. However the game does feature an all new commentary team Clive Tyldesly and Andy Townsend who do a very good job and comment on the match progress.
2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa may not be overly different to FIFA 10 but it does introduce some changes that do enhance the playing expereince, possible serving as a preview to FIFA 11? If you don’t own FIFA than this is a very good football game to test your skills against, but FIFA 10 owners shouldn’t instantly dismiss it as it features just enough tweaks to make it worth a look.
