Reviews

Come June, it'll be pretty much impossible to get away from the World Cup. No matter where you go, you're sure to see something related to the tournament, be it themed menus, merchandise or drunken fans in shirts starting up chants. Of course, if you're a gamer, this has already started, with versions of EA's spin-off game hitting all current formats, including this edition for the PSP.

Several (but not all) of the modes from the main console game are available in somewhat of a cut-down form. In addition, some brand new game-play features introduced for the first time, most likely as water testers for FIFA 11 later this year. As you'd expect, you have all 199 nations that attempted to qualify for the tournament over the past three years, and the ability to lead any of them to glory.

The main World Cup mode gives you the choice of working through the qualifying phases, or just starting with the finals. Qualifiers are simply played one after the other, with no option to play friendly matches in-between. You're also unable to customise the qualification groups, forcing you to play the matches as they were (unless you choose to qualify with South Africa). However, you can choose to customise the teams by going straight to the finals, or stick with the draw as it is.

Captain Your Country mode again has you battling to take the armband to the finals, but with a much lesser emphasis on progression. Create your own player or elect to use an existing pro, and then you'll be thrust straight into the first team, playing friendly matches and the qualification groups on the way to the tournament. Your player rating fluctuates wildly as you work through a match, with one erroneous pass likely to do a ridiculous level of damage to your score. However, once you get the hang of remaining in the correct position, calling for the ball when you need it, and directing the rest of the team where possible, you'll soon be scoring 8s and 9s come the final whistle.

Meanwhile, the modes are rounded off by the Story of Qualifying scenario mode. The same match-ups and goals from the home console versions are present here, though many of them are locked until you earn set numbers of points via the unlocked matches. You can earn 500 points per match, with the main goal worth 250 points, and two minor goals for 150 and 100 points respectively. When you've worked your way through the qualifying scenarios from each region, you can then try out scenarios from the 2006 World Cup, revisiting or remaking history in the process. Sadly, there's no mention of any DLC, which suggests that there won't be further scenarios added from this year's tournament come the summer.

As you can expect, there is online play for the game, but the Online World Cup doesn't make an appearance. To be perfectly honest, this feels like a good thing, as the online is perhaps one of the weakest areas of the game. For the most part, this reviewer found that games were failing to connect for the most part, and that when they did, they practically ran in slow motion. Take into account that the highest ranked player over the first weekend had only played less than 50 games, and that my own personal ranked record of 1-0 was enough to put me into the Top 500 in the world, and you'll see that online play is clearly not a priority for this title.

The match engine itself is still the old school FIFA engine from the PS2 days, complete with generally weak player likenesses (for the most part, you can work out who players are meant to be, but there's no "wow" factor with them). It's easy to get to grips with, and generally fun to play. However, at times, you feel like the gap in class between sides is nowhere near as big as it should be. Playing as the mighty Spain and having your defence undone by the likes of Benin while Torres and Villa struggle to outrun their centre backs is particularly frustrating. It does feel as though EA have taken this series as far as it can possibly go on this particular format, hence the tweaks in play being only minor.

Promised on the back of the box is a new shooting technique, though this is somewhat misleading in a way. In actual fact, the new feature is a change to set-piece taking, using the analogue nub of the PSP to control the spin on the ball. When given a direct free kick or a corner, you use the d-pad to aim up the kick, then hold the nub in place to determine how much spin or curl you want to use, before holding down the shoot/pass button to take the kick.

In the case of a free kick, the ball will fly towards goal, while with corners the camera will remain in place while one of your players tries to get their head or foot to the ball and hopefully put it in. It doesn't always seem to work as well as hoped, more so in the case of the free kicks than the corners, but it's a pretty neat system that gives you more of an idea about what you're doing with your set-pieces that just arbitrarily filling a power bar and holding the stick.

Meanwhile, another new feature on the pitch is the Golden Moments ability. By stringing together passes, shots and general instances of good football, you'll begin to fill up a bar at the bottom of the screen. When this has filled to around halfway, you'll get the option to activate one of four boosts using the d-pad. You can either choose to increase the skills of your attack, defence or goalkeeper, or simply activate a general boost that affects your whole team until the bar empties out. At half-time, the bar resets, so if you haven't activated your boost, you'll have to wait until you fill up again in the second half. Golden Moments appear in all team-based modes of play, and can be used by both yourself and your opponents. They can also be turned off from the menus if you don't wish to use them at all.

It's probably fair to say that the PSP version of World Cup lacks the long-term replay value of FIFA 10, with the inability to build a team over time, and only one tournament to play through (admittedly in several different ways). As a quick fix piece of footy fun, however, it certainly does the job, and starts getting you hyped up for the cup itself.