Preview: FIFA Street 3 (X360)

My pre-order arrived, and I played the first 4 challenges on FIFA Street 3 last night. I have to say that I really like it.

EA have basically taken the NBA Street Homecourt engine and applied it to the concepts you see in a Nike/Adidas football advertisement. They have also thrown in abstract caricature styling and player models – which some folks will dislike, but I think they are an interesting twist.

Now I was a big fan of NBA Street Homecourt. I actually think the over-the-top acrobatics and simple arcade controls make for a better video game. It worked perfectly in Homecourt, and it works really well in FIFA Street.

If you approach this game as a “football sim”, then you will undoubtedly hate it. However, if you come to it with an open mind and embrace the “trick combos” and “gamebreaker” mechanics, it is a load of fun. I've read a few reviews and been surprised by some of the comments. In some cases I have felt that the reviewer has missed the point. It is not football sports game, but an arcade game that happens to use cartoon footballers and a ball.

I'll need to play it a lot more to see how much depth and longevity there is, but so far the 4 games I played were great fun. The team/character combinations are really quite clever (players are grouped into sets like “Youngsters”, “Veterans” and “Speedsters”) and I personally like the caricatures (- particularly Samuel Eto's which made me laugh!.

BTW: There is an achievement for scoring a hat-trick with Peter Crouch!