FIFA 06 Demo - A quick review.

Another year, another sport franchise based game milked by EA Sports (it's in the game!). This time around we have the new FIFA 2006, which they drop the 2 thousand, kept the 06..which would make FIFA 6...but its 11 players in the field, damn new name scheme.

So here we go they dropped the demo, less than a month away, for you to taste the new version. You will also noticed a couple of new bugs here and there, which make no sense you complaining about to them because by the most part the game its done. EA Sports by the most part never patch their games. Well, i lied, they do. For example lets say I want to get my FIFA 2005 game patched (it needs a patch or 2..3..). I would like to regain substitutions, and players' injuries notice in-game, etc. Well of course there's a patch out: -It's FIFA 2006.

The demo comes with (surprising) 5 big name teams to choose from: AC Milan, Barca, Bayern Munich, Man U, and PSG. Home and away kits to your disposal as well. Graphically, from the demo, you can tell the quality of the team kits have gone up. You can finally read ADIDAS on the shirts, instead of sum blurred out thing as in previous versions. Animations have also improved, and the net physics are a lot better. When a ball hits the net, it sorta resembles a net, not a freaking spandex spread across the posts. The players to me still suffer from their faces been to "bulky" and the kits have now a glossy like finish to them, like they were dipped in stain prior to the game.

Gone are John Motson and Alley McCoist, replaced by Clive Tilsley and Andy Gray (they were in previous FIFAs, i think I remember in FIFA WC 2002). The chants are pretty generic by the most part, at least in the demo, BARCA BACA!!..UNITED UNITED!!.. remix #4667 of the Paul Oakenfold's FIFA theme is back, as well as music by Oasis and others.

Finally a bug, the demo tends to go crazy at times. Crazy as in it just switches around like you were pressing the keys. The fix EA gives: Go into device manager and disable HID-compliant devices under the USB branch. So its disable, try to see if its fixed, try another so on and so forth. Hopefully this is something EA WILL address, although I don't know what to expect from them anymore.

From the demo I can say the gameplay has changed a bit, the graphics have been up a notch. The rest is all the same, with of course updated rosters. I would like to give a more in-depth review of gamplay but sadly my Dual action logitech gets all crazy when I try to use it with the demo *sighs*. I just hope they update the network code, because as it is right now is crap stuck to the right hand side of Oliver Kahn's post, and provide good gamepad support. Please EA. We all know you are in it for the $, but don't abuse of your exclusive licenses like you have with Madden and other sport games.

So far it looks like another maintenance FIFA update...