Many of us in America do have a love of footy, traditionally known as soccer. Soccer has been a videogame staple ever since someone took a Pong game, put it on a green background and called it soccer. Granted, we've come a long way from the horizontally challenged games of control by a paddle from the 1970s into the amazing games that we have today for the PC and various consoles.
The FIFA series has always been one of the most acclaimed games by EA Sports, even back in the days of the Sega Genesis. However, even in the mid-90s there was a debate as to whether or not it was the best soccer game around. In fact, back when Mr. Sharky Ross himself was working at another site and living across the pond, he and I had a pretty big debate over whether now-defunct Gremlin's Actua Soccer was better than FIFA. Unfortunately we haven't seen Actua Soccer in ages, so for action soccer PC gamers, our only choice is FIFA, so it better be good. Luckily it is.
Before we talk about this year's model, let's reminiscence about last year's version. FIFA 2000: Major League Soccer was not a very good effort when compared to previous versions. The Major League Soccer (MLS) license seemed tacked on and did not have an option for an MLS league. Rosters were nowhere near accurate for the US league, and the play-by-play combo of commentators Julie Foudy and Phil Schoen had the uncanny effect of making gamers want to vomit. EA even went so far as to release a 90+ MB patch to bring John Motson (the commentator for the non-US version of the game) into the US version. The postage stamp-sized pitch (field) gave you a great game of ping-pong rather than soccer.
With that in mind I was hoping above hope that FIFA 2001 would correct many of these issues. While playing a version of the game on a PlayStation 2 at E3, it looked like some issues were addressed but new issues were coming into light. The PC version is much more refined than the early game I played at E3. Let's have a look.
I assume if you've read the review this far, you know that a) FIFA 2001 is a soccer game and b) you know the basic rules of soccer. If not, go check out (http://www.fifa.org) and you should be good to go. I'll wait here……back yet? Ok.