I've been playing the fifa series of games since fifa 97. Quite frankly I am getting a little disappointed with each so-called 'new version.' What we see with each version are really just cosmetic changes like graphics and tweaks, not the overhaul that I feel the actual game engine needs. For example in fifa 2001, ok so you can't go down the middle as much, but now you just go down the wings - so what? EA made a lot of the fact that it was harder to go down the middle but its stupid how easy it is to score overhead kicks - easier than scoring from a one on one with the keeper -- thats just stupid. The shielding overall was a welcome addition but just when they introduced that with fifa 2000 they dropped a couple of good fakes while keeping the stupid spin around one and the flick over, both unrealistic moves that you never see in real life, while the fakes that were dropped from 2000 onward were excellent. Long range goals are basically non-existant - to try for one usually just means wasting possession. This crap of the ball bouncing to the keeper is just lame!! I don't know , I guess easports can't win, the more they raise the bar the more things there are to do better I suppose, but personally I am sick of paying full price every year for a game that is still flogging basically the same game engine from 5 years ago.

Good to see another person from New Zealand making there thoughts heard on the forums.

Agreed, now for my 2 bobs worth, did you guys ever play Premier All Stars 2001, and was it ever available down there in New Zealand, if you can get a hold of it and give it a try, you will see a completely different Fifa football game with different moves etc, this game has a far more authentic aproach to football than any of the releases from the North American team, it consists of the Full English prem league plus various condensed Euro club and World club knockout tournys and a 66 game campaign to win everything in sight, it doesn't have the world\national leagues as in some of the other fifa games, but is far more enjoyable and realistic to play and as an added feature they have placed all the Prem League stadiums in the game, plus a few more that pop up when you play in the other cup tournys, i still play this game every day and enjoy every minute of it ... Ned :D

Hey what a coinsedence yesterday when I was in town I saw Premier All Stars 2001 for half price so is it good cause I will go buy it. I would love a game with some great gameplay. :)

Yeah [= Sam =] go and buy it because the gameplay is a lot more realistic than FIFA.

Judging by the animations and some of the skill moves, it seems to be built on the rather good (IMO) FIFA 99 which was the last FIFA game that I would have called "decent".

I bought mine for, wait for it... £4.99 in a supermarket which is an absolute bargain!!!

=Sam= .. sure thing, mate if its at half price, buy it while it's still around, i paid 25 quid for it when it was released last August, but it was money well spent, i have been thro' it several times with different teams and finally got the better of the Premier mode of play, anyways i have done a few gif anims <11 total> from the game and hoiked em up to a 'nothing fancy' tripod dump site, so if any one wants to download em, you can snaffle em from here,and there are two small thumbnail anims active on the page for you to look at and decide if you want to dive in the deep end and download em all, they are on there for anyone to download .. Ned :rolleyes:
http://members.tripod.com/fcrazy0/

Premier League all stars... sounds like it might be worth checking out then. When I saw it advertised i just assumed "here we go, same version of fifa in a different box to rip us off a few more bucks" -- also interested that someone thinks fifa 99 was the last decent version -- i agree, i've still got my fifa 99 and its alot better than the latest version. When fifa 2000 came out i was hoping it would just be fifa 99 with shielding... pity -- i guess ea uses a whole lot of 10 year old kids in their focus groups ....