heres some info from IGN
X05: FIFA 06: First Look
EA shows us the first glimpse of its next-gen soccer game in action.
by Douglass C. Perry
October 3, 2005 - Right after the Tokyo Game Show in September, Electronic Arts debuted its five first launch titles for Xbox 360 to a select group of journalists, and along with Madden, NBA Live, Tiger Woods, and Need For Speed Most Wanted, we got an all-too-brief glance at FIFA 06: Road to World Cup.
FIFA 06 is the foundation game for the next generation of EA soccer games. It's not a fully fleshed out, feature-packed game, but rather a humble start on an unfamiliar system that shows hints, but only hints, of what the next generation could bring. What can a development team accomplish in one year's time? While the Canadian developers behind FIFA constantly fiddle with the balance between instant pick-up-and-play feel and the depth and realism they continue to see in Konami's ever-growing Winning Eleven series, a balance I hope to find leaning toward the competition in this new next-gen game, the most noticeable qualities in FIFA 06 are its visuals.
We saw, but did not play, pre-alpha code. Thus, the demo was limiting. What did it play like? How did it feel? What is the actual balance of players? How was the speed and physics of the ball; and how smart is the AI? We could look but not touch, giving us a 50% feel of the game. More than anything, the demo showed off the game's façade; its presentation and graphics.
The game's overall presentation is impressive. Like NBA Live, FIFA 06 utilizes a cathedral or starting arena as its start-up page. In this generation, the start-up page is a menu screen with perhaps an animated screen and an index of modes. FIFA 06 changes all that. When the game is fully booted up you start on a soccer field with playable athletes and a soccer ball. The start up page is a playable demo of the game! You can literally play FIFA for hours in this menu screen before even starting a full game. When you're ready to start, you can select a cursor on the bottom left hand side and a horizontal menu bar appears with mode options.
In another touch of next-generation, you'll be able to continue playing on the menu screen as the game loads up in the background. Apparently, EA has found a way around Namco's patented play-game-while-loading law. Along with new technology, EA's sweet little invention helps to prevent loading screens from being the boring sequence they have been for the last 10 years.
Once you're in the game, you'll notice all sorts of visual elements that catch your attention and that are striking and new. EA's goal is to breathe life into their videogames, and in a few ways it looks like the Redwood City giant is succeeding. Four hundred professional soccer players' heads have been photographed and scanned into the game. The difference between a current generation game and a next generation game demonstrates the relevance of this fact: The increased geometry for each athlete is so high, the blocky angles, flat faces, and rectangular heads are all but eliminated. In their places you see more life-like, round heads, blinking, moving eyes, and musculature in each player's face. There are 1,700 players, and nine stadiums in total.
Other visual enhancements create more realism. Hair and clothing are no longer painted onto character bodies like before. They have physical properties of their own. They movie independently of the player and in reaction to them. It's a little detail, but that's what these early games are comprised of: Hundreds of little visual details that create a more realistic world.
Moving into the game itself, Road to World Cup offers players a chance to pick from 72 teams and perhaps win the virtual World Cup. During their experience, they'll hear from Sky Sports commentators, exclusive to the next-generation version, and experience a panoply of graphic enhancements over current generation games. Players have primary and secondary animations, they're more emotional and move with more life-like fluidity. The realtime dynamic lighting affects everything in the stadium. Players are textured with shaders that reflect the right amount of light for their skin color. They'll grow sweaty during the game, and their sweat will increase as it progresses.
Coaches from each team move back and forth along the sidelines as the game progresses. They'll react to the flow of the game, showing emotion by yelling, talking, and reacting to plays. Players can change their strategies and formations on the fly, without using a menu screen. You'll see a scoreboard on screen, indicating the score, location and time of day or night, and realtime lighting will be reflected on the field, whether its night, day, or dusk. You can zoom your camera in to see close-up details of the players, the sway of the grass, or you can zoom it out to see a fantastically animated variety of fans. You won't get too many modes of play, nor will there be a Create-A-Player mode available in this version, but you will be able to play one-on-one against anyone in Xbox Live. And you will be able to play this game on day one of the Xbox 360 launch.
The demo we were shown was both illuminating and frustrating for a couple of reasons. It's clear that EA has already achieved some interesting things in its presentation, but FIFA 06 is by no means a graphic powerhouse. It's not the game you'll use to show off your new system to friends. The frustrating thing about the demo was that because we were unable to play the game, a crucial part of any preview -- and especially a next-generation game -- it denied us the ability to properly deliver the game's feel. The half-day demo of all the launch titles was designed as a look-but-not-touch experience. We can tell you it looks better than it did at E3. We can tell you it's impressive in some ways, far from impressive in others. But how will this game deliver a next-generation experience? Unfortunately, we'll have to wait and see.