Fifa Street – review

I have to confess to feeling a little irked when I saw Lionel Messi doing keepy-ups on the cover of the new Fifa Street. Not that I have a problem with Messi as either a player or a person, it's just that he didn't look like an outlandish caricature of himself and lightning wasn't flying out of his feet.

This told me that Fifa Street was going the same way as SSX, EA's other reboot of a gem from EA Sports Big's back catalogue, where all the zany, incredibly fun silliness in past iterations has been replaced with an aesthetic that is both unblinkingly serious and achingly cool.

This, as anyone who remembers the hey-day of Fifa Street, is a pity. In the past, Fifa Street was a cartoon-like and refreshing alternative to EA's Fifa franchise. Its players weren't sportsmen, they were superheroes who could pull of flamboyant tricks, run up walls and bang in goals with bicycle kicks from miles outside the box. This isn't the case anymore; now the players look just like they do in real life. The arenas they frequent are graffiti covered carparks and indoor arenas. Even their tracksuits look licensed.

But, if you're prepared to look past the cooler-than-thou presentation, Fifa Street is an admittedly excellent game, even if it does comes across like Fifa's show-off younger brother. The focus here is all about individual ball skills, trick dribbling, faking out opponents and building up fluid momentum while moving the ball up pitch. It feels, and to some degree, plays a little bit like an arcade fighter; players need to learn all the finesse dribbles and trick moves, and then chain them together to get the better of their opponents.

The controls will be familiar to anyone who has played a Fifa title in the last few years; the face buttons, triggers and bumpers all mirror Fifa's interface, with a couple of exceptions. The left-stick, for example, is essentially the player's toolbox for faking out opponents. Flicking it this way and that produces heel-chops, feints and step-overs, but rotating it in set patterns produces pirouette moves, rainbow flicks and a host of other nifty tricks to baffle opponents.

Pull the left trigger, and your player plants one of his feet in the ground and wheels the ball around, baiting opponents and protecting the ball with his body. Once their opposing number starts to harry them, players can quickly flick or feint away with the ball and create space for pass or a shot on goal. Click the right bumper and your player starts to juggle the ball with their feet. They can then flick it over or past an opponent, or pull it back over their own shoulder if they're being crowded.

In defence, the key is busting up any momentum the opposing team tries to get going, and this means sticking to your opposing number like glue. There's no slide-tackling in the game, but players can execute standing tackles as well as bump and barge each other. Fifa 12's tactical defending system is plugged into the proceedings, so players can jockey and contain attackers.

While all of this sounds rather complicated, it's actually an absolute breeze to get to grips with, thanks to the World Tour mode, where players can set the difficulty on a match-by-match basis. This means that they can proceed at their own pace, although those who decide to ratchet up the difficulty earn more than novices in the form of unlockable gear, such caps, hoodies, shorts and so on.

The World Tour is essentially a selection of the different match types available in the exhibition mode, with a championship tournament serving as a finale for each region. Aside from the standard five- and six-a-side tournaments, there are three-on-three games, Last Man Standing matches, Futsal games and Panna matches. Last Man Standing is a four-a-side contest in which a team loses a player every time they score, and wins the match when they have no one left on the pitch. This may sound a little weird, but it's actually a lot of fun. In Futsal games, the goalmouths are bigger, there are no walls to bank passes off and fouls are penalised. In two-on-two Panna matches, players build up point in a "bank" every time they successfully nutmeg an opponent. When they score, any points they have in the "bank" are added to their overall tally. They can also lose their team's "bank" balance if an opponent manages to put one past them.

During the tour, players will start a team, and fill out its roster with players they've played against, players created by their online friends, or more creations of their own. During matches, their players also earn XP from executing cool moves and scoring, which can be used to upgrade their individual attributes, turning them into better attackers, defenders or goalies. The multiplayer mode allows users to also take their team online and compete in for bragging rights and trophies.

So it seems, in the end, that Fifa Street's new cooler, slicker presentation sits better with the game than I first imagined. Yes, it's a far cry from the arcade-like iterations of yesteryear, but in truth it's all the better for it. It might look and feel quite flash, but it's got the depth in content and mechanics to back it up. Above all though, Fifa Street is loads of fun to play, and that's a feature that is as welcome as it was – at least by me – initially unexpected.