Weighing the gold – FIFA Football 2004

**FIFA Football 2004** (EA Sports, PlayStaion 2, 2003)

FIFA Football 2003 was beaten in the charts by Pro Evolution Soccer 2, but at the moment of the series’s most glaring failure it also set up the foundation for future success. Reviews tending to mark it as inferior but surprisingly good was something to built on, and for once EA had the confidence and sense not to rip it up and start again for the sake of it.

What’s new in FIFA Football 2004?

The biggest gameplay change is the off-the-ball movement, where you can select another player and move them into position to receive a pass while the AI handles your player with the ball. It should in theory open up wider tactical possibilities (and work like a better version of FIFA 2002’s odd approach) though it’s rather fiddly in reality. There’s also yet another new set-up for set pieces, where you select the type of cross and then control the player it’s aimed at as they jostle for position. And there’s a nice feature in replays of goals where it pauses and adds arrows to diagram what happened, like this is an old issue of Shoot! magazine and not a video game.

There are a couple of new additions to the menu options. One is the multi-season career mode, where you manage your team and make transfers. As a way of playing through a league campaign and then going onto another one, it’s welcome, even if it’s otherwise implemented in the shallowest possible way. The other one, linked as it allows for promotion and relegation, is including the lower leagues of English football. Given how far the massive popularity of the game extends beyond the Premier League, this is such as obviously good idea that it’s surprising it hadn’t been there already.

What’s gone?

The Club Championship which felt weirdly prominent in the previous version is gone, as are the rubbish golf-swing set pieces. The success of FIFA 2004 is mostly in not jettisoning stuff needlessly, though.

Who is on the cover?

As with FIFA 2003, there are three cover stars to better cover all bases in different markets, this time with Alessandro Del Piero (Juventus), a returning Thierry Henry (Arsenal) and Ronaldinho (Brazil). No mention this time of them taking part in any football council to advise on authenticity. Perhaps they were too occupied with whatever eldritch horror they are staring at in fear/awe/surprise.

What’s on the soundtrack?

Kings of Leon’s “Red Morning Light” as the intro theme sets the tone – the ascendancy of garage rock (cool, popular, blokey) was essentially what previous directionless versions had been waiting for. The lengthy list of songs — sorry, of EA Trax — extends further to other countries too (with flags showing on the on-screen notifications for each song). And further into the past, with The Jam and The Stone Roses to reinforce the slotting of its new songs into the indie rock canon.

Who is the best player in the game?

After some of the leftfield choices of previous games, a completely obvious if maybe slightly delayed one – Ronaldo of Real Madrid. FIFA 2004 feels like the point at which the series stopped thrashing around and settled into the path that would take it to the present day, so putting a bit more consideration into this one fits.

Who is the worst player in the game?

It’s probably Jun Woo Geun of Busan Icons. Unlike the previous year’s his full name is included; unlike the previous year’s I can’t find any information on him.

What do the players look like?

FIFA 2003 had a sense of stretching the PS2 as far as it could go here, accordingly it’s one more place where FIFA 2004 doesn’t change things. Player likenesses are still variable but frequently very recognisable.

How does it play?

The new off-the-ball stuff doesn’t work well at all, but for once it’s added in such a way that you can basically ignore it and stick to the same standard basics as FIFA 2003, which are still there but more robust.

At one point in my career mode season, I played against Liverpool and conceded an equaliser to make it 2-2 with mere minutes to go in the match. I had one last chance. I played a quick lay-off to a charging Freddie Ljungberg, and bashed it into the goal off the post with a shot from outside of the area.

This felt like a culmination of everything the game was going for: quick, easy, dramatic. There is a lot of pleasure to be had from playing elegant football, and while it’s often played along lines very much laid out already, there are enough different lines to prevent it feeling as replica-shirt artificial and low stakes as some previous versions.

How does it score on the sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gif greed index?

At the same time as settling down was what FIFA really needed, it does make the redundancy of yearly updates come to the fore. Still, there are some new additions in there too, even if they fall into inessential or minor. 0.5 sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gifs.

If FIFA Football 2004 was a football team at the time, who would it be?

Getting things together (at vast expense) – still Claudio Ranieri-era Chelsea, now a bit closer to the top of the league. Just unfortunate to be against opponents at the absolute top of their game, be that Arsenal’s undefeated Invincibles or Pro Evolution Soccer 3.