Well the World Cup of Soccer is almost upon us and we all know what that means don't we? That's right, not only the depressed sighs of anguish from fans of the Australian soccer team, but sighs of barely suppressed joy from EA Sports marketing department because they get to release multiple soccer games in the same year! If you've got the World Cup bug but had been considering importing the Road to World Cup game then don't bother as 2006 FIFA World Cup is definitely the far superior game.

The sport of soccer, increasingly being annoyingly referred to as the 'Beautiful Game' by our mainstream media (that, except for SBS, really only care about it during the World Cup) translates exceptionally well to computer games and the multitude of different soccer game series is testimony to its large audience. The FIFA series has its legion of fans and the Pro Evolution series has its own with both camps each with their own feelings on which is better. Truth be told, in my opinion both series are great but the move to a more 'realistic, Pro Evo' style of gameplay in the FIFA series has been fairly obvious over the past few years. Purists swear that the Pro Evo series has always had the better controls and more accurately represents what soccer is actually like so you won't see me complaining as FIFA heads down that road.

My main complaint about the Pro Evo series is the lack of real player names and that little to no thought goes into the menu system which looks like it was put together in 20 minutes back in 1985 by an Ikea manual designer and they've stuck with it ever since. There's no denying how well it plays, but official teams, accurate looking players, official stadiums, increasingly better physics, controls and high production values sees EA's FIFA series as the more popular series in the XBW gaming den and the one that I find myself drawn to whenever I'm in the mood for some aerial ping pong.

2006 FIFA World Cup comes with a 'Play Now' mode for anyone interested in picking 2 teams and simply going for it. Quite a few options are available such as friendly game, playoffs, World Cup group stages, quarter finals, semi finals, or you can even jump straight into a World Cup final match. Quite handy if you want to pit the world's 2 worst teams against each other for the final and see what happens. Plenty of great looking stadiums can be selected also, the Olympiastadion in Finland, Zentralstadion in Germany, Dortmund and among many others, the fantastic looking Gelsenkirchen stadium. Game halves can be anywhere from 2 to 45 minutes in length as well as game speed which can be slow, normal or fast. Something to hopefully cater to everyone. How the game ends can even be selected with extra time and penalty options available and for an extra bit of fun, there's even over 2 dozen different looking match balls to unlock. Find the game too easy, well then ditch that amateur difficulty and try semi-pro, pro or world class.

As you can tell, there are plenty of options to choose from which is always welcome, but they're also expected in any quality sports game these days so to leave any of these options out would have been pretty disappointing. The main drawcard of course though is the World Cup mode where you take your favourite team through its group table, qualify on top and head into the final tournament, or if you like, ditch the qualifying and jump straight into it. The choice is yours. It's obviously not up there in terms of depth that you find in normal 'franchise' modes but the World Cup FIFA series is only about just that, the World Cup. Fans looking for more regular season based games with their favourite European clubs will have to wait for FIFA 2007.

2006 FIFA World Cup captures the spectacle of the event quite well with excellent looking stadiums that feature some of the rowdiest crowds yet to be seen and while the game looks great everywhere it should, there are a few graphical glitches that are a cause for concern. The first is the ground texture, close up looking at the grass is like staring at one of those 'magic eye' pictures and the worn out central part of the pitch has a texture that mysteriously disappears and reappears. The only other real issue is that some of the player likenesses, while pretty good, some feature hair that strangely sticks out of their foreheads. Take a look at Australia's Harry Kewell to see what I mean. Did EA think we wouldn't notice it or something? Sometimes it's so bad it almost makes him look like Darth Maul from Star Wars with horns poking out of his head.

The glitches are there, and they're obvious, so obvious in fact that you have to wonder if maybe EA were in a bit of pressure to get this game out the door on time. One can only hope for a patch to fix those bugs up, but don't hold your breathe. Also don't let it disappoint you too much as the game looks great in all the right spots. Excellent menu system (with a very funky globe of earth that rotates as you select countries), a super sexy 'zoom' mode (ala Google earth style) when you start a game in a World Cup stadium, smooth animations that blend into each other almost perfectly, day and night matches (but no weather unfortunately) and some very cool cut scenes give the game the glitz and glamour that a World Cup soccer game demands. The presentation is absolutely superb and EA can't be faulted at all in this area.

Putting all the sound together in a game such as this must be a real challenge but EA have come through. Each team has their national anthem, the sound effects from the crowd are excellent and very atmospheric and the commentary does a fine job. It appears to keep up with the game quite well but you will hear the occasional odd or out of place comment but aside from that, the two commentators, Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend offer up plenty to listen to but it still does need some work to avoid the contradictory comments that creep in occasionally.

Of course it wouldn't be a FIFA game without some changes to the controls and 2006 FIFA World Cup naturally does a few things differently than past games. You still run your player around with the L stick, pass with 'A', lob with 'X' and shoot with 'B' but the shooting has supposedly been tweaked although I admit it's been so long since I played FIFA 2005 that I didn't really notice much of a difference. You have the ability to lob the ball over the keeper if he strays too far forward, perform a number of different cross kicks and perform one-two passes as well. One of the big let downs with the game though are the cornering and penalty kicks. For penalty and free kicks at goal in past FIFA games I remember being able to aim a target where in the net I wanted to aim, then select where on the ball I wanted to make contact to apply spin. For corners you used to be able to select which player in front of the net you wanted to target, then attempt to drive the ball at him as hard as possible. Unfortunately free kicks, penalties and corners are now almost guess work with little to no real aiming available. When taking a penalty you can still do a curved shot with 'X' but it's extremely hit and miss and most of my kicks ended up sailing over the top or ending up in the keepers arms after some weak soft, pathetic attempt. Corners aren't that much better but I've been able to score off them a number of times, unlike penalty kicks that are almost a waste of time.

It's good to see EA tweak FIFA in the aim of improving things, but why some great features from the past get removed I'll never understand. If anything, those options for targeting during corners and free kicks should at least be available somewhere to turn on if you wish to. The controls, on the whole, are very good though and as responsive as you would expect them to be. Players have inertia and also the ball to worry about as sprinting forward requires you to tap the ball out in front of you much further which in turn makes it easier for defenders to take it straight off you, the ball is no longer magnetically stuck to your players foot but long term FIFA fans would be used to this as it's been one of the big improvements over the past few games.

All in all the World Cup mode is fun to play through as the spectacle of the event is replicated extremely well. With the difficulty tweaked up a bit the game is a nice challenge and if you plan to run all the way through the qualifying events to the final, there's plenty of fun gaming to be had and when it's all over, you can hook up for some games on Xbox Live as well. Unfortunately though, this is where the game falls over in a few key areas.

Playing 2006 FIFA World Cup online was a mixture of great fun, lag, disconnected sessions and frustration at the lack of options. You're able to set up ranked or private games but the initial setup options are very light on. You can set quarter length and difficulty but that's almost about it. All the great options available in the offline 'Play Now' mode are sadly missing and that swanky gold soccer ball, game speed, the stadium and time of day cannot be selected or customised. The gameplay can be smooth, but between my cable connection in Melbourne, down to a mates ADSL connection in Ocean Grove there was a bit of stuttering that was very off-putting. At the end of a game there's also no 'rematch' option and to start another game you have to exit out, create another game and invite your mate back in. The game does have a lobby mode but it's something I rarely use in any game so some extra options when creating custom matches are sadly lacking. At its best, it is loads of fun though and while I've complained about those points above, we were able to string a number of games together and get some good soccer action happening that contained plenty of exciting moments.