Story:

Play mechanics:

There are two control schemes: Simple and Complex. The Complex mode gives you manual access to all of the game's moves, the Simple mode does not. The Complex mode more than lives up to its name, so I focused on getting down the Simple controls.

The general controls are as follows:

A=Pass the ball / Switch to defender closest to the ball
B=Kick the ball / Tackle

Z=The manual says something about guiding the ball while holding down Z, but I was unable see the effects of doing so during play.

Control Stick= Move your player.

C Buttons= Repeatedly press Left C while moving to make your player run fast. Bottom C executes a Rainbow kick.

Control Pad= On the control select screen, you can choose to use the Control Pad instead of the Control Stick by pressing any direction on the Control Pad (the area around the Control Pad on the menu's picture of your controller should turn red if you've done it right).

Start= Brings up the game's pause screen, giving you access to many different options.

This is by no means a complete run-down of the FIFA controls, but it should be enough to get started. My suggestion is to refer to the manual until you get things down pat (and if you don't have the manual when playing this game, you're going to miss it). For an in-game control scheme refresher, press Left C on the control select screen to bring up a list of the controls.

As for gameplay options, the different modes are as follows:

Friendly Mode: A one game match between two teams.

League Mode: Choose to control up to 8 teams during season play. Each team meets twice during a season. Each win earns three points, each draw earns one point, and each loss earns zero points. At the end of a season, the teams with the most points head to the season tournament. If you choose to control only one team, you can play for the Season Championship. If you play as more than one team, apparently this is not the case. Season stats and game info can be saved to an NCP. There are a few save slots allotted in the 63 pages of FIFA data on an NCP.

Tournament Mode: This mode can be reached through winning League play, or it can be selected from the main menu. Each team in the tournament meets once, and the teams with the most points move on to the Playoffs. You can save tournament info to FIFA data on an NCP after each game.

Playoffs Mode: This mode can be reached through winning Tournament play, or it can be selected from the main menu. A team is eliminated from the playoffs if it loses, and the last team standing is the winner of the championship. You can save Playoff info to FIFA data on an NCP after each game.

Team Management: During a game, each player can manage different aspects of how their team is setup to play. The Team Management menu can be accessed from the pause menu. Among the different options to change are the team's field formation, offense/defense strategy and the ability to carry out player substitutions.

What's it like to play?:

When I picked up the game from my local Blockbuster, I began to read the manual and was initially impressed. The number of moves, options, and FIFA teams were very impressive. It gave me an initial impression that the game was made by people who really know soccer. Then I began to realize that no where in the manual did it explain the complex moves in layman's terms. Apparently, EA thought that everyone playing FIFA Soccer 64 would be a serious soccer fan. Well, I don't know much about soccer, so I was completely baffled by almost all of the moves for the Complex control scheme.

After finishing with the manual, I popped in the game and fired it up. Some MIDI music began to play (the opening music sounds a lot like SNES music) and I noticed that the typical "EA Sports, it's in the game!" announcement was noticeably absent.

Unfortunately, there's no tutorial or practice mode to get the controls down, so I jumped right in and began a Friendly match. There's a very clear voice intro from an announcer as polygonal players take the field. The game startup is quite impressive the first time through, but it gets very repetitive after a few plays (it never really changes much).

The crowd is presented in Dolby Surround, giving a wonderful sense of immersion in the game, even if you don't have a Dolby setup. The chants are very cool and have a nice rhythm to them, but I have no idea what the crowd is actually saying. There are also blow horns and individual cheers. Overall the crowd really adds to the atmosphere of the game, and in a way, it's the game's best aspect.

The play-by-play is also fairly good, but repetitive. The major problem with it is that it's not possible to make out a word of the commentary when a goal is scored. The comments also seem to be inappropriately positive and overly-enthusiastic. For example, you can get the ball, move an inch and hear "That's the way to play!" Um, gee thanks Mr. Announcer, I guess.

After the players take the field, the camera zooms out to game view, and as it does so you'll immediately feel your eyes re-adjusting as the players become a small, fuzzy mess. FIFA is the only N64 game so far that is negatively affected by anti-aliasing. Teams with similar colored uniforms create an especially difficult to make out mess, with any distinguishing colors or marks being anti-aliased away. It's very, very hard to make out detail on any of the players and this causes serious problems from time to time. The different cameras don't fix this at all, because while the other views may provide a more detailed view of a few players, the main view is the only one suitable for play.

At the kick-off, it is not made clear which team is which, nor who has control of the ball. A simple "1p" or "2p" indicator over the team making the kick-off would have been a great help. It also took me quite a while after the kick-off to determine which net I was supposed to score in (yes, the graphics really can be that hard to make out). A clearer indication of which goal to head towards after kick-off would have been helpful.

Shortly after kick-off, the game's animation takes on an unforgivable choppiness. Sometimes it's almost as bad as if the game were taking place under a giant strobe light. This makes everything feel out of sync and makes delicate maneuvers very hard (if not impossible) to pull off. If you turn on one of the game's Picture-in-Picture cameras of the action, be prepared for even worse slowdown and a useless extra view blocking part of the screen.

After only moments of play, it became clear to me that FIFA's controls are fundamentally flawed. I kept pressing B to tackle and steal the ball, only to press it one too many times and kick it a way. After more extended play, I figured out that dashing into a player with the ball (by repeatedly taping Left C while moving) had a significantly higher success rate when it came to successfully stealing the ball. I found this very strange, and having to repeatedly press Left C instead of just holding it down became very annoying.

Passing is also extremely difficult. In most sports games that I've played, an indicator appears over a player open for a pass, and if the pass button is pressed while this indicator is shown, the pass is almost always completed successfully. This is not the case in FIFA 64. In order to successfully pass in this game, you must identify which player is open (while avoiding losing the ball), press and hold the pass button, and quickly hold the Control Stick in the direction of the open player. This may be more realistic, but it's no fun and it's difficult to do.

As a result of this overly complicated passing setup, it's almost guaranteed that the other team will either steal the ball before you pass it, or intercept it after it's passed. It can also be easy to mistake someone on the other team as one of your own teammates if the teams have similar uniforms (for example a blue blur with a white dot can easily be mistaken for your teammate who is a blue blur with a yellow dot) and pass the ball to the other team as a result. I have never played a sports game with a poorer passing setup. This makes FIFA ill-suited for four player team play. The poor passing also reduces the gameplay to charging the net a la NBA Hangtime -- the difference being that in FIFA the ball rarely makes it into the net.

FIFA has different options that I tried monkeying with to make the game play better. The control menu allows each player to set his or her skill level. The higher the skill level, the less computer assistance the player will receive (i.e. the ball will be stolen easier). There's also an option on the main menu's options screen to set the game type. There are three different game types, ranging from Arcade to Simulation. With the control set to Novice and the game type set to Arcade, FIFA was more playable, but only because the other team was a little less likely to steal the ball and passes were ever so slightly more successful.

After customizing the different options, I began to try out the different game modes. I was surprised and disappointed that any game in any of the modes looks, sounds and plays like any other game in any other mode. I even played through (and won) the playoff mode, only to find the game simply return me to the main menu without any congratulations whatsoever. This left me wondering why on earth I, or anyone who's not a simulation and statistics fan, would want to play through a season and take up more than half of an NCP with saved FIFA data.

FIFA Soccer 64 is the only game (as of this writing) that I've played for my N64 that I honestly didn't enjoy playing at all (although NBA Hangtime comes close). There just wasn't anything in the gameplay to make me want to come back for more. The poor control, blurry graphics and lack of variety left me wondering what on earth EA was thinking when it made this game. I would rather have played the FIFA Soccer for my SNES instead of this version of the game.

Overall, FIFA Soccer 64 is a repetitive, graphically poor, difficult to play soccer game. If you're a die-hard soccer and/or simulation fan, you may like to rent FIFA for its official license and number of moves (if you can figure out how to use these moves), as well as the simulation aspects of the game. On the other hand, for the non soccer and/or simulation buff (which I'm guessing fits the profile of most people), I just can't think of any reason to even bother with FIFA 64.