Fifa Soccer 08 Review

Fifa Soccer 08 is the newest version of the top-selling Football (Soccer for the Americans) franchise by EA Sports. It is all about trying to get as close as possible to the real sport with more teams, stadiums, players, boots, etc.
While many people have always argued about which soccer game is better, Fifa always ends up selling more simply because Ea Sports has most of the FIFA license leaving its rival game, Winning Eleven, with less teams. I have played the Fifa games since the 98 version and you can only notice difference in graphics and teams. But with the newest entry things are changing drasticly, for the good. First off all, Fifa has decided to copy Winning Eleven's control style and has made some improvements over it. You now change players with the left bumper instead of the "A" button. Players have many tricks at their disposal like their real life counterparts, but sometimes they are a little bit too overpowered, fortunately the A.I is much more smarter this time. It predicts plays and becomes really tough to beat.
But even if the game controls like real football, it is nothing special if it doesn't look like it, so that's why the game needs to looks amazing. It does look gorgeous on HD (High-Definition), players move realisticly, some of them move exactly as in real life thanks to Motion Capture, and even look like themselves. But this only applies to big name players such as Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney, and others. Less important players don't even look like the real thing, it is really dissapointing to see them in the game. But aside from the everything else looks pretty good, the stadiums, the footballs, even the boots look good!
Sound is a very important factor in sport games and FIFA 08 doesn't dissapoint in this aspect either. Most of the teams have their own cheers and the commentary is very good. There are tons of phrases comming from the narrators Andy Gray and Martin Tyler. Also if you switch your console's main language to spanish you will hear the Mexican narrators Enrique Bermudez and Ricardo Pelaez from Televisa. I do like the Mexican comentary more but it gets old really quickly, even frustrating.
FIFA 08 has really improved from last year's mediocre attempt and its a great addition to the franchise. If you really like football/soccer you should not hesitate in buying or even renting this game.

Graphics:9.0
Sound:9.0
Gameplay:9.5
Entertainment:9.5
Replay Value:9.6
I give this game a : 9.3