Powered by the revolutionary FIFA gameplay engine, FIFA Street authentically replicates the way soccer is played around the world. Using real street dribbling styles and trick moves players will compete everywhere from parking lots to prestigious 5v5 futsal-style tournaments on the streets of the world. FIFA Street is all about style and ultimate control of the ball.

"Worth 2 Pannas and a goal"

FIFA Street is the fourth installment of the series, featuring the Player Impact Engine that was displayed so highly in FIFA 12. FIFA Street to me was definitely not a disappointment like FIFA Street 3 was. The game plays like FIFA, but of course has plenty of flair, because that's what street soccer is about. The game in most ways is basically FIFA 12; they just fine tuned everything to fit in a street or indoor setting and allowed the engine to better show itself off in a small arena.

FIFA Street has gameplay that has yet to be rivaled by any other game, mainly because there is no other game like it. It has the essence of the FIFA series yet displays it in new settings and in some ways even plays differently, so you will have to learn some new tricks. This game isn't perfect though; there are certainly flaws that have showed up in the old FIFA series that are even in this game. Like the fact that defensive players are still, in all appearances, blind from time to time, and the goalie also sometimes forgets he can use his hands. But there are certain glitches that occur specifically to this game. One annoying glitch is that when your player gets beat by a trick, he loses his balance and is momentarily slowed. For some reason this game also classifies running past a player as being "beat" when clearly there was no trick involved, and so the defender will lose his balance and fall, leaving a 1 on 1 situation with the goalie. Most of the glitches occur rarely and don't always have a large impact on that game. If you lose a goal, it's not that hard to score back and because of the high score counts, it can be entertaining for those players who hate the low scoring games of regular FIFA.

A game mode called World Tour allows you to create your own character or load a Virtual Pro from FIFA 12 and start your own team. In World Tour you compete solely against other player created teams that are randomly selected, and from time to time in the game you have to compete against All Star Teams which is a challenge compared to the other regular teams. You also gain experience for your whole team in which you use to upgrade your players for certain stats or gain tricks or traits that can effect how your player plays. When you put points into certain stats it will give a specialization to your player. For example if you put more points into speed than anything else, the player will be identified as a "speedster" or if you place the points in shooting they will become a "finisher” which help you decide how to balance your team.

The sound quality in this game is not very different than FIFA 12 and most of the sound effects that deal with the soccer itself like kicking or colliding players is just about the same. Some of the main differences is that because the crowd is different, and since you aren't playing in a stadium filled with more then 20,000 people, the crowd reacts differently. Something else you'll notice is that you can hear the players yelling out things like "Pass! Pass!" or "Cross the ball!" or "Shoot it!" most of which are usually exclamations. The interesting thing is each player has a unique voice and some have different accents, depending on where they are from. These exclamations from the players are random, but of course have something to do with the situation so you're not going to hear someone yelling shoot when the goalie is trying to pass the ball to a player. In some arenas you can also hear background city noises such as police sirens or cars driving around, but that depends whether you are playing in a street arena or an indoor court.

Graphics in FIFA Street hasn't changed much since FIFA 12, but there’s more attention to detail due to its smaller scale, which allows you to see the players more realistic movements and see the detail on their jersey's more clearly. Depending on which arena you play at, you will see the crowd looking more high quality then the ones in the FIFA series which have always been mostly 2d shaped and pixilated, giving little or no detail to the crowd. Once again they are rendering the game on a much smaller scale which allows more room for high detail in the game. The arenas look like they could exist in reality, rather then just having a fictional look and you sometimes will see yourself wanting to play in some of the arenas featured in the game.

Once again EA releases another FIFA game that still has the flaws and glitches from previous series, yet they are less noticeable in this game and rarely will dramatically affect the game. If you aren't as analytical as me, you'll probably just look past the glitches and flaws, consider it part of the game and continue to enjoy the game as it is. Of course I'm still hoping that one day EA will release a FIFA product that will not contain flaws and glitches that have always lingered among the franchise. This game still deserves to be recognized as a great game, not just because of the word "FIFA" in it, but because EA keeps proving to us that soccer is never dead and there will always be new ways to enjoy these games.

GameTestLab was supplied with a copy of FIFA Street for review purposes