FIFA Street 3

FIFA Street 3 - (Xbox 360 PS3)
Developer: in-house
Format: Xbox 360 PS3
Genre: Football

Jumpers for goalposts

They must play a very different kind of football over in Canada then they do in Europe. There's none of this street soccer kickabout you'll remember from school for starters - it's all carefully FIFA controlled.

So eye-gouging, half time tantrums, grass -stained knees and yep, no sliding tackles! Instead you'll have access to a kind of low sweeping tackle in your arsenal of tricks. It's still a great move, essential if you want to build up your tricks and tackles, passes and punts to unleash your Gamebreaker - the magic shot designed to blast through an opponent's defences and into the back of the net. This time though it's not always a given. Often the AI will leave you breathless, literally as a player on the pitch. All that energy, all that careful build-up only to have an over eager and over-qualified defender deflect the ball out.

This is still street football at its core however with familiar floodlit pitches, ring-fenced parking lots and mucky pitches are here for you to play out your football fantasies. Caricature players opt for trick shots and there's a great Playground Pick mode online (as in the humiliation of being picked last for the school five-a-side).

Players also have different abilities (no, no sniper rifle) but plenty of types - tricksters, playmakers, finishers and enforcers. It's a fiddle to scroll through them in the crux of a match to find the ideal bod to pass to and once you master it and once you know your team inside out, it's loads of fun planning your tactics on the hoof.

The single player has you picking your fake team and playing across a variety of games some with a timed, stunt or accuracy focus. You also have World Challenge over in the online ether and a host of leaderboards to delve into.

Number 3 significantly, has an improved frame rate from the first two in the series - it's something you'll notice instantly. All in all a great game of two halves.

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