FIFA 08 Review

In a small village in rural Germany, where the tiny, almost Hobbit-like houses were home to fairly large people content enough to live within their miniscule confines. Amidst the green grass set against the backdrop of huge industrial chimneys. (They'd rise up in the air close to where the hills meet the valley.) Where fast trains would cut through the countryside and people of all nations and colors traversed in search of a better life... as they watched our villagers dwell in their petite settlements.

There, in the country where the East clashed with the West most fiercely, lived two brothers.

FIFA family was a compact one. They lived close to a small river which ran through a beautiful dark green cluster of trees you couldn't really call a forest. In the morning, a strange mist would rise up from the river. Some folks thought it was pollution from the nearby BMW facilities, but had you lived there in the middle ages (and even before that time), you would have known that the mist, it was the stuff of legends.

As the hard, leather sandals of the Roman legionaries would sink into the soft soil of the marshland close to the river bank, the mist would hide the savage German tribes - the barbarians. And once the mist was lifted, some two hours before the midday sun was at its peak, the barbarians would descend upon the legionnaires with all their savage fury. And the little river would turn red. In it, limbs of fallen men would swirl with the current, as if to remind an odd passerby how frail and brutal life is.

It was in that setting steeped in culture and the bloody tradition of the ancient tribes that the two brothers would go fishing in the early autumn - the most beautiful time of the year when the wind would caress with a soothing briskness of the flat surface of a steel blade; unlike in the winter, when one would feel its sharp end.

Many early autumns had passed and the life in the FIFA family remained much the same. The two brothers, though they grew up to be strong and healthy men, their power had dulled over the years. Like a sword that was so rarely used, they would lose the severity in their edge. They would lose that thin sparkle, that gleam in their eye which every male in the wilderness had. But they were still strong.

One day, the older brother was cutting some trees in the forest, helping the family meet the winter day. Coming back, he was greeted in the tiny living room of their infinitesimal abode (no, really, I've seen far more spacious dog houses in my time) by his mother, father, and his younger brother.

"What happens here," he asked, "are we having a family meeting?" His father looked at him, trying to hide feelings of fear and anxiety behind a stern face. "FIFA, your younger brother FIFA is going away to a big city."

"How so," asked the older FIFA.

"I was approached by a man who manages a big team in the big city. They want me to play football for them," said the younger brother.

A heavy silence fell upon the room. The father could feel it pressing on his skin.

After a few moments that seemed like hours to everyone in the room, the older brother spoke.

"That is good, FIFA, I'm glad," he said.

The mother and father looked at the older FIFA, shuffling in their creaky wooden seats a bit, with their elbows down on the table next to the bottle of schnapps.

"I love you very much; both of you," said the mother, and the older FIFA smiled a wan smile.

"Do us proud in the big city," said the older FIFA to his younger brother, "show them what we're made of here."

What was a rolling swell of a single tear filled the bottom of the young brother's eye. "I will, FIFA. I will."

As the narrator of this short story, I feel compelled to tell you that the older FIFA was the much stronger, faster and more talented of the two brothers. He also happened to be, well, older. He happened to be born at the wrong time. He also happened to be the one who realized sooner than his younger brother, that if he didn't sacrifice all his strength to keep the family alive, their small house by the modern railroad track would've become but a fleeting reminder of one family's desperate struggle and ultimate defeat in trying to survive in a stagnant rural environment.

Now, for those of you who've never read my FIFA reviews before, know that there is meaning to this tale. One that pertains to the new FIFA games from EA.

As you may have heard, the FIFA series has been split in half. The next-gen version of the game was developed for the PS3 and Xbox 360, whereas the "current-gen" version was relegated to the PC and PS2.

This is profoundly ironic, of course, given how much more powerful a today's PC can be compared to the "next-gen" consoles. Still, in an attempt to maximize their profit on the platforms that count (in the global scheme of things), EA has pulled a fast one, essentially making the PC version completely redundant. While the current-gen version has access to the "Be A Pro" feature, which is by far the best addition to FIFA games, its control scheme and old-looking gameplay make it inferior to the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions (which are identical).