FIFA Soccer 08 marks the franchise's first venture onto the Wii, and EA has been rather talkative about it the past couple days. Between an interview with Eurogamer and interview with Gamespot, plenty of new details have arisen.
A customized Mii of this year's cover athlete, Ronaldinho, is featured in a Wii-exclusive Footii Party mode. Much like Madden NFL's Party Mode, Footii Party features local multiplayer minigames that take advantage of the Wii remote. There are three minigames: Table Soccer, the equivalent of foosball; Boot It, a fast-paced game where players take turns kicking balls at the goalie; and Keep Up, a soccer juggling game. Players can import their Miis for use and stat-tracking in the Footii Party mode.
Local multiplayer includes normal matches alongside Footii Party, and the online mode features leaderboards, message boards, and two player matches.
With the Wii version comes a completely revamped control system. "We tried sticking the Wii Remote to the bottom of a sock," producer Tim Tschirner said. It didn't work out, though. "It felt strange kicking air, if you didn't have contact with a ball." Still, he's confident they managed to map the controls to hand motions pretty well, despite the fact that soccer is almost all foot. The nunchuk is used for controlling movement and the remote is used solely for things done with the feet—passing, shooting, tackling, and the like. When players get into a rough situation, instructions appear on screen with examples of what motions to make. Tim says they took a cue from Nintendo in trying to make the game as user-friendly as possible.
As a result of the reworked controls the game has a more arcade feel than past iterations of the FIFA franchise, but EA believes that it is for the better.
FIFA Soccer 08 is due for release September 25, 2007 in North America. Europeans will get FIFA 08 a couple weeks earlier on September 7. You can check out the first screens of the game here.
A customized Mii of this year's cover athlete, Ronaldinho, is featured in a Wii-exclusive Footii Party mode. Much like Madden NFL's Party Mode, Footii Party features local multiplayer minigames that take advantage of the Wii remote. There are three minigames: Table Soccer, the equivalent of foosball; Boot It, a fast-paced game where players take turns kicking balls at the goalie; and Keep Up, a soccer juggling game. Players can import their Miis for use and stat-tracking in the Footii Party mode.
Local multiplayer includes normal matches alongside Footii Party, and the online mode features leaderboards, message boards, and two player matches.
With the Wii version comes a completely revamped control system. "We tried sticking the Wii Remote to the bottom of a sock," producer Tim Tschirner said. It didn't work out, though. "It felt strange kicking air, if you didn't have contact with a ball." Still, he's confident they managed to map the controls to hand motions pretty well, despite the fact that soccer is almost all foot. The nunchuk is used for controlling movement and the remote is used solely for things done with the feet—passing, shooting, tackling, and the like. When players get into a rough situation, instructions appear on screen with examples of what motions to make. Tim says they took a cue from Nintendo in trying to make the game as user-friendly as possible.
As a result of the reworked controls the game has a more arcade feel than past iterations of the FIFA franchise, but EA believes that it is for the better.
FIFA Soccer 08 is due for release September 25, 2007 in North America. Europeans will get FIFA 08 a couple weeks earlier on September 7. You can check out the first screens of the game here.