Perhaps the best way to work on improving your skills in 2006 FIFA World Cup is to play through its Global Challenge mode. After choosing a team to take control of, you'll be tasked with beating no fewer than 127 (compared to 40 in the home-console games) different match scenarios with varied objectives. The challenges, which get harder as you progress through the mode and travel to different continents, typically start midmatch and task you with achieving a certain result before the final whistle is blown. Some of the objectives are much more interesting than that, though, and really do a good job of forcing you to focus on specific aspects of your game. There are challenges where you're required to retain possession of the ball for a certain percentage of the time, for example, and others where your opponents are only allowed a certain number of shots at goal before you fail. In what we'll diplomatically refer to as a nod to Sony Europe's World Tour Soccer series, 2006 FIFA World Cup also offers challenges in which you're required to score a certain number of "soccer points" by playing attractive soccer.
The unlockable bonuses in 2006 FIFA World Cup include five Adidas balls, a dozen videos showing off the German stadiums where the World Cup will be contested next month, and classic strips for England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. You'll unlock each piece of bonus content either by beating a territory's global challenges or by succeeding in the World Cup with a certain team--the specific details of how you unlock everything can be found in the game's rewards menu.
When you feel like pitting your 2006 FIFA World Cup skills against a human opponent instead of the CPU, the game's options include ad hoc play for up to four people and one-on-one online play. The ad hoc matches that we played were completely lag-free and were even more enjoyable than the time that we spent playing solo, simply because the CPU-controlled opponents are a little predictable at times. Our online experience of 2006 FIFA World Cup, on the other hand, wasn't nearly as painless. After going through the usual EA Nation ritual of agreeing to let a soccer-themed Web site send you spam via email in return for having your $2 fee to play online "sponsored" by them, you'll find yourself in a lobby where there are four different rooms designed for players of varying abilities. To date, we've never witnessed more than a handful of players online simultaneously, though, so in practice you'll just want to head for whichever room everybody else appears to be hanging out in.
Before starting a match with another player, you'll have an opportunity to check out their win and loss statistics, as well as the percentage of games that they've started and then quit out of early. We recommend paying attention to that last one because, at least based on our experiences with the 2006 FIFA World Cup community thus far, many of them prefer disconnecting midmatch to losing. Irritating players aside, 2006 FIFA World Cup can be a lot of fun online. It's not lag-free by any means, though, and the slowdown occasionally gets so bad that the game becomes frustrating.
The PSP version of 2006 FIFA World Cup plays a very enjoyable game of soccer and offers enough improvements over its predecessor to make it worth a look, even if you already own that game. Regardless of whether or not you plan to take advantage of the game's multiplayer features, there's plenty of content in 2006 FIFA World Cup to keep you entertained up until, during, and long after the upcoming tournament in Germany.
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