FIFA World Cup for iPhone

Official iPhone game of the 2010 World Cup

FIFA World Cup is the official game of the World Cup in South Africa. The game challenges you to qualify then go on to the finals and attempt to win the greatest prize in soccer.

FIFA World Cup is endorsed by football's governing body, meaning that all of the teams and players are officially licensed. The format and schedule of the World Cup finals is set up exactly as it will be in real life, and the actual stadiums have all been realized in the game.

FIFA World Cup gives you the choice to try and qualify, or proceed directly to the final tournament. Other game modes include penalty shoot-out, multiplayer over WiFi or Bluetooth, and the Captain your Country mode. The latter of these sees you take charge of just one player on the field, while the CPU takes command of the rest of the team.

The controls in FIFA World Cup are based around an on-screen joypad. The joystick on the left is used to move the players around, and the buttons on the right are used for actions such as shooting, passing, tackling, etc. This type of control system gives FIFA World Cup a definite disadvantage of its console-based bigger brother. It often make hard to see exactly where your players are because they are obscured by your thumb or finger. Personally, I find both FIFA World Cup and the FIFA 10 game much harder to control than other iPhone soccer games, such as X2 Football, for example.

In terms of its graphics, FIFA World Cup doesn't offer anything particularly special. The animation is OK but the player sprites are very spindly looking and their movement is slugglish at times. The commentary isn't very in-depth and there seems to be a lack of audio samples in there, as team and player names are rarely announced.

If you already have FIFA 10 on your iPhone, there may not be much incentive to go buy FIFA World Cup. However, if you want the ability to take control of any international team in the World, and fix up an encounter between Benin and Macedonia like we did, FIFA World Cup will serve you well.

FIFA World Cup won't go down a classic but it's a fun way to warm up for the actual World Cup.