The first time you play FIFA Street you’ll be encouraged to create a custom player for use in friendly games and in the “rule the street” career mode. The customization options are somewhat limited, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to create a player who bears at least a passing resemblance to you if that’s your goal. Once you’ve settled on your custom player’s physical appearance, you’ll be allocated 2000 “skill bills” (FIFA Street’s currency) to spend on upgrading his attributes, which include speed, shot power, shot accuracy, tricks, and tackling. Your player will be pretty useless at this point, but that will change once you start progressing through the career mode and earning more skill bills.
FIFA Street’s version of soccer is a four-on-four game played on pitches that are, predictably, daubed in graffiti and that really don’t look like anywhere you’d want to be alone after dark. Matches are played either to a time limit (including the traditional halftime swapping of ends) or until one team scores a predetermined number of goals, the default setting being five (most matches last anywhere from two to 10 minutes). Since the pitches are all enclosed and there’s no referee, the only time there’s any kind of pause in the play is when a goal is scored, at which point the unfortunate goalkeeper will get the ball out of his net (assuming that he has one on the pitch in question) and roll the ball out to one of his teammates to get the game under way again. The lack of stoppages makes for an exciting and fast-paced game at times, which is unfortunately a lot more than can be said for the players’ artificial intelligence.
