The presentation is fantastic and really captures the global feel of the game. The game opens up to a global map nestled on the right side that rotates according to the continent where the player wants to pick a national team. Amazingly, as the globe rotates away from the sun, the geographic areas light up to indicate nighttime. It's one of the small touches that really separate this game from the current-gen titles. The loading screens fire off facts about each nation playing, from their World Cup placement in the past, to trivia. They're small touches that seem to contribute well to the international feel of the experience. Load times don't seem overly awful, although EA's PR has already reassured us that the load times will be even better in the final version.

2006 World Cup has plenty of modes to keep soccer fans occupied well after mid-July determines the best team on the globe. Of course, there's a World Cup mode, in which players can choose to either work their way up from their regional tourneys to the World Cup, or they can decide to start off smack dab in the Finals. There's also a Penalty Shootout, which should hone players for those overtime golden goal head-to-heads. New to this game (and seemingly nicked from other EA titles, like NCAA Football) is the Global Challenge. In the Global Challenge, players get to relive regional rivalries, like US vs. Mexico or Italy vs. Poland. There are sometimes score deficits which the player must overcome to take the victory, or there are real World Cup finals in which players can rewrite the history books. Likely due to the Xbox 360's emphasis on online multiplayer, The Lounge mode, which is in current-gen, does not appear to be in the next-gen version. Sorry, couch warriors.


The title will support Xbox Live, of course. However, our build didn't have online capabilities, so we couldn't even get a morsel of how it could run. Not that we'd run a review without taking a test run with real gamers on Xbox Live first, but it would've been nice to get an early peek. Hopefully, it will run better than the absolutely horrific online experience we had during the system launch with Road to World Cup.

The buzz and anticipation looking toward Germany this summer is building up more and more as the months get closer to June. The World Cup always shuts down most of the world in some way or another during some hour during the months of June and July (except in America, but that's a wholly different topic). EA's installment looks to build on that buzz when it releases shortly. It seems as though EA Canada has been working hard to deliver a next-gen experience that doesn't feel nearly as rushed as last fall's hastily launched debacle. So far, so good at this point in production. 2006 FIFA World Cup looks to be a perfectly fine official title to accompany both the world's finest soccer players' foray into Germany and the gamers who love them.