What FIFA World Cup '06 does, it does very well. It's what is left out that holds this game back.
FIFA World Cup '06 is the latest attempt by EA Sports to bring the glory of the World Cup to your screen. First things first, when you turn on FIFA World Cup '06, you'll notice a very nice music soundtrack for your menu perusing, highlighted by a track that features the Black Eyed Peas. In addition, if you aren't in a gaming mood but you still want to groove to the music, the game has a soundtrack mode for your listening enjoyment. The main menu and all subsequent menus are easy to navigate.
There are only three modes of gameplay for FIFA World Cup '06 on the PSP platform. You can choose a quick play mode, in which you pick your team and another international team and battle it out in a friendly. There's a World Challenge mode, where you take a team and attempt to complete unique tasks against every other team in the world. Then there's the primary mode, where you try to take your country to glory by winning the World Cup. You can choose to play in preliminary action, or you can skip the formalities and go straight to the finals.
So how does the game play? In a word, nicely. After some time, you'll begin to make dribbling moves and cutting patterns by reflex, and you'll also get adjusted to the new shooting technique. In this game, holding down the shot button will determine how high your shot goes instead of how hard. There's also a shooting meter under the man in possession. You have to release the shot button within a certain range on the meter for an accurate shot. Defense is difficult but not impossible to master. You can also change your attacking and defending strategies on the fly, which is a very nice feature. And if you think the game is getting to easy for you, turn up the difficulty level, and you'll swear you're playing a different game.
However, there are many way in which FIFA World Cup '06 falls short. The most noticeable shortcoming of the game is the fact that you have no control of the direction of your shot. This makes for some harried moments when your shot goes straight at the goalkeeper in the late moments of a match. Winning the World Cup has no special animation at the end of the final, which is remarkable considering the animations for scoring goals (which, annoyingly, tend to run back to back after putting one in the net. How many times do you see a goal-scorer slide to the ground, then get up and do the airplane, then congratulate his teammates?) With all the other animations in the game, you would figure winning the cup would get you some dramatic scene of players rejoicing with the trophy in hand. Load times for the game are comparatively short, but you get the same little "Did you know" factoid every single time with your team. Trust me, if you take the U.S. to the World Cup, you will never forget that the U.S. team made the semifinals in the first ever World Cup. Also, with only three modes of play, the replay value of the game is downgraded.
I would definitely recommend trying out the game for its high points. FIFA World Cup '06 will make you pump your first when you succeed, and will tempt you to throw your PSP when you fail. It's very engaging, but the lack of extra modes and other shortcomings make a good game out of what could have been a great one.