After several years of development and ownership by Eidos/Silicon Dreams, EA releases the official Champions League game for the 2004/2005 season.
The engine’s last rehash debuted on FIFA 2003. It draws most of its gameplay elements from the 2005 edition but with some changes to gameplay, such as a slightly more aggressive AI on the attack (reducing the need to constantly push players forward using the Off The Ball controls, which are still present), new refereeing aspects such as some deliberate errors (as in occasional bad offside calls or throw-ins, not cheating the player through mistakes), advantage rule, and handballs. As a directional arrow and power bars govern how balls are crossed, and there are four-player movement setups, each corner, and an indirect free kick is unique; this approach is far less rigid and formulaic. For direct free kicks, players can take driven or curving shots or pass to a neighboring teammate to exploit a defensive gap. Instead of being limited by the distance to the objective, all possibilities are always open. Many of these innovations were later incorporated into the new FIFA 06 engine, also chosen as the match engine for Bright Future’s future FIFA Manager.
Goals, fouls, and attempts on goal are recapped in the full-time highlight reel and during game stoppages and PiP popups, taking cues from real-world television broadcasts. Because the game is presented in a fake letterboxed format, statistics will occasionally appear next to the scores, allowing you to track them for specific objectives. The ability to see the energy bars of the closest players to the ball on both teams and icons indicating the most significant players’ unique talents (speed, shooting, dribbling, or tackling) was a much-requested feature.
One of the possible modes, but not the most important, is the Champions League, in which the player leads one team to the Final in Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium in the bid to supplant FC Porto as European Champions. That honor goes to “The Season” mode, in which the player begins by creating his managing avatar and then proceeds to a series of 50 missions, the first of which is a close last-week match against a Champions League spot rival, followed by a buyout of the club and increased expectations, and (hopefully) concluded with the Champions League final. This mode also allows players to unlock additional features such as balls, a stadium, and unique exhibition modes by completing objectives set by the club president during the season, some of which are crucial matches (failure can result in sacking), while others are simply balancing the squad. Other modes include friendly games, “home and away” (a two-legged friendly), scenarios (in which the player can construct situations such as defending a 1-0 score for 45 minutes while two men are down), and practice.
