FIFA Street boils soccer down to its core: fast rushes, stylistic moves and fakes, and power shots that can take a keeper's head off. Instead of a team of eleven, on a plush green field, you play teams of four on four in the back alley behind the bar. Or on a unused basketball court. Or in a dirt and trash strewn ghetto street in Rio. The game focuses more on style over strategy, where gameplay comes down to button timing and "combo-move" like controller handling to juke your opponent, bounce the ball off the wall and finish with a good cross goal. Tricks are king, and the game is fast and tense. When you finish playing, you feel like you played Street Fighter, not Madden, and tend to twitch for a good couple of hours afterwards.

Like previous arcade sport games, FIFA Street has a combo bar that accumulates points when you do "cool things." For instance, faking a defender, passing it between their legs, or bouncing it over their head nabs you points. You can also do various taunts to build up more points, such as my favorite "standing on the ball and staring at them." After your trick meter fills up, you get one "Game Breaker shot" from any member of your team which makes your kick go into "bullet-time" and blast past the defender. While strong, it's not unblockable, and some of the best moments are when the goalie or defender gets in front of your power shot, and you get to see him keel over in slow motion. It's sure to make you all teary eyed, or at least wince once or twice.

While there is some defense, such as stealing the ball or blatant "knock them to the ground" tackling, (no red cards here my friend) pretty much the only thing that keeps the score from being 50-49 in a six minute game are the keepers. The CPU keepers are insane at being able to block the ball, and in some games the only way it seems to be able to get the ball into the net is to build up your trick bar and then make a power shot. Even those get blocked half the time, so you have to set up plays, usually involving getting crosses over to your most accurate player and shooting immediately.

With four players, positions aren't really critical, other than one, mostly AI controlled, keeper. Instead, each player has certain skills that are better than others, and an overall point ranking. Some players might be better strikers, some might be better at accuracy, and some might be better at pulling off tricks, faking around his opponents like Thiery Henry on fourteen cups of coffee.

Speaking of Henry, yes, a number of popular players make an appearance in the game, either on teams you construct as a "Star Team" or as both opponents and players you can buy during the game's campaign mode. A lot of the big names are in there, including dream squads like the French Street team of Henry, Viera, and Pires. Even Freddy "the whole MLS marketing plan rests on me" Adu is in the game, as a top American team player. While you may personally disagree with these superstars' stats or styles as portrayed in the game, the characters themselves look spot on. You can even dress them up in officially sponsored gear, as some of the most blatant product placement I've seen to date lets you upgrade and put your players in Nike shoes or Adidas shorts. I tend to protest this blatant commercialism and stripped every one of my players down to his skivies and made him play barefoot. That's how you REALLY play soccer. Shockingly, not wearing name-brand shoes didn't affect my players' game at all... hmmm, there might be a lesson here...

There are basically three modes in the game: "Game On" and "Friendly", which are single games where you set up the options, and then Rule the Street, the game's campaign mode. Rule the Street is where you'll spend most of your time, and reminds me a lot of the original Tony Hawk games. In this mode, you create and customize a player that you'll keep throughout the campaign who will play a non-keeper position. You'll also get to pick a roster of "B teamers" who are barely adequate to get you built up enough to buy a better team. With this merry band of misfits, you travel from city to city, playing in that city's home court, against that city's home teams.

Each city consists of three basic game modes: beat the other teams eight times in "kick abouts", play a mini-tournament to "Rule the Street" in that city, or try to add that town's top talent to your own roster by playing against them in "Upgrade Squad". For example, say you are playing in New York City and decide you want to recruit Adu to your side. You must first prove your worth to him by beating him and his team before he'll join your roster. And you have to pay for that privilege, so if you lose you not only don't get the player, you lose your "skill bills", the in game currency. But, if you win, you get to remove one of your has-beens from your team and replace him with the bright shiny new all-star player. At least until you upgrade him with an even better player down the road, as the rosters are fixed in size. This forces you to make some tough decisions at some point when your most loved player in real-life doesn't quite cut the mustard against some of his peers.

As you win each match you get skill points that you can apply to raising your skills and buying new players. Its important to keep upgrading your campaign player because he's always on your team, and pairing him with far superior players will throw things out of balance. Also, I feel its better to specialize that player in certain skills, until he builds them up fully, instead of spreading his skill points amongst all of the categories. You'll have better chances to score if you play each player toward their specialty, rather than just running fast breaks all day with whoever has the ball. You also build up "street rep" which opens up new kits and sets your overall game "experience."

As you Rule the Street in each city, new cities open up for you, giving you more opportunities for gaining new players and progressing through the game. There are ten cities to play through, and each gets progressively harder than the last. You aren't forced to do them in order, or even to clear out each level, but you'll find quickly that you need to gain the experience and loot to be able to take on the better teams.

The other major game modes aren't that imaginative. Both modes let you set up teams, or play nation vs. nation to see which country has the best all-star players. The teams and venues change, but the basic gameplay is the same - get more goals than the other team, in the same stadiums you play in campaign mode. Nothing you do in these other modes affects your campaign game either.

Outside of the game modes, there's not a lot to this game. The character customization is pretty full featured and well built (though, you can't create a female... tsk tsk, EA.) but there isn't much beyond that. The music in the game is typical EA fare, but there isn't much of it, so it gets old REALLY quickly. I had to turn it off after the first couple of hours so as there is only so much techno-reggae my ears can take. That is probably my biggest disappointment, because I'm starting to really look forward to hearing new tracks in my sports games now.

What makes the music worse is that the game is so damn addictive, so you hear it over, and over, and over. The developers really did a good job in balancing the thrill of all the good parts of soccer, with arcade action and style. I make the comparison to Tony Hawk for a reason, as it grabbed me the same way: you sit down to play "just one match" and next thing you know its 3am and you've woken up the neighborhood with your screams of bloodlust after losing a Rule the Street match in overtime when you CLEARLY blocked the shot, and you just KNOW that Cisse would have never made that shot in real life....and.... and...

Ahem. I rest my case. While there isn't a lot to it, this game is highly addictive, and fun. If you are into soccer at all, go buy this game immediately then clear your calendar for a little while. If you aren't into soccer at all, but like sports games, go rent it anyway. You'll probably get hooked just the same. If you aren't into sports games, well, maybe get one of your friends to rent it, then go over to their house. You might just unleash that "inner hooligan" just dying to get out.