2006 FIFA World Cup lets gamers and soccer fans experience every footballer's dream of bringing home the biggest prize in world football. This EA Sports game challenges you to lead a nation's team through the highs and lows of qualification, as you play teams from your chosen continent in order to amass enough points to take you to the World Cup Finals. Alternatively, you can skip the qualifying and get straight to the tournament in all its Teutonic finery. As you compete in the 2006 FIFA World Cup mode, you get a passport which gets stamped every time you beat another team. Every country you defeat earns you a stamp, with bonuses for completing a FIFA WC Zone. Points can be earned as you conquer teams from around the world, and these can be spent in the virtual store, to buy kits and players, etc. There's a virtual magazine available in-game too, with all the news and statistics to keep you abreast of all the tournament's happenings. There's an interesting Objectives mode included in 2006 FIFA World Cup which comes with a range of demands, such as providing a feast of goals to keeping your team's hopes alive against the odds. You can practise your spot kicks in the Penalty Shootout so you're ready for those tense moments after extra time has elapsed with neither team able to get ahead. But 2006 FIFA World Cup is really all about the tournament itself, and it's comprehensive alright. We like to think we're well-travelled men of the world, but Cape Verde from the African qualifying group caught us out and had us reaching for the world atlas - at least until we noticed that the game menu was showing us in pinpoint detail where this island is. And did you know that Paraguayans have two native languages? No, us neither, until we started to pay attention to the menu screens. Very educational. 2006 FIFA World Cup is sufficiently different from EA's aesthetically similar FIFA 06 - no faffing about too much with the management side of things for a start - and the strict tournament qualifying structure is a boon somehow. At the time of the game's original release, we're just a few weeks away from the tournament for real, and 2006 FIFA World Cup is the ideal warm up.