Despite being British, I’m not much of a Ssoccer fan. In fact couple that with my general indifference to tea and my devil-may-care attitude towards scones the reasons for my departure from that damp land become abundantly clear. I don’t often catch retarded commentary in reviews of soccer games. Fortunately some of my readers do, and they let me know about it.

For the first time since taking open submissions I had to ask the writer if they minded awfully… er… toning down the language a bit. This is the second version which is cleaner both in a linguistic and, I suppose, a literal sense. I think the first draft used up the nation’s supply of the phrase “cum-soaked”, so keep in mind if you plan on using the phrase at any point before December 31st you are in fact pulling from next year’s reserve.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Slightly-edited user submitted content follows:

I know, I know… it’s just a football game, who cares? Still, this is one of the worst reviews I’ve ever read.

It leads with a full quarter of the review featuring name dropping and credmining while Andrew Fitch talks about Madden. Great start.

He then follows up by putting Landon Donovan on the same pedestal as Villa and Forlan, just in case anyone questioned his nationalistic pride come the commie trials, I guess. Or it might be because the only ‘soccer’ he’s ever watched is this year’s World Cup and suddenly he’s an expert. Right?

He blames the game because it doesn’t turn Diego Forlan into some sort of football golden gun. He complains that Martin Tyler is too ‘dull’ and wonder aloud if EA might bring “English sensibility and American-style enthusiasm… to the FIFA franchise.” just in case you forgot his jingoism from before.

He derides ‘Be A Goalkeeper’ because being a goalkeeper is boring. Anyone who’s played goalkeeper (or had watched a game of football, or had a capacity for critical thinking) already knew this. Slow clap.

And then of course there’s this, which cannot be summarized and must be appreciated in all its glory:

And, as always, you’ve got those issues that won’t show themselves until millions of fans get their hands on the game, such as online connectivity issues or game-breaking bugs. While I didn’t personally encounter any serious issues during my time with the game, I won’t assume they’re not there…

Ohhhh - those issues he hasn’t seen and doesn’t know exist but assumes they exist because he’s a (can’t we go five minutes without foul language? - Ed.)

And then the cop out conclusion paragraph. It’s not as bad as IGN’s hilarious Football Manager 09 review (Note, the preceding link points to Yahoo! Games’ mirror of the original review and isn’t a Google Cache link - Ed.) but Christ, it’s still a shocker. How is it that FIFA as a series has been out for 18 years and we still see this kind of crap from the big sites?