Fifa 98
You challenge someone to find fault with this review. How about this for starters: I quote the opening paragraph:
"Four years ago, EA Sports turned the soccer gaming world on its ear with the release of Fifa: Road To The World Cup 98, featuring brilliant gameplay, excellent graphics and a massive selection of teams. RTWC was the best soccer game available by a country mile"
That is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever read (and that's saying something for online journalism). Did the reviewer ever actually play FIFA?
RTWC was ok - certainly an improvement over Fifa 97 (shudder), but to say it was the best football game available 'by a country mile' is ridiculous. I remember the reviews - magazines like N64 and Gamesmaster gave it scores in the mid 70%s-early 80s. This is in contrast to the first N64 ISS game which was universally accepted as incredible for the time; CVG remarked 'five years ago, this would have been a vision of the perfect football game'. Granted, ISS had faults but critically (if not commercially) it still blew Fifa out of the water. I still play it occasionally today (and check out my FAQ on gamefaqs.com).
I'm not going to stop there. Remember WWS 97 on the Saturn? This also got much better reviews than Fifa. Personally, I would also add the ISS Deluxe on the Snes and Sensible World of Soccer to the list of better games than RTWC. If ISS Pro was out at the time, add that too (even before Evo, Pro was amazing).
Fifa was slow and unresponsive, and the tackling (ISS's best feature) was lousy. The reviewer is right in some respects though - the graphics weren't bad, and it was comprehensive in terms of teams. Brilliant indoor mode too (one of these for PES 2 please Konami).
So there you go. Point challenged.
DISCLAIMER: The above is extremely pedantic, arguing with one minor point of an otherwise excellent review. Good job.