The demo of FIFA 2000 has just been released. It should be very strange if not many us are all sitting home playing and enjoying it. This article can also be defined as a review of the demo by someone. I don't want to make any conclusion of what category this article should fit into. So just make up your own decision.

I started the download of the demo immediately. I got very very excited when I saw the demo was out. I knew that the server already was overloaded, but I was so exited that I couldn't wait for mirrors to get up so I started to download anyway. To 10% the speed was acceptable, 3.0 kb/sec to 3.5 kb/sec. I have a ISDN connection and I can get a speed so high as 7.5 kb/sec on really fast servers. That's only on one line. On two lines the speed doubles, but the telephone cost too. From 10% to 40% I used three hours and the speed was only 1.2 kb/sec. VERY SLOW! I decided to wait untill some mirror sites was up. The day after I woke up (Saturday) I discovered that Mike had posted some mirror sites and I knew that I was going to play FIFA 2000 within minimum 30 minutes. I downloaded the rest 60% from Telepac.pt and the speed was very good, 6.9 kb/sec.

When I installed the demo and started it up for the first time, I was very impressed. Please make a notice that didn't have the possibility to try FIFA 2000 before the demo was released. The graphic, the gameplay, the audience and the sound! I LOVE IT! Also this years edition of FIFA lives up to it's anticipations. I still wonder how EA Sports is capable of doing that every year.

You only get to play 45 minutes which in real time means around 3-5 min. When you are finished with the 45 minutes and want to exit, you can't do that. I repeat: when the referee have blown in his whistle, you can't exit the game. You must see the features for the full edition for 18 seconds (I have taken the time) and then you must load a new game. When you are in the new match, there's no problem. Just click on the ESC button and the main menu pops down. Dumb ass, many of you may think about me now. He can just use Alt + Tab, Alt + F4, the Windows buttons or just click on Ctrl + Alt + Delete one time. The problem is that none of these combinations works. EA Sports have cutted out their function. Just try for your self if you don't belive me. What I have described above will I define as the most annoying and the most negative with the whole demo.

I have a Pentium 200 MMX, with 64 MB of RAM and a Voodoo 2 card. I can admit to my self that my computer is getting old. (If you are sitting on Pentium III, 600 MHZ with 128 MB and a Matrox G400 graphic card, please don't laugh of my computer. Every day I nag my parents asking about a new computer. I'm at least trying to get a new, better one!) My conclusion is that FIFA 2000 needs more RAM rather than MHZ on lower resolutions to have an acceptable performance. When I play the FIFA 2000 demo the gameplay run smoothly almost all the time with 640x480, with 800x600 I don't feel any difference. When I take out 32 MB RAM of my computer, leaving me with only 32 MB RAM, the performance is acceptable. It also doesn't run smoothly when many players are in the view at the same time. You almost won't notice any performance difference with 800x600 with 32 MB of RAM than with 640x480.

In the game I feels like that there is taking too long time from the "hard" tackle to the referee blows in his whistle. I don't know if some of you have experienced this, but it is almost constantly happening with me. (Maybe the referee uses some time to decide if he are going to blow or not). It doesn't seem like EA Sports have fixed the problem this year too, but it's still difficult to score from a long distance. I have only once managed to do it, but that in that episode I must admit that I had very much luck that the ball went by the keeper and into the goal. There should also be other teams rather than Galaxy and D.C United which are in the English version! I can also confirm that the other teams which you get to play when you choose another language on the installation is correct. Please see Mike's post earlier today.

I now that I have written a lot of words here and I don't know what to say any further. If you haven't downloaded the demo yet, DO IT! You won't get disappointed. The game it self is so good that you will completely forget all the small annoying problems. Feel free to send me comments about this article on kristoffer@soccergaming.com

I haven't downloaded the demo yet, so where do I get it? You are just a click away from it.