Smakus's take:

The Fifa Street series of games have a somewhat interesting history.  The original title was one of the first high definition games ever made for a console (on the original Xbox, no less).  With arcade gameplay that generally mimics indoor soccer, the earlier titles found some success and developed a small following thereafter.  However as it appears with Fifa Street 3, EA is looking to close down the franchise and hopefully kill off the abomination that is EA Big.

Single Player and Overall Gameplay: ★☆☆☆☆

This part of the review will be admittedly short.  The reason being is that the single player experience, despite a shallow attempt at making some challenge modes interesting, is just plain boring.  If I could pick a single word that nearly perfectly describes the gameplay in Fifa Street 3, that word would be arbitrary.  The reason for this is because every action in the game seems completely arbitrary.  Whether your pass bounces off a wall to your teammate, goes directly to him, or goes out of bounds, is completely arbitrary.  Whether your goalie does a spectacular save or literally stands there watching the ball roll into the goal is also arbitrary.  Whether you dribble the ball around an opponent, or get the ball stolen is... arbitrary (until I found the cheater move, that is - see the multiplayer section for more on that).  Nothing in this game seemed deliberate or felt like I had any input or direct influence over.  I never felt like I had complete control over my character.  There was always a disconnected feeling between what I was doing with the controls, and what the characters would do on screen.  This makes for a horrible gameplay experience. 

Even when I finally did gain some semblance of how to control the animation system (because believe me, you aren't controlling a character, just a set of pre-canned animations), the game never felt good.  In fact it just plain sucked.  Half of the controls don't even seem to really do anything.  For example, there is literally no difference in which tackle you decide to use (aggressive or normal), either one will arbitrarily steal the ball or likewise punish you for missing it.  This is a real shame because the original Fifa Street on the original Xbox actually felt pretty good.  It was fun playing that game.  Fifa Street 3 is not fun.  And even if you can get your character to do the same moves with reasonable predictability, it never feels good.  It's all just pointless. 

The AI isn't much better.  They do well at fanning out, without ever bunching up too much, but that's about it.  The AI never helped give you any kind of strategic advantage.  Whether you had any help attacking or had somebody back on defense from one encounter to the next seemed completely arbitrary, right in line with everything else the gameplay of Fifa Street 3 has to offer.

All of the game and challenge modes are just re-hashes of the same thing.  How many header goals can you score?  How many gamebreaker goals can you score?  Ok, how many goals with no gamebreaker?  You get the point.  Boring.  These types of goals might seem interesting if the gameplay felt good, or if you actually had fun playing the game.  But alas, it all falls flat. 

Multiplayer: ★☆☆☆☆

When attempting to play an online match you are quickly greeted with the (now standard) EA distortion of what multiplayer gaming should be, namely, another EA contract agreement, complete with spam questionnaire.  Here is how it goes when attempting to play an online match in Fifa Street 3 for the first time:

1)  Please wait while we download the latest terms and conditions.  Do you agree?  Yes/No

2)  Officially register me as the owner of this product?  Yes/No

3)  EA may contact you about EA products, news and events? Yes/No

4)  EA may share your info with select EA partners? Yes/No

5)  You will need an EA account to play online.  By pressing submit, you acknowledge that Microsoft will send your Xbox account info electronically to Electronic Arts in the U.S. to set up your EA account.  This includes your email address and date of birth but does not include credit card number or other financial information.

Can you fucking believe this shit?  Now, we already have an open letter to EA that covers this type of bullshit, but still, you just can't help but feel raped with every EA multiplayer experience.  Let me translate the above for you, in standard English:  EA has the right to shut down the hosting of multiplayer for this game at any time, and in the meantime, we'd like to track all of your purchases, push marketing down your throat, and then sell you to one of our sleazy friends.

Thanks EA, you assholes!

Now, I'll try to put all bias aside and give an honest review of the multiplayer experience:  Whoops, "No opponents were found who are near your skill level.  Would you like to search again or create your own session?"

Damn, I must have been the only person attempting to play Fifa Street 3 online.  I tried literally every multiplayer option I could, from ranked to unranked matches, custom games to quick play.  I never found anybody to play with.  Some would say this shouldn't have any bearing on the multiplayer score, but I disagree.  If there is nobody to play with online, or you have to go through extraordinary steps just to find an online match, shouldn't that reflect in the overall quality of the multiplayer experience? 

In my search for multiplayer fun, I finally wound up creating a match, and just let it sit on the hosting screen for ages in the hopes that somebody would eventually join my game.  My persistence paid off, and about 15 minutes later, somebody joined.  

In terms of lag, the online play was ok.  Minimal stuttering here and there, but no show-stoppers.  As for actual gameplay, well, that's another story.  The person that joined my game thoroughly kicked my ass, and at the same time, showed me a serious gameplay flaw in Fifa Street 3.  In order to score, all you have to do is get the ball, and then continually tap the Y button (which makes your character juggle the ball) all the way down the arena until you get right in front of the opposing team's goalie.  Then just tap the shoot button and viola!  Instant goal.  Tapping the Y button has the net effect of making your player nearly impossible to tackle, while at the same time building up your special "gamebreaker" team power that makes your goals nearly unstoppable.  Superb!  I took my newfound skills into another match (after 10 minutes of waiting for somebody to join) and thoroughly proceeded to kick their ass, only to have them disconnect on me halfway through.  Good times.

After that I only had the patience to play a couple more matches, which is a bummer because it actually was slightly fun once I learned the cheater moves.  I did come across one gamer that gave me a run for my money, but in the end he couldn't compete with my superior cheating.  After a while I just got tired of waiting for tens of minutes for the off chance that somebody would join my game.  I revisited the options of searching for an opponent over and over again, but they never could produce a match for me.  Hosting was the only thing I could do, and I simply got tired of waiting.  My multiplayer experience was (in)complete.  I was done with this game.

Graphics:  ★★☆☆☆

EA cheated on this one... They took the perpetual sunset and burnt-corners look from Skate, mixed it with a little NBA Street Homecourt, and then took the character designs straight out of Orange Box's Team Fortress.  Why they decided to go with the cartoony look for the characters is a bit of a mystery.  Usually you would use this style of art to greatly exaggerate or accentuate your characters, but somehow the characters in Fifa Street 3 actually look more plain than their Fifa 2008 counterparts.  Way more plain.  Seriously.  Most of your teammates look exactly the same, so you never really know who you are controlling unless you stare at the name next to the character.  Animations are also crap, with only a limited handful of them that you'll see over and over.  The tackling foot-sweep move never gets old though, because it almost looks like a break-dancing move.  Just kidding, it does get old.  Very quickly. 

The level designs are actually kind of cool, but there isn't much to distinguish between each one outside of the general lighting.  Am I playing on the oil rig, or the rooftop?  Who knows, they are all pretty much the same.  That being said some of them are pretty, so I can't knock it too much.  From a graphical perspective, the levels of Fifa Street 3 are probably the best part of the game.

Sound:  ★★★☆☆

Nothing exciting here, but what is there is decent.  All of the standard sounds you would expect and attempting a shot has a satisfying thump.

Soundtrack:  ★★★☆☆

Generally speaking, all of EA's Fifa-based games have had great soundtracks, filled with more obscure world-based music and electronica.  Fifa 3 is probably the weakest of the series, but still manages to have a couple decent tracks (unlike other Fifa titles, nothing I would go out and download though).  It's clear they had less money for licensing tracks this time around, and I'm pretty sure I heard all of them during my endless waiting for multiplayer match-ups. 

Overall: ★☆☆☆☆

Save your pennies for another title.  Between the lackluster controls, boring gameplay, and lack of anybody else actually playing this game, it's clear EA Big has lost its way with the Fifa Street series.  Here's to hoping that they abandon this series and all others, and instead concentrate on making a proper sequel to the only game they haven't managed to fuck up yet: SSX.