Football. Eh? Small boys running in the park. Jumpers for
goalposts. Is there a better way to spend 90 Minutes ?
Well, yes, there is actually.
Let's deal with the good things first. With few new Dreamcast games coming out
now there's no new competition for a football title, although a game would have
to go some to improve on last year's
Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000:
Euro Edition.
On the plus side, this game has the players' real names and the usual plenty
options to play Exhibition matches with the home teams, a World Championship,
Domestic games, Competition matches such as the World Challenge Cup and the
European Trophy as well as a spot of training.
On the down side, the graphics and sound are nothing to write home about.
Although there are options to choose the stadium, the inside pitch of which
is identical, the kit and other sundries, it's how these are executed that is
the problem. Playing the old Sensible Soccer was nothing major to look
at, but at least when you moved your players they went where you wanted them
to go. Here, the controls are unbelievably sluggish. If you change the direction
of your player, he takes about a second to react to it, by which time the
opposition has taken the ball from you! Did no-one play-test this before
releasing it?
Also, very often, the game suffers a slowing down of movement as the ball
travels round the pitch as if it's a high-spec computer game running on a
low-spec PC. How on earth is this possible?
Commentary on the game is nothing more than you'd expect and the apparent
roar of the crowd sounds more like Niagra Falls in full flow than a large
group of people.
It's hard to find originality in a football game, so there's no surprise to
be learned when I say this has none, but if
Virtua Tennis 2
can have mini-games then why not other sports?
Longevity, anyone? If you can get "90 Minutes" of gameplay out of this title
I'll be very surprised indeed.
GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
On the down side, the graphics and sound are nothing to write home about.
Although there are options to choose the stadium, the inside pitch of which
is identical, the kit and other sundries, it's how these are executed that is
the problem. Playing the old Sensible Soccer was nothing major to look
at, but at least when you moved your players they went where you wanted them
to go. Here, the controls are unbelievably sluggish. If you change the direction
of your player, he takes about a second to react to it, by which time the
opposition has taken the ball from you! Did no-one play-test this before
releasing it?
