That, is just brilliant.
Written: Jun 13 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The game
Cons: well, no club teams?
The Bottom Line: If you like the beatiful game, and own a Sega Saturn, you should own at least one Sega Worldwide Soccer game. Seriously.
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: Sega Worldwide Soccer '97 for Saturn |
To continue my own personal little celebration of Euro 2004, I felt like taking a look at another of my favourite footballing titles from years gone by. While I would have liked to review SWWS 98, it isn’t on here, so I’ll make do with 97, which is almost identical anyway.
When I talk to the average Joe about games and the Sega Saturn comes up, the quote “total flop” comes up ten times out of ten. But another one comes up quite often, another one I totally agree with “but it has to be said that that Sega Worldwide Soccer game was bloody class”.
The game was one of the Saturn’s only titles that you can talk about favourably with those who only play games casually and not be looked at funny, and is a close runner to its 98 counterpart for the title of the best football game ever.
The game has some pretty great visuals for the time, with them still looking pretty damn good to this day, with the only real downside being the crow’s in the stadiums, but this has been a problem for roughly 98% of all football titles ever.
The sound is also pretty top. The crowd are good enough to get you going, and commentary is provided by Gary Bloom, formerly of Football Italia, this is a really good reading of commentary, and avoids the ridiculous comments of Motson in the FIFA games, and Bloom was a pretty good commentator in real life, so it makes it less irritating to hear you are crap from someone who actually could talk and make sense.
The controls are in this formation while on the ball:
Y:Tactic Change
X: Activates Keeper Z:Tactic Change
L: Sprint B: Pass R:Tactic Change
A: Shoot C: Cross/Lob
And Without:
Y:Tactic Change
X:Tactic change Z:Tactic Change
L:Sprint B:Shoulder Tackle R:Change Player
A: Slide Tackle C:Tactic Change
All of these respond essentially spot on. The controls are simple enough to master, and pick up and play is important to a football title.
There are a variety of game modes, ranging from Exhibition to World league to international cup to shoot out amongst others. The game generally lets you have any type of tournament going.
So how does it play? Like Thierry Henry. Brilliantly.
The controls are well placed out, and respond almost perfectly. This is not one of those games where you only seem to be able to score in one way. You can run in and slide the ball past the keeper Henry style, hit a Nedved-esque long range peach or just plant a nice Ally McCoist style poacher’s header. It is a football game as football games should be. There are plenty of fouls, yet like in real life the referee makes mistakes, as do the keepers, who are actually useful, but can make mistakes.
The CPU difficulty is hard enough to be challenging, without being horribly tough. But who buys a footy title for 1p play?
Multiplayer modes, like all good sports titles, are where this beast shines. Expect arguments, celebrations and general football happenings while playing this game.
Of course the game isn’t totally perfect. You can only play as international teams, however this was somewhat remedied in the 98 release. The lack of real player names could also be irritating; if it wasn’t for the fact you had a player name editor.
SWWS is a hard game to talk about, seeing as I could have just written the words ‘BLOODY GREAT’ and it would have been a fairly accurate review.
If you are a football fan, you really should get around to owning this, or the 98 upgrade, it truly is the best 32-Bit representation of the beautiful game, and is definitely a candidate for the best footy title ever.
The makers of the PlayStation era ISS games openly admitted that this game was where they got a lot of their ideas, and it is just sad that the series never took off as it deserved to. SWWS98 was another excellent entry, but the two Dreamcast SWWS titles 2000 and 2000 Euro Edition, both made by a team different to the makers of the Saturn games were both disappointing. Who knows, maybe one day we may see a new SWWS title on the Xbox 2 or PS3, but until then SWWS on the Saturn will do me just fine.
Other Football Reviews
International Superstar Soccer Deluxe for Super Nintendo
Olympic Soccer for Sega Saturn
FIFA 2003 for Microsoft XBox
AC Milan Home Shirt 02/03 by Adidas
France Home Shirt 02/03 by Adidas
Italia Home Shirt 00/02 by Kappa
AS Roma Third Shirt 01/02 by Kappa
Escape to Victory
Recommended:
Yes
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flash-hammer
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