I wondered how long it would be before someone dusted off the Sensible Soccer name for another outing. It might not have been realistic to look at, but a little under 15 years ago Sensible Soccer was the only football game for the discerning gamer. While most football games superglued the ball to players' feet, Sensi let the ball run almost free, with the ball rolling away from players if they got up too much speed or tried to change direction when moving quickly. Played at a lightning fast pace, Sensi was chaotic, but huge fun.
Sensible Soccer 2006 retains that style – simple, quick (although not as quick as the original) and a lot of fun. The whole game is controlled with just the left analog stick (to move), and the X, Circle and R1 buttons (for pass, shoot and sprint). As you can see from the screen shots, games are viewed from almost directly overhead, with goals appearing at the top and bottom of the screen, rather than the more regular left/right ends, and players all have a deformed 'big head' look. The ball sticks to the players' feet these days, but it's definitely still Sensi.
Hats off to Kuju, they've captured the Sensible Soccer feel, and the game plays just as well as the original did – passes and shots simply go in the direction that you are currently pointing the analog stick, with ridiculous levels of curl available with a flick of the analog stick to the side after the ball has been struck. To tackle you just run into the player in possession, or for those that like something a bit firmer, you can do an impressive sliding tackle with the Circle button. The simplicity of tackling and difficulty of longer range passes means that rapid, short passing and clever use of 'aftertouch' is the order of the day to win games. As you'd expect, multiplayer is the game's strength – 1 v 1 was excellent entertainment for a quick, high-scoring game and I look forward to trying out a full 2 on 2 game.
Take out the multiplayer though, and the modern Sensible Soccer is a bit lacking. The single player game has lots of cups and tournaments to win that roughly mirror the style of real world tournaments, although they can't call the Champions League 'The Champions League' as they don't have any licenses. They're all a challenge, but there's nothing with any real meat to it, like Pro Evo's Master League. Well, there is a career mode where you upgrade your squad of players by winning tournaments, but it's a bit lop-sided as it's harder to win the tournaments at the beginning with your poor players than it is at the end with slightly better ones. There's no online play either, which leaves the lone gamer out in the cold a bit.
Although easy enough to overlook when playing with mates, the presentation is pretty poor. The in-game graphics are nice enough, well animated, and the big head style is cute, but after a while playing on your own it looks quite bland. There's very little sound too – just crowd 'white noise' while the ball is in play, without even an 'Ooo' when you smack one inches over. The menus are plain (and sometimes downright unresponsive), and the loading times can be awful.
The fact is though that it's easy to forgive the shortcomings of the game because it's a nice, safe nostalgia trip – all the gameplay, but none of the pixel explosions that hurt your eyes when you play old games fifteen years after their original release. While I wouldn't recommend this to lone players, at the budget price point it's being offered at I can recommend it to those looking for something different for multiplayer gaming sessions.
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
