Majesco
Very often when drive to grandmas house in the car you get restless. You get bored and want to be active. Well thats where your trusty GBA comes into play. Playing soccer on-the-go is the closest thing youre going to get to being on the field without actually being able to smell the fresh grass.
In David Beckhams Soccer, you play as any number of international teams in the hopes of scoring more goals than your opponent. Of course, you already knew that. It really does sound simple, and in fact the game really is simple. The action is seen from an isometric view with sprite players and a Mode-7 field that stays in the same perspective but scrolls up, down, left, and right.
Features
- Created under the guidance of David Beckham himself.
- Lots of international teams to choose from.
Lets find out if this game is a winner, or deserves the red card right out of the gates.
Jason Nuyens: From the minute you flick that little power knob on for your GBA, you know you are in for a rough ride. The screen is so dark that I bet even the GameBoy Advance SP wouldnt help. My guess is that the developers actually forgot to test out the game themselves on a real GameBoy Advance unit. What is more aggravating is that the art wouldnt have taken too long to overhaul. There is so little art in the game that it would have taken far less time to overhaul than took the Rayman Advance team when they had to re-create all the art. What a pity that an entire game is wasted from poor brightness implementation.
Once you get to the playing field and attempt to shake off the dark visuals (literally), you will instantly see how simple this game really is. Everything in the game is simple right down to the controls and animations. For instance, the controls consist of pass and shoot using B and A respectively. However, the aiming for both is completely digital in nature. This leaves you with only eight directions to shoot the ball at any given time. Now I know that the GBA doesnt come with an analog stick for precise aiming, but thats why many sports games have used lock-on passing. Even just the option to lock on to a teammate for passing would have made huge amounts of improvement. As it stands, the controls are really clunky and limiting.
On the animation side of things, you still have an inherent simplicity. When the ball changes directions, every single non-player character changes direction too. It looks really robotic and unnatural. The other problem is that sometimes the characters seem to move far too slow. For instance, in the tutorial (which Ill get to in a second), the characters seem to trudge along as if walking through molasses as you wait for your turn to try out the moves. Maybe its just me but I would rather be playing the soccer game instead of waiting ten minutes for someone to place the ball in front of my player. The player animations, unfortunately, are just as disappointing. They are very small (and dark, as you may remember) and sometimes almost scary. The idle animations make them sway back forth slowly as if they are zombies. I must admit, Ive had that thought run through my mind more than once. If there are any kicking animations then I cant notice them since the players are far too small. Basically the graphics and animations are lacking sorely, and could have used a truckload of elbow grease to polish them up.
The games one shining moment was the idea to put in a tutorial. Notice how I said the idea was the saving point, not the implementation. Because the implementation is flawed and clunky (noticing a trend?) However, it was nice to have a list of topics to choose from to learn how to play. You could learn how to pass, power up kicks (hold the shoot button), and play defense. Good idea for a sports game, but the execution is sadly flawed. As I pointed out earlier, the slow movement of the characters means you will be spending more time waiting to play than playing itself.
I was really hoping I didnt have to comment on the artificial intelligence in the game. Its an area that really is bad enough that I dont think much needs to be said. Players mechanically and robotically move like zombies towards the direction the ball is heading. The second you have the ball and are running towards the net, the AI picks up speed (Mario Kart 64 anyone?) and will get you from behind. What little AI is in the game is wasted on trivial routines like speeding up the computer so they can intercept you.
This is a game that you will put down after about ten minutes of play no matter how hard you try. I have been playing in spurts over the span of days trying to see what I am missing, but with no success. The game truly is simple, and not in a positive way. Yet another title to add to the ranks of "released game which are truly unfinished but were rushed to the market." Heres hoping that many changes are made for any future releases. Jason Nuyens