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For the purpose of total disclosure, let me say from the outset that while I’m not the world’s biggest football (soccer) fan, I love videogame soccer.  I have tons of soccer cartridges and cd-roms that I’ve imported over the years—dating back to a time when I liked watching soccer more than I do now.  Soccer games just seem to capture the essence of the sport more so than other sports games.  So, despite being rather clueless about the current stars of the sport, I was looking forward to World Tour Soccer for the PSP.  Unfortunately, WTS isn’t quite the game I’d hoped it would be, though it isn’t bad for a first generation release.

At its core, WTS is a very standard modern soccer simulation.  I didn’t encounter anything in the way of an innovation nor any element that seemed terribly outdated, outclassed by other soccer sims.  Graphically, though the individual elements are tiny given the need to show a good chunk of field, the game looks pretty much on par with the first generation PS2 soccer games.  Actually, given the quality of the PSP’s screen, the game looks a little sharper than those releases.  The character models are small, but well animated and the stadiums are good looking but rather sparsely detailed.  The sound is really pretty basic—nothing particularly great or noticeably bad, though the dearth of soundtrack songs separates it from, say, an EA offering.  In total, the graphics and sound package is about what I’d expect from an initial system offering.

The controls and interfaces are intuitive and well done, giving the game a solid pick-up-and-play feel that befits a hand held game.  These elements are somewhat dampened by the longer than average load times and the lack of mini-games or 

 

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situational game modes.  Game play is typical for the sport with zero in the way of innovation, something that seems typical with this generation of soccer games that polish rather than evolve the old formulas.

For the most part, WTS is bland and non-involving.  The only truly bad element of the game is the difficulty level.  It is very hard to lose a game of WTS.  I know that that is true for most sports games after 

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a player has a few games under his or her belt, but with WTS, it is impossible to lose right out of the box.  The problem is that the A.I. simply doesn’t score enough to make the game challenging on any setting.  The game has some realistically low  scores (1-0, 2-1), but there really isn’t any tension once the player gets up by a goal. 

I’ve yet to play the other PSP soccer game, so I can’t compare the two, but if WTS were the only product available, I’d say skip it unless you were a huge soccer fan and couldn’t resist the urge to play a modern soccer game on the morning commute.

- Danny Webb

(September 6, 2005)

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