#270 Sensible World of Soccer

Posted: 3rd August 2016 by Jeroen in Games

531th played so far

Sensible_World_of_Soccer_cover

Genre: Sports
Platform: Amiga/PC
Year of Release: 1994
Developer: Sensible Software
Publisher: Renegade/GT Interactive

More football games, more sports, more of what I feel we’ve seen before. Sport games just as much feel like they’re a checkbox game – same functionality, each adds a feature, but how does Sensible World of Soccer compare to FIFA 10, what more would it offer?

Our Thoughts

This… was a football game. Slightly more playable than other games, I’m happy to report, as it seemed like it handled better, but I still didn’t manage a win. I did manage to score though, that was a big win. But more on that in a bit.

For me, more strategy player than twitchy action game, this game had the perfect option. Rather than playing out the entire game each time, you can let the game resolve the results of your matches, while you just set up the strategy – an early Football Manager setup. It may not seem like much, but means that you can still progress at a somewhat faster pace.

As said though, the actual matches, which should be the focus of the game, aren’t my sort of thing. Two notes I’ve had is that, first of all, the aiming is pretty bad – there isn’t much granularity to be had. That was off putting, as was the player AI in general, which didn’t get the players where you want them.

Final Thoughts

These football games really just aren’t my thing, but it also feels like there’s no game that seems to really train you in them – some game-based cultural heritage that I never learned. Unlike FPS games, however, I haven’t been picking up on it as I played, partially because, again, the games don’t seem to be set up for it.

The football manager mode was nice, though, so this isn’t a lost cause. If anything, this is something I expected to see resolved in later games instead. A good try, with a supposedly decent simulation (for its age) – and the reights to a lot of the real life teams and players of the day!