Interfering With Play 06/05/08
Posted by Dan Bolas in Interfering With Play on Tue 06 May 2008
Welcome to Interfering With Play. The last week has seen the release of arguably the biggest gaming title ever in the form of Grand Theft Auto IV on Playstation 3 and X Box 360. With so much press surrounding the game, and it spending a considerable amount of time in my PS3 this past week, it would be foolish to not touch upon it during this article. However, I have decided against dedicating an entire section to the game, at lease in this week’s column. Anyone who owns the game will be well aware of its qualities, the sheer size of it and the attention to detail is spot on. If you’re a fan of the title, but don’t own it yet, I can only assume its due to lack of a next generation console or funding, as all the reviews will point you towards picking up a copy. And finally, if you don’t like the game, which I am sure the genre will not appeal to everyone, then you will simply not be interested in anything that is said about it. With that said, I would like to begin with this week’s Interfering With Play.
The Big Four: Week One
Over the month of May, Interfering With Play will be looking at four of the biggest titles in Football Gaming history, focussing on why they were so important and giving you the opportunity to decide on whether or not you agree with their place in the ‘Big Four’ category.
Just to give you a brief introduction upon this feature, having played through a number of old school football titles over the past 12 months, it got me thinking which ones were true classics, and which ones were really nothing more than copies of original masterpieces. Of course, everyone is going to have had that one game, be it football or any genre, that will have eaten away hours and days of their childhood, and view it through rose coloured glasses when discussing it in a forum environment. I have tried my very best to put those glasses away when writing this article, and have left one or two of my all time favourites on the bench, opting for titles that are not only considered to be universally ground breaking, but also have offered enjoyable and lasting gaming experiences. Please note, these games may not be considered great games during a modern day market place, but at the time, they provided ideas and options that were ground breaking.
Sensible Soccer (1992) Amiga- I have started at the true beginning of football gaming. Up until Sensible Soccer, football games fell into two very distinctive categories. They were either top down experiences, almost indefinable from Rugby or Basketball games, and featured very little in the way of aerial based football, or side on games, which provided oversized players upon tiny pitches. This of course was mainly down to the power of the systems they were running upon, and many games actually only featured 7 or 8 players per team, due to graphical constraints. This is not saying these top down titles or small-pitched games didn’t catch the imagination. I personally loved both Kick Off and Emlyn Hughes International Soccer as much as anyone, but they lacked the realism of a proper football match. Sensible Soccer revolutionised football gaming in so many ways. In spite of being on the Amiga, it managed to feature hundreds of playable teams, all of which were completely editable. Some of the teams and players names may have been fake, but one night spend editing and you had a game that was as realistic as the episode of Match Of The Day you had just watched. This was taken further by the comedy teams, completely made up teams based on things you would find in your kitchen, or parts of a car. These would not have been to everyone’s taste, but the casual gamer could pick up a side and have a laugh seeing their star striker “Fridge” score past the opponents goalkeeper “Exhaust Pipe”. Again, these were easily editable, so you could end up making your entire school team, or in one of my mates cases, a team for each class at school, giving a real personal feel to one of the domestic leagues. For the first time on a football game, skin colour and hair colour were also customisable. Gone were the days when everyone playing for Italy must have dark hair, and everyone from Brazil must be dark skinned. This was something unheard of in 1992, and really paved the way for future titles to do the same thing. Up until this point, strips were also merely one of 16 different palette colours, meaning yes, you could wear your team colours, but realistic interpretations of your team’s shirt were not available. Sensible Soccer offered hoops and striped shirts among other designs; featured games in 2008 are still missing! The ability to save highlights is now something very much taken for granted, with memory cards and huge hard drives sitting in our home consoles, it’s a simple way of showing off our best goals or pieces of skill. Sensible Soccer allowed you to do this first, saving your best games to show to your mates. But the mode that really strode onto new ground was the game play. Whilst still being very close to top down, the camera was on a slight tilt, giving the illusion of height and power when kicking the ball. The fact that having two buttons, one for pass and one for shoot, worked so well is a testament to the pick up and play ability of the game. Still to this day, there is little more satisfying then a well-timed diving header flying in on ‘Sensi’, and that is a sign of a top game.
I am going to now open the floor to the PESGaming.com public. I am aware that Sensible World Of Soccer, the games follow up title is available on X Box Live, and the original is available for download off a number of different sites. Please feel free to share your experiences of Sensible Soccer, love it or hate it. Do you feel it is worthy of its place in the Big Four, or are there any other key points I have missed when describing it. At the end of May, there will be a poll on PESGaming.com allowing you to cast your vote for which of the Big Four is the overall champion.
Still Got It
As I said I wasn’t going to dwell on GTA IV this week, over the past 7 days, a certain game has spent hours in my PS3. Its an exceptionally strong game that will take weeks for me to finish, and is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. However, I go back to one of my original points, and that is following a heavy gaming session, I always seem to sneak PES2008 back into the console for a cheeky game. This is the pure beauty of Pro Evolution Soccer, and always has been, its ability to entice you back. This is not aimed at the people who don’t own PES, or those who traded the game in after two weeks, as they don’t understand it. This is not aimed at the casual player who pops round his mates and plays the game with a beer in hand, as they won’t have experienced it. This is aimed at the gamers, or PES players who have put the hours in, who have got to know the game, and love it for all its faults, and still want to play it. In my 3rd year of Master League, I have gone undefeated, and sit one game away from the Champions League final, having won the Division One cup and League on Top Player. I am not saying this to boast, I am saying it to show that once I win that Champions League, I will have to all intents and purposes completed the game. Yes there are further achievements to unlock, but the main game mode, in the same way that Assassin’s Creed or Rainbow Six Vegas have mission modes, will be done and dusted. But of course, with PES, the game never truly ends. You can carry on that season, and keep it going, potentially for as long as you wish. With the European Championship’s just around the corner, I know I will be dipping once again into an International League to be playing with one of those very sides. The fact that after 7 months, I am still playing PES as much is a testament to the lifespan of an ‘unfinished’ game. It’s not perfect, but its still very good fun!
One Two
Having played Sensible Soccer this week, prior to writing the Big Four, has anyone wondered why it hasn’t been made available for PSP or DS? It makes me smile that people have been complaining about the lack of two shoulder buttons for the PSP version of Pro Evo, yet Sensi used to keep so many gamers captivated using just two buttons!
A Life Sentence
A point that has been mentioned a few times upon the forums here, and indeed everywhere else on the net is the lifespan of computer games. I mentioned earlier how I am still playing PES 7 months on, and GTA IV has been dubbed with over 40 hours of Single player game play. Some gamers seem ‘ripped off’ that certain titles, for example Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, feature such short single player modes, and therefore can not be considered as ‘full games’. The dilemma is something that has raged on for many years due to the fact of Eastern gamers. Japanese gamers like to fly through games quickly, they like to get quick achievements and like to feel good about themselves. Western gamers tend to prefer a sterner challenge, and would rather graft away at a title for many hours in order to get a ‘hard earned’ reward. This is how the gaming industry stereotypes the different cultures, and for many years, this would strictly set to. Games like Tomb Raider were frowned upon in Japan because of their long complex levels, whereas many Japanese games never made it to Europe due to them being ‘too easy’.
Nowadays, the lines are less clear, and titles tend to be released more universally, allowing the audience to pick up whichever suits them. Some gamers will have loved the Call Of Duty 4 single player experience, as it allowed them to follow a very strict line and end up jumping through the hoops to complete the game. Others will have found the game too short, and may feel that the game could have been drawn out. No denying though, whilst playing COD4, you were never bored, as it was 6-8 hours of action sequences. Compare this with a game like Oblivion, a game that features in excess of 50 hours (or so I am informed) worth of game play. Some people will see this as great fun, and riding a horse from village to village in order to pick up items will be exactly what they are looking for. Others will find this exceptionally tedious, and therefore will stay miles away from the game. These games are completely different to each other and should be judged as such. A game should only be as long as it needs to be, and whilst COD may have been short, it was great fun while it lasted and definitely the finished product. People who claim these kind of games to be poor because they are short are missing the entire point of them, and that is for quick action fixes. To put it into media context, a new DVD may cost £13.00, and give you 1 ½ hour’s entertainment. Whilst a game may cost almost three times that, it will give you at least three times the lifespan. If you wish to complain about companies cashing in on titles, I ask you to look no further than EA Sports, who are charging £40.00 for Euro 2008, a game which is little more than a watered down Fifa 2008.
That’s it for this week. As always your comments are more than welcome at the bottom of the article. danbolas@hotmail.com is the address you can reach me on if you have anything you wish to say personally! Please include your views on Sensible Soccer if you do comment.
Thanks for Reading
