GAMES .: REVIEW

May 2002
by Q.Mulative

SEGA SOCCER SLAM

This is the game igncube.com has been hyping for months before it's actual release. It's basically Sega's take, on Midway's take on sports games. NHL Hitz with Soccer, except instead of just lighting your team on fire, you can also turn them into water, freeze them, electriy them, or make them glow a healthy radioactive green (this also affects the ball). After finally renting this game and giving it the once-over, I believe it was worth the hype, for the most part. The graphics are great, the characters have personality, and even the voice-acting is passable, except for some taunts, which are just weird (E=mc kick-butt?).



In Single-player mode, you're probably going to want to play through the quest, which is where the characters experience their storylines and gain special boosts (e.g. when you buy Angus a special shield, he uses it in the game to power up his hits.) Each character has his own individual story of how they joined the Soccer Slam league, and the player experiences them by the threes, as each team consists of three players. This makes 18 different storylines in total, and each character has their own country of origin and outrageous accent to match ("Eet waz natheeng!" says Arsenault, the player from France, after scoring a goal). It works for a while, but after one or two run-throughs, it starts to lose a bit of its punch.



Multi-player is what this game is really about. Matches can be organized so that they're 3 players against 1 (the one has the option of controlling the whole team, or just a single character), or 2 on 2, but there is no four players against the CPU option, as there are only 3 players per team.

My final verdict: This game definitely has the charm, but not the staying power to be a classic. Unless you're a big sports gamer with a fondness for great special effects, you'll probably tire of this game after running everyone through their quest.

IMAGE SOURCES
Screenshots are from Sega.com.

Genre - Sports / Action

Developer -
Visual Concepts / Black Box Games
Publisher - Sega of America
Release - March 2002

Save - Memory Card

Players - 1 to 4

LINKS
Sega.com Site
Official Site

 

 

Binary Score

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