This game is fucking atrocious.
I’d like to leave it there and get on with my life, but I know that won’t suffice, you’ll want more of an explanation and, God help me, I’m going to have to give it to you.
When I started “Footy Month”, I didn’t originally plan to play this abomination. I’d picked this game up for something like 50p in a bargain bin a few months back. I’d bought it just to have it. I’d bought it just to say that I actually owned it. Being somewhat of a cultural oddity, I liked the idea of having it in my collection. I never had any intention of actually playing the bastard thing! However, when my original choice for a PSX game, Ronaldo V Football, decided not to work I was stuck for options. As a consequence, I found myself having to actually play this monstrosity. Oh the humanity!
For those not au fait with the work of Christopher “Kammy” Kamara, he is an ex-football player and coach who now earns a crust doing punditry for Sky Sports here in the UK. He’s probably most well-known for his occasional gaffs, such as missing a player getting sent off or losing his mind over a goal being incorrectly given. I have vague memories of going to see a Stockport County match against Stoke City around 20 years ago, back when Kammy was Stokes manager. Working in Leek, which isn’t far from Stoke, I have been led to believe from numerous Stoke supporters that he made a shambles of his time as manager for them. In that at least, his football management career and the PSX game bearing his name have much in common.
Where to start with the thoroughly disgusting bucket of shite that was this game? Well, the game has no license to start with, so all the player names are fake. Each team is based in the city of a major country, so England has a team from London and Brazil has a team from Rio, etc. Hilariously, the Norwegian team come from Prague, which is not only 1,400 Kilometres away from Norway’s capital of Oslo, but is also in a completely different country! Yes, as those who excelled in geography at school will already know, Prague is actually in the Czech Republic. How no one clocked this before releasing the game is beyond me, but sadly this is only the tip of the suck iceberg when it comes to this shambles.
The game has perhaps some of the worst gameplay I’ve ever experienced for a football game, with players moving like they are in quicksand and with shooting so disgustingly inaccurate that it becomes an exercise in chance as to whether you’ll even hit the target, let alone score. As opposed to being a full on 11 a side release, the game opts for 5 a side, which fits the “street” theme. Seeing as there are no substitutes and only 20 teams, this could be a chance to give each player on each team their own unique look and personality so they would stand out. However, the game instead just sticks 5 generic looking people on each side and leaves it at that. It’s a real missed opportunity to do something interesting to get around the use of a license, but the game fails at it miserably.
It also doesn’t help that the game has possibly some of the worst graphics I’ve seen for a post 2000 PSX game. This game would have looked awful even back in 1995, but in 2000 having a game this ugly and poorly animated was nothing short of inexcusable. Yes, it’s a budget game, but if this is honestly the best you can manage you really just shouldn’t even try to make the game to begin with. There is not a cheap enough price on Earth that would justify this tiresome mulch of a game.
Some of the teams are male and some of the teams are female. There’s no real explanation given as to why some are different from the other, it’s just the case that they are. This would have perhaps been an interesting opportunity to have some sides which are a mix of both male and female players, but that is also spurned along with anything else that could have potentially made this game more interesting than the oppressive slop it actually is.
For a game being called “Street” soccer, you don’t tend to play on an actual street that much. Some arenas involve you playing in medieval courtyards, while others have you playing in the desert. None of them make any real sense as venues for football, and it only takes away from the game’s theme. How hard does this really need to be? You’re making a game about Street Soccer and you don’t have an arena set in a Brazilian favela? Really? You don’t have an arena set in the undisputed home of the street game? Need I remind you the superstars who have emerged from the streets of Rio and Sau Paulo over the decades? And you still don’t have an arena set there? And rather than stick an actual Brazilian on the cover, you go with Chris Kamara? If your budget was that low, why even bother with putting someone on the box? Did you pay Kammy in toothpaste and matchsticks?
This might be seen by some as overly harsh, but I think it’s valid criticism and perhaps one of the most valid ones I could fling at this pile of horseshit. Street Soccer is a way of life in Brazil. For some young Brazilians, football is the only way they can escape a life filled with misery and hardship. The street game truly means something in that culture, and it deserves to be treated with both respect and reverence. This game does the sport a complete injustice by being an unfinished, buggy, poorly controlled, terrible looking, and downright craptastic release. I’m convinced that every time someone in the world boots this up, a Care Bear dies.
One of the worst games ever made for the original PlayStation. Avoid at all costs.
Unbelievable, Jeff!
I’ll see you next week where I take a look at a very well known Footy game for the Super Nintendo. You might say the Soccer on offer in this game is almost…Super.
Thanks for reading
Nil Satis, Nisi Optimum
You can view footage of the game on YouTube, courtesy of RandomeGaming38, by clicking HERE
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