Showing posts with label Sport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sport. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

FIFA 08

Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Canada
Genre: Soccer Sim
Release Date: Oct 9, 2007 (more)
ESRB: EVERYONE
Number of Players: 1 Player
Number of Online Players: 2 Online

FIFA Soccer 08 is the next release in the long-running simulation series from EA Sports. Most of the features of FIFA 07 return in FIFA 08, with a host of new features that aim to liven up the gameplay.
FIFA 08 introduces a new engine--called the 35-point decision engine--that enables players to react to situations and make realistic decisons. Other new features include improved shooting, where a variety of factors now affect the ball after it is struck, including ball spin, pressure from defenders, player attributes, and even air resistance and pressure. FIFA 08 also introduces a new feature called "Be-A-Pro" that will allow player to control individual players for entire matches.

Screen Shots

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Monday, August 20, 2007

FIFA 2002

Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: EA Sports
Genre: Soccer Sim
Release Date: Oct 29, 2001
ESRB: EVERYONE
Those who hammer the buttons on their gamepads as though they were synthetic rodents in a whack-a-mole game had best prepare for their day of reckoning. The foremost proponent of willy-nilly button-beating, EA Sports, has used the latest edition of its vaunted FIFA Soccer series as a springboard to a more thoughtful and more challenging control method that genuinely alters the way the game is played. Penalizing adrenaline-fueled thumb jockeys and rewarding those who initiate actions only after quick consideration, FIFA Soccer is quite simply a more grown-up affair than its predecessors. That it also offers improved passing and player movement and a generally more credible feel are just two more reasons fans of real-life soccer will find this the most enjoyable soccer experience on the PC to date.
Since its debut in the mid-1990s, the FIFA series has continually ranked as one of the strongest PC sports games on the market. If the series had a low point, it was in the highly stylized FIFA 2000, which focused on graphical prowess and high-speed button pushing over believable gameplay. In doing so, it seemed to herald a trend toward even more arcadelike gameplay in the future. Fortunately, things got back on track with last year's FIFA 2001, a game that showcased a renewed commitment to authenticity and now can be viewed as an obvious stepping-stone to this year's model.

In FIFA 2002, the gameplay is noticeably slower and more deliberate. Players behave even more like human beings than they have in the past--taking a few moments to gather in passes, accelerating slowly, gaining momentum in their first few steps, and ultimately losing steam toward the end. Rapid and repetitive button presses only hinder subsequent maneuvers, and manually controlled speed bursts do not generate the temporary supermen seen in prior editions. Passes must be delivered with an emphasis on trajectory rather than raw speed, and shots on the goal should be measured and carefully targeted if you don't want to miss the net completely.

The art of tackling has undergone a particularly satisfying revision. No longer do slide tackles carry a player 20 or 30 feet across the field, razing opponents without fear of punishment. Now, you had best measure your chances of contacting the ball first, or you'll risk drawing a yellow or red card. As such, an aggressive tackle is recommended over a conservative approach only in the most dire circumstances.
Artificially intelligent players without control of the ball display newfound canniness in some situations, though they may just as likely infuriate you in others. It all depends on whether the program has been coded to recognize the play you want to set up. Normally, teammates smartly predict strategies and move skillfully to open areas, setting up for quick one-twos or running at double speed to await perfectly timed lobs that drift just over the heads of defenders. EA has added new visual cues such as trailing red streaks to help identify which of your players is currently making a break for open ground. Sadly, teammate reaction is less convincing when the human coach leads his or her ballcarrier on an abnormal crossing pattern or otherwise atypical maneuver. In such situations, nearby players tend to stop or shuffle about listlessly rather than adjusting and moving where you want them to go.

The ebb and flow of the team is especially believable. Offensive forays are stifled not just with well-timed interceptions or tackles, but also with appropriate positioning. Watching a computer-controlled side move toward midfield, only to play the ball back and regroup when faced with a threatening but as yet uncommitted wall of defenders is something FIFA veterans have rarely seen before. Shot and goal totals are still a bit too high, and defenses continue to possess uncanny skill within the box--often dispossessing ball carriers and picking up loose balls faster than they do anywhere else--but EA Sports has generally done a fine job determining the final tally according to quality of opportunity and ball possession, total number of shots, and overall dominance. In short, FIFA 2002 beckons you to play again if just to more effectively implement your strategy and more astutely man the controls.
Minimum System Requirements
System: PII 233 or equivalent
RAM: 32 MB
Video Memory: 4 MB
Hard Drive Space: 50 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: PII 400 or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Video Memory: 16 MB
Hard Drive Space: 510 MB
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Saturday, August 11, 2007

Winning Eleven 7

Publisher: VU Games
Developer: KCET
Genre: Soccer Sim
Release Date: Apr 9, 2004
ESRB: EVERYONE
Customization: Editing Tools
Offline Modes: Competitive, Team Oriented
Number of Players: 1-2
It may have official FIFA PC licensing; it may have dominated the genre for the better part of a decade; and it may have climbed to such a lofty position of strength that it's driven away virtually every contender. However, Electronic Arts' celebrated FIFA Soccer series may not have the PC footie market cornered after all. Fresh off its 2004 revision, in which the game's producers have once again shown a disturbing recent penchant for sitting idly upon the throne, the FIFA series is also now in the midst of taking a full-on broadside from an exciting newcomer. With World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International, Konami brings its console soccer hit to the PC for the first time and, in the process, proves that EA's reign is suddenly as shaky as the San Andreas Fault. Whether it's superior overall to the durable EA franchise is open to interpretation, but one thing is clear: Winning Eleven 7 is a superb game that sounds great, looks impressive, and gets the most important element--playability--just right. No true PC soccer fan should buy into the EA FIFA machine this year without first investigating Konami's superb alternative.
As the title suggests ("Winning Eleven" stands for the number of players on a soccer side and "7" stands for the number of annual revisions in the game's history), Winning Eleven 7 is far from a brand-new series. In fact, it has existed in the console realm since 1996. Granted, North America didn't get its first taste of the game until 2003's Winning Eleven 6, when Konami released it for the PlayStation 2 crowd. But this is the first time we've seen it in PC form, and it's not a moment too soon.

When EA's FIFA Soccer rose to prominence in the latter part of the last decade, it did so with a solid combination of presentation and user immersion. Featuring full FIFA licensing--which allowed EA to use all the real-world players, teams, and stadiums--and EA's masterful 3D graphics and animation technology, FIFA's visuals simply blew its competitors away. Its lengthy roster of user options certainly didn't hurt, nor did its gameplay experience, which represented a clever balance of detailed team management and coaching decisions, as well as an ever-growing inventory of player actions and moves. Still, recent editions have not exactly been filled with innovations, especially in terms of the product on the pitch. What had once seemed like amazing gameplay back in the late '90s began to feel arcadelike and fanciful. Could real-life players pull off the moves you'd see on a FIFA Soccer pitch? No. Could one real-life team completely dominate another in every facet of the game and outshoot and out-chance them by the widest of margins, only to ultimately lose because some unseen force wanted it that way? No. Did an EA game really feel like the pass-happy, calculated, and sometimes plodding experience of a real-world FIFA game? Not usually.

Conversely, Winning Eleven 7 plays very realistically indeed. In all truth, very casual PC soccer players may not notice much of a difference between the two approaches. Moreover, those who prefer a fast and more-whimsical game that often keeps things interesting by maintaining an undeserved tight score may even prefer the EA game. Nonetheless, Konami's latest soccer extravaganza will most likely satisfy those serious soccer students who've grown somewhat disenchanted with the EA methodology.
Minimum System Requirements
System: Intel Pentium III 800MHz or equivalent (Athlon/Duron/Celeron) or equivalent
RAM: 128 MB
Hard Drive Space: 640 MB
Other: Nvidia GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 video card; DirectX 8.1-compatible sound card

Recommended System Requirements
System: ; Intel Pentium IV 1.4GHz processor or equivalent
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Drive Space: 1200 MB
Other: Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti, ATI Radeon 9600 or higher video card; DirectX 8.1-compatible sound card
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Sunday, August 5, 2007

TOP SPIN 2

Publisher: 2K Sports
Developer: Aspyr
Genre: Tennis
Release Date: Mar 16, 2007
ESRB: EVERYONE
Connectivity: Online, Live Aware
Resolution: 480p, 720p, 1080i, Widescreen
Customization: Editing Tools
Offline Modes: Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Online Modes: Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Number of Players: 1-4
Number of Online Players: 2 Online
PAM Development delivered a high-quality game of tennis when it originally brought Top Spin 2 to the Xbox 360 a year ago. It wasn't particularly revolutionary, but it offered a flexible character creation system, a playful career mode, first-rate production values, and most importantly, some of the sharpest, most nuanced tennis action to be found anywhere. Aspyr has now brought Top Spin 2 to the PC, and although most of what made the Xbox 360 version great remains applicable here, the passing of time and some sloppiness in the translation make it a less impressive package all around.
First off, you should know that this is a game that simply demands you play it with a gamepad, and unsurprisingly, the Xbox 360 controller proves to be ideal. This necessity is driven by the fact that Top Spin has always offered a slightly more technical game of tennis than Sega's standard-bearing Virtua Tennis franchise, though it's still quite easy to pick up. You've got four basic swings, including the aptly named safe swing, which will never go out of bounds, though the other three shot types require a bit more finesse to keep inside the lines. The slice shot flies low and fast and is great for crossing up your opponent; the topspin shot flies straight and bounces high but moves fast and can slip right past opponents who aren't on their toes; and the lob shot, which should be used sparingly, can be very potent against aggressive opponents apt to ride the net.

While the four basic shot types can be used at any time, eight additional swings require some portion of your momentum meter. Momentum is gained and lost naturally as you score points and are scored on and can be used for either risk shots, which take up big chunks of your momentum, or advanced shots, which eat up a more modest amount of momentum. The advanced shots are high-powered versions of your standard swings. Risk shots are even more powerful, but as the name suggests, they're rather risky, too. Holding down the assigned modifier button before you start a swing will bring up a rising power meter, which you need to stop right at the top. If your timing is off, you'll botch the shot and likely give your opponent the upper hand. If you nail it, the ball moves hard and fast and can be difficult to return.

As potent as they can be, though, risk shots are usually worth taking only during your first serve, when you have a free pass to hit the net. Otherwise, the stakes are too high, and it's prohibitively difficult to keep an eye on the meter and your opponent while also keeping your player in motion in the middle of the match. While the risk shots still don't have an optimal risk-to-reward ratio, they've been refined a bit since the first Top Spin, and they don't have any ill effect on the rest of the gameplay, which is consistently responsive and, thanks to some aggressive and skilled artificial intelligence, regularly quite intense.

Digesting all of the tennis jargon in Top Spin 2 can be a bit much if you don't know the sport, and hopping right into the game's exhibition or tournament modes may give you a bit of a rocky start. It's best, then, that you go into the game's career mode, which does a fine job of casually acclimating you to the nuances of the gameplay as you play. Before you start mastering your smokin'-fast ace serves and humiliating dump shots, though, you'll have to create your own custom tennis pro.

In addition to offering basics like gender, age, and nationality, the character creation system in Top Spin 2 gives you rather impressive control over the facial features and physical build of your player and is almost comparable to the character creation system found in 2K Games' The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion--though, as far as we could tell, there's no option to create a crazy magic-adept lizard-man tennis pro in Top Spin 2. Maybe next year! There's kind of an "uncanny valley" thing going on with the facial features. The skin tones often have flat, mannequinlike sheens to them, but the player models still feature a good amount of realistic detail. Despite the support of higher screen resolutions, it can be tougher to make the tennis pro you want in the PC version, as the work-in-progress model you're shown during the creation process is blurry and indistinct, making some of the finer details hard to make out. It's odd, because once you're actually in the game everything is crisp and clear. The animation has also suffered in the translation. There's still some nice subtlety to the players' movements, but the smoothness of the Xbox 360 version has been replaced by erratic choppiness. This isn't just a minor aesthetic problem, as it can affect the timing of the gameplay as well.
Minimum System Requirements
System: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3200+ or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB
Hard Drive Space: 4500 MB
Other: 3D Hardware Accelerator Card Required - 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible

Recommended System Requirements
System: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3200+ or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 256 MB
Other: Geforce 6600 or Radeon X800
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Monday, July 23, 2007

Championship Manager 2007

Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Developer: Beautiful Game
Genre: Soccer Management
Release Date: Oct 13, 2006 (EU)
Number of Players: 1 Player
DirectX Version: v9.0c

Championship Manager is a name that has become synonymous in the UK for over a decade with the concept of a great, in-depth football management game. Originally developed by Sports Interactive, the game has been the responsibility of Beautiful Game Studios (BGS) since 2004. Unfortunately their initial attempts frankly weren't up to scratch but with the benefit of time and stability under the new SCi-Eidos regime, the team has succeeded in building those early efforts into something far more worthy of the CM brand.

This year's iteration is undoubtedly the most convincing edition yet and gives you the task of choosing any team from a total of 63 league tiers in 26 countries with which to find glory. What that glory might be will depend on your choice of team. Chelsea, for example, would no doubt demand an excellent showing in the English Premier League, as well as a more-than-respectable level of advancement in the Champions' League. But if you decide to opt for the likes of Farnborough Town, which would probably just settle for avoiding relegation from the English Conference South, a different kind of challenge would await you.

But your first choice, once you've set up your own manager's profile, is to work out which leagues you want to run and how much detail you'd like the game to go into. If you've got an older machine, it'll help to keep the number of active leagues relatively low and simulate the rest, although you can only take jobs from active leagues as determined at the start of the game. It's common to choose the country you want to start in, as well as a few others, and it's possible to limit the number of leagues playable within a given country.

Once that's done, and you've decided on a team, you'll be responsible for pretty much every decision you can think of that a football manager in real life would make. First of all, you'll need to think carefully about the players at your disposal and whether you want to mould a team around a certain formation, or vice versa. It's important, especially at lower-level clubs, to spend some time looking at the players' statistics--of which there are many--to see who might perform well in any given position.

Of course, there's far more to take into account than bare stats alone--the age, morale, and general happiness of a player can contribute to whether or not he'll perform. And until you've played a number of matches, it's hard to get a feel for a team that you don't know very well.
Fortunately, that's exactly what preseason is for, with a raft of friendly matches that will have been arranged for you. These games are designed to give your players the chance to gain match practice before the proper season begins, but also to give you the opportunity to experiment with formations and tactical settings. However, it's worth bearing in mind that the opposition is likely to be doing the same, so just how much valuable information you gather during this time is always open for debate.

The hub of the game focuses around match day itself. When your team is due to play, you'll see a list of fixtures onscreen, before being taken to the dressing room for the team talk. In CM 2007, you have the opportunity to utter some words of inspiration--or condemnation--before a match, during halftime, and after the final whistle. You can also talk individually to players, as well as give an overall address or keep quiet if you'd prefer. Different team members will respond better to different messages, depending on their personalities. A feedback area at the bottom of the screen will give you some idea about how certain players have reacted to your comments. As you progress in this way, you'll get an idea of how to motivate the various characters on your team to get the best from them.

After that, it's on to the real action, and you can choose to digest the match in a number of different ways. The game is played out automatically, without any intervention from you unless you decide to make a tactical change. As in real life, once the whistle blows, it's up to the players. You can view as much or as little of the on-pitch action as you like, but you'll usually want to stick to the highlights--near misses, red cards, injuries, and of course, goals.
When one of these highlights occurs, you can watch the match in a kind of 3D that's an approximation of what you might see on TV. Should you so desire, you can also change the viewing angle. Although players aren't represented realistically, as you might expect from something like FIFA 07, you get a good idea of the movement and the ball and players.

On the plus side, being able to see a game play out in this way gives you much more of a visual clue as to where your team is doing well, or not so well, and it's certainly easier on the eye than CM's text commentary roots. However, the drawback is that most people buying this game will be used to watching real teams play on TV, and unfortunately, BGS still has some work to do on sharpening up some of the player intelligence. There has definitely been an improvement made to the match engine since CM 2006, but watching just a handful of games will present a myriad of odd decisions.

For example, on a number of occasions, we witnessed situations where a challenge would occur on the edge of the area, which resulted in the ball trickling toward the goal and just past the post as the goalkeeper and nearest defenders stood by and watched. This usually resulted in a corner to the opposition--despite the fact that there was ample time and opportunity for one of our team's players to rescue the ball.

On another occasion, we managed to score from a free kick that was taken midway in the opposition's half. Curiously, most of the players on the pitch were huddled about 15 yards from where the kick was being taken, while a lone pairing of striker and defender stood on the penalty spot. The ball came in and was nodded home by our striker--the oddest-looking attack-free kick we've ever seen.

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium III 1GHz or Athlon XP or equivalent
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Drive Space: 400 MB

Recommended System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 2GHz or Athlon XP or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Hard Drive Space: 400 MB

Screen Shots

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Supreme Snowboarding












Game Details:
publisher : Atari
developer : Housemarque
genre : Sports
ESRB rating : E
homepage : http://www.supreme-snowboarding.com/
Release date : Jan 2000 (released)

Snowboarding seems almost out of season in April but Supreme Snowboarding comes on the heels of a series of snowboarding titles released for next generation consoles. PlaynGo transfers the formula found in those games to the Pocket PC. While some snowboarding titles emphasize tricks, railing and jumps, Supreme Snowboarding is more interested in races and times. As such, the game is broken into free race and championship modes. A good two-thirds of Supreme Snowboarding's initial runs are locked and you have to unlock them through the championship mode. Championships involve a variety of time-based challenges issued to you on a particular run. After you complete a challenge, another run will open up and you can practice the newly opened run in the free race mode until the next one.

Like many snowboarding games in this genre, Supreme Snowboarding keeps track of a plethora of personal achievements. Best times are kept for each specific run. Moreover, you can save and load different championship runs so you don't mix up the progress of your individual snowboarders, or it prevents someone else from muddling yours. One of the problems I cited with the Xbox snowboarding title Amped is the fact that the runs themselves were geographically wide and lateral. Supreme Snowboarding, probably owing to the PDA's portrait configuration, still demands lateral movement but its courses are more elongated. They privileged length over width. This gives the game more of a race feeling and since performance is really based on time, it is aptly fitting. Jumping is still pretty useful in the game though. Performing certain jumps will earn you extra time bonuses. Some jumps are also timed so you can shave off a few seconds by going over obstacles, and on certain runs you can even jump over a snowed-in car.

Visually though, Supreme Snowboarding is a 2D top down title. Its animation is smooth and there is a slight trace of particle effects when you navigate through the snow. Particularly noteworthy is the attention to the star of the game itself, the snowboarder. The persona may be small but it reacts naturally to the varying degrees of turns applied. Unfortunately, the snow looks fairly bland and artificial. It effectively is one sheet of white pixels and the lack of anything organic about it almost makes it unbelievable. It could easily have been a blue background and turned into a Transworld Surf title. The visuals are saved by the sound effects but even those are far and few in between. I often wished Supreme Snowboarding would take a more aggressive, in-your-face type attitude that is often evoked by the sport itself. Perhaps a little music and commentary would make it more in line with the sport.

With experience, I found that one of the most crucial things about snowboarding games is the controls themselves. If they're too tough, you'll find yourself battling the control schema as much as you are the actual runs themselves. If they're too easy, a fast run might consist of nothing more than a few timely nudges. Thus, the actual connection between the snowboard itself and the player is absolutely crucial. Supreme Snowboarding gives you the choice of controlling via the stylus and the PDA's keypad. Both avenues don't provide absolute control. Those thinking you can simply draw a line from the start of the run to the bottom of the run will be in for a surprise. Supreme Snowboarding is about controlling the snowboard itself. And the physics of momentum mean you can't stop or turn on a dime. As you can probably guess by now, it takes quite some time to accelerate in Supreme Snowboarding, but it's helped (whereas Amped was not helped) by the fact that the runs are fairly lengthy in nature so you have ample real estate to gather speed. There's a slider in the main menu to control how sensitive you want the turning to be. On higher sensitivities, you don't feel as much friction but again, it's never as easy as merely connecting the dots with your stylus on the PDA screen. PlaynGo's idea of snowboarding, just as in real life, takes some getting used to.

In total, there are sixteen tracks altogether, of which you'll spend the majority of your time overcoming challenges to open up the latter ones. The runs increase in difficulty but unfortunately, there's no briefing screen or option to see the run before it happens. Because of the somewhat stiff controls, you really have to plan ahead of time to get the minimum times to complete challenges. This will undoubtedly lead players to take a scenic tour of a particular run to get to know the lay of the land, and then practice until they can clear the entire track in record time. These types of design create redundancy but I'm guessing it's a device by developers to extend the longevity of their game. A live automap during snowboarding or a quick glance at a map before the start of the run would have helped ease the frustration.

The small size of Supreme Snowboarding is something to cheer up about in light of the lack of extras. There's no multiplayer, support for ghost racers or additional tracks, which any single one alone would have added immensely to the game. So it all boils down to improving times and going over the few jumps that exist in the game. I always came to snowboarding games thinking the emphasis on merely performing tricks was too much. On the other hand, Supreme Snowboarding is all about getting to the base of the hill in a timely fashion. On its own, it also seems to err too much to the other side of the pendulum. If it were to include some of the trick-oriented play of the console snowboarding titles, PlaynGo would easily have a winner here. Throw in some good, maybe even customizable soundtracks, as well as multiplayer or some way to tie in the net as a platform for competition, and they'd hit more than solid gold.

Minimum Requirements:
Windows 95/98/ME/XP Home
Pentium 233 mhz
4x CD Rom
64MB Ram
8MB Graphics Card
Category: Sports

Ratings:
[08/10] Addictiveness
[17/20] Gameplay
[12/15] Graphics
[08/10] Interface/controls
[09/10] Program Size
[03/05] Sound
[04/05] Discreetness
[11/15] Learning Curve

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part1,part2,part3,part4,part5