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Review - Kick Off 2002Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Date: November 15, 2002
I'm going to do something a little different this time around, so please bear with me. See, I don't know much about soccer (football, yes, but I'm an Ugly American, so I must stick with what feels right to me). I mean, I understand the rules; I played it for a couple years before it became the sport of choice for yuppie couples who don't want their precious children playing football or hanging out at bowling alleys or tossing cabres. I enjoyed soccer all right, but not enough to keep it up in high school. Now, since I can't understand what would make people set up makeshift bleachers outside electronics stores in New York City to watch Brazil play in the World Cup, I decided to turn to my friend Helen in Wales for advice about how I should approach my review of Freeverse Software's Kick Off 2002. I simply asked Helen which team I should control. Following is her response (feel free to bypass if you're short on time or you're already familiar with U.K. football):
What's more, I edited that for space. See? That's passion. Had she written me to ask about American rules football, I would've just said, "Choose the Packers and save yourself the heartache I experience every Sunday as a Seahawks fan."
What Kick Off 2002 gets right is the appeal it has for both die hard fans and those who just want another sports game on the Mac. It can be as simple as selecting two teams and playing or as involved as creating your own leagues. You can select one team (from 204 available) and take it to the top match by match, or you can start play at the Qualifier Stage and see which team will make it to the World Cup. You can even create your own team or entire league of teams, assigning various strengths and skill levels to your players. Whatever your interest in soccer, kicking a ball around or managing Premier Divisions, it's covered here. The controls are also friendly to those just getting started...that is, once you force them to be. Using the keyboard or a game pad, ball control can be set to various skill levels. Heck, you can control the field, the weather, the rules...even the referees. Why not? Shouldn't all sports games give you the chance to build some confidence while you're learning? That's the thing, you see. When I first tried to play Kick Off 2002, I was flabbergasted. The game was much faster than I anticipated, and impossible to control. This was partly due to the speed, but mostly due to the fact that my players would only run diagonally until they were out of bounds. I first thought this was some sort of expressionistic interpretation of soccer; a team responding to the game rather than playing the game itself. But no. Ends up my iShock just didn't want to work with Kick Off 2002 in OS X (I also had to force quit a couple times). So, I booted up in OS 9 and all was fine...well, mostly. The option screens still gave me trouble, as I found it to be counter-intuitive and fraught with glitches; for example, I always seemed to end up with two pointers floating around the monitor. Which to use, which to use?
There's a lot to know here, you see, if you want to know it. Trap the ball, pass the ball, shoot the ball, chip the ball. Headers and diving headers. Free kicks, short kicks. Take corners, defend corners, short corners. Goal kicks, goal bowls, drop balls and drop kicks. Who knew there was this much to do in soccer? After watching my ten-year-old niece play in her league, I thought all soccer players did was run around aimlessly for half an hour then have some Fritos brand corn chips and Juicy Juice. Now, although Kick Off 2002 can be played by novices, it still assumes the player has a strong working knowledge of soccer. The rules aren't covered here, and you'll have to discover your own strategies. I certainly don't expect a "Rules of the Game" handbook to accompany the CD, no sports game has that, but some sort of help would've been appreciated, even if it were only links to good websites. As I mentioned above, there's a lot more to soccer than I'd previously thought. Knowing when to substitute players, how to utilize the players' strengths, and such, is just as important to this game as being able to defend a corner kick.
There's not a lot happening with audio in Kick Off 2002. Basically, you get the sounds you'd expect to hear at a soccer match: the crowd cheering and booing, the players kicking the ball, the referee blowing his whistle. You don't get attitudinal taunts of athletes working harder to sell their endorsed brand of shoe than to win a game. You don't get an over abundance of angst-ridden rock bands singing obnoxious songs that get in the way of the entertainment. Nice touch...although Madden NFL 2003 does feature OK Go, and that's pretty cool. Oddly, these simple sounds are implemented very well. They seem disjointed, like the crowd had no idea how they should respond to certain events and were therefore prompted with cue cards. Going back to my Intellivision reference, I think Mattel Electronics handled sound better back in the early 80s. All this aside, however...all the configuration options, available teams, difficulty levels, tutorials, etc., Kick Off 2002 is just fun to play. It manages to retain an arcade style feel while simultaneously providing enough options and growing space to entertain hard core fans. An online, multiplayer component would be nice, but you can at least play with two people on one computer. Custom teams can also be exchanged between computers, so it's possible to take your team with you for a "road game." Kick Off 2002 is a good game. It won't revolutionize sporting games on the Macintosh (nothing can do that, as proven by Madden NFL 2000), but it does what you want it to. It entertains you as you learn to play, and it keeps you entertained as you get better. It'll probably be more fun if you have friends with whom you can play and share teams, but there's something to be said for constantly getting beaten by the computer as well. You blame your losses on the cheating game instead of on your lack of skill. Of, if you're my friend Helen, blame it on that cute French guy. Damn you Emmanuel Petit and your "gloriously long, blonde hair"...all the time distracting me! Oh, and for those interested, there are two really good online resources for this game. Check out Danny Dinneen's Kickoff World (under construction at press time, but it offers a bunch of helpful tips and even explains how to access some easter eggs) and KO Gathering, a forum for Kick Off fans.
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So, Kick Off 2002. Would this computerized version of the world's most popular sport help me appreciate it more? Well, not really, but it is a fun game.
The game itself played fine, however, once I got the hang of it. By setting the speed to slow and the controls to the easiest level, and by spending a lot of time in the various practice modes, I was able to get a feel for what I was supposed to do. It actually harkened back to my days of playing MISL Soccer on the Intellivision. I enjoyed soccer, and, indeed, about all of the Intellivision sports games. In my opinion, developers throw so much into sports games these days that they forget to make the games fun to play. Anco threw a lot in to Kick Off 2002, but they managed to save enough room for the fun.
Visually, Kick Off 2002 looks just the way you'd want it to. It's certainly not as fancy as the console sports games for which I keep seeing commercials these days, but that's for the best. The scrolling, top down view is perfect for a game of this type. The lighting effects for night games are pretty cool (multiple shadows), and the field suffers damage as you'd expect it to after a few hours of tournament play. The players themselves look good, and they do goofy little dances after scoring goals. Well, maybe not dances, but they do pose and celebrate accordingly. I can assume these celebrations are patterned after those of the players upon whom they're based. It seemed to me, though, that the goalies (keepers?) fell down after every block. It didn't matter how easy the block was...I could kick the ball right into the goalie's gut, and he still drop to the ground as if trying desperately to make the highlight real that night. Is Deion Sanders playing for Argentina now, or something?