Worst football game ever (Adidas Power Soccer (PS))

Member Name: mike1uk

Product:	Adidas Power Soccer (PS)
Date:	28/03/01 (594 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's very cheap

Disadvantages: Boring, old, bad graphics etc.

I brought Adidas Power Soccer about two years ago, as I thought it looked quite good. I rushed home to play on it, and I was disappointed from the first glance. It is obviously a very old game (about five years) so you cannot expect too much from it. Anyway, here are the details about the game:

Adidas Power Soccer is obviously a football game. You have to select your team, and you can either play against the computer, or with a friend. There are many teams to play with, which includes international clubs, international teams, and English clubs. They all have the same type of skills, so it does not matter how good the reputation of this team is in real life. If you do not like these teams, then you can always use the Dream team. To do this you have to use a cheat though, and here it is:

OPTIONS IN THE GAME:

Friendly Match – You can play against a computer or against a friend using this option. You have a selection of 56 international teams, and teams from 5 domestic leagues, which includes the English. This is a good option if you want to have just one quick match, but if you want to go for a long stretch, it is better, and a lot quicker if you start a league or a cup.

Tournament – There are many options in the tournament section. You can either compete in a Cup, Championship, Tournament events, Euro ’96, international Cup and Eurocup presets. As you can see, there are many options here, which will keep you entertained for hours.

Season – You can complete a season with many of the teams in the game. There are about 38 games in a season, so you will not be able to complete it in one night. I never used this option much, as it became very boring to play, and I just gave up.

PREMATCH: Before you start the match, you are given many options. You can choose which side you are going to play for, select your tactics, choose your mode (choose between the two preset controller configurations, and d
ecide if you want to have a manual or automatic player marker. These options are quite helpful, but I’d rather just get on with the game, I do not really bother configuring everything.

COMMENTARY:

There is commentary from the two commentators. It is not very helpful at all, and it gets very annoying. There are stupid comments such as “I thought that was going in”, when it hits the corner flag. The comments really annoy me, so I usually change the language. You can choose between French, German etc. As well as this, there is a cheat to have woman commentators. There comments imply that they know nothing about football, with comments such as “OH, he kicked it backwards”, when a player back heels it. They also make some weird comments such as “I just spilt coffee down my breasts”, so overall, they are funnier than the men are. Here is the cheat for woman commentators:

NAMES OF PLAYERS:

There are no real names of players in this game. This is not very good, as sometimes you do not know who is who. They usually have names which are similar to the proper names, but miss spelt and with different letters added.

IN GAME MENUS:

There are many options which you can use during play. You can view replay – which you can change the angle on, and put it I slow motion. This is quite good for an old game. You can also make substitutes, set up your camera, timer, radar, names, referee and offside (you can decide to have offside on or off). As well as these, you can set the games sound options, or do what I usually do, Abort match, when you get bored.

SAVING YOUR GAME:

To save a game, you have to have a memory card. These are quite cheap, going at about £9.99 for the official ones, and £4.99 for the ones made by other manufacturers. When you save, it takes up one memory block for this game – a 1mb-memory card has 15 blocks. If you already have too many ga
mes saved on it, you can overwrite them by scrolling through and selecting the one which you wish to overwrite. To load the game, you have to got to the games load menu, and select the game you wish to continue with, which you have already saved.

GRAPHICS:

The graphics on Adidas Power Soccer are pretty poor. The men are not that bad, but there is no detail on them. There is no detail in the crowds either. When you make a special move with your man, little orange sparks fly out from the ball (this includes the Adidas power kick – appropriate for the game). In addition, when you run at a fast speed, blue sparks fly out of you. This is very unrealistic, and it does not really do any good for the game.

The game has its good points though: It is not slow and boring, it is quite fast. You can perform quite good skills and runs, and some of the touches and passes are excellent. You can perform some extraordinary special moves, which improve the game slightly. Despite this, it does not make the game worth buying.

AUDIO:

There is quite a large quantity of music. There is music at the start up screen, and at the menus. The crowds sometimes cheer, and there is a lot of sound from the commentators. There may not be much, and it may not be very good music, but at least there is some.

CONTROLS:

The controls are very simple to use, and they are easy at the fingertips. I have listed them below:

X button – Starts the match or restarts the match after a goal has been scored. You press x at the kick off.
X button– To pass. This is a pass along the ground to a teammate. The square button executes a high ball.
Running with the ball – When running with the ball, you can press triangle to avoid tackles.
Tackling – Press the x button to execute a careful tackle, or press O to execute a hard tackle.
Shooting at goal – You can shoot by pressing O. You can use after
touch, by pressing L2 AND R2, which swerves the ball left and right.
Keepers ball – When the keeper has the ball, you can press x to make him throw the ball a short distance, square for a longer throw, or O to make him kick the ball.
Throw-ins – Press x t throw the ball, or square for a long throw.
Corner kicks – Press the O button and hold it to increase the power, then release it to kick the ball.

There are more besides these, but they are mostly using x or O to kick, or square to throw etc.

CONCLUSION:

This game was good in its day (1996), but now it is very outdated. The graphics are shoddy, and it doesn’t use real player’s names. There are quite a few tournaments etc. but they get boring. It is very simple to score, so you shouldn’t be surprised finding yourself 15-0 up. The gameplay is OK, but it does not even get close to the more modern games such as Fifa 2001. The commentary in the game is poor, as well as most of the other things!!! There are not very many good points, so I do not recommend buying this game, it would be a waste of money, and it is very boring. You should go for a game such as Fifa 2001, which is 5 years newer, and a lot lot, better.

I brought this game for £15, but I would not ever buy it again at this price. You can get it for around £10, but that is still not worth it. I recommend something such as Fifa 2001 instead.

HAPPY GAMING!!!

Summary: