Sega WorldWide Soccer 2000 Euro Edition

Sega WorldWide Soccer 2000: Euro Editionis another football game, but how will it entice me given that I hate watchingthe sport on TV? The answer is that it’s the best football game I’ve playedsince Sensible Soccer and Kick Off on the Atari ST a good fewyears back.

There’s a number of mode in which to play this game although most of them arefairly similar. First off is an Exhibition mode (one-off match),the self-explanatory European League, European Cup, International Leagueand International Cup, plus a Euro Championship mode, each ofwhich offer all the competing teams you’d expect.

A wealth of options are also available allowing you to set such variables asReferee leniency, team formation and line-up, substitutions, off-side rule, coin toss, game time,replays, after touch and a scanner which shows whereabouts the playersare on the pitch.

Graphics, Sound and Playability

When it comes to football, I’d be lying if I said there was anything unexpectedhere. You have a pitch with a number of players running about on it. Thankfully,the movement is very fluid and you can play from a number of different angles.I didn’t like the isometric 3D angle, a la FIFA 97, but the side-onMatch Day-style or top-down Sensible Soccer options are mucheasier to get to grips with.

When you get to the replay options, you can play it out from absolutely anyangle and move that around the players too, thus recreating those sweeping-cameramovements fromThe Matrix.

And a big pat on the back to the programmers for adding in an anamorphicwidescreen version for those with big TVs and are into similarly-featured DVDs.This is the only way you’ll see any of Euro 2000 in widescreen format sincethe foreign cameramen couldn’t be bothered to shoot the matches with a 16:9lens.

There’s not much different between this and other footy games in the sounddepartment. A football being kicked is the same in mono as it would be inDolby Digital Surround EX 6.1, but there’s also a running commentary frompundits Trevor Brooking, Peter Brackley and James Richardson.

As you might have guessed, I’m not the greatest football fan in the worldbut the commentary flows pretty well and realistically. However, there’soccasionally different intonation in the voice which spoils it a little whenthey mention certain team names, the change in vocals making it sound, atworst, like the stuttered voice of BT’s directory enquiries service. Also,while the player names are given, SWWS 2000 is Seaman-freebecause the goalkeeper is ALWAYS known as… “The Goalkeeper”.

When it comes to playability, it’s faultless and recaptures the spirit foundwhen I played Sensible Soccer and Kick Off and it does exactlywhat you want it to do when you boot the ball! If I’m finding little to sayin this paragraph it’s because there’s nothing bad to comment about it – it’sgreat fun and you should get stuck in now.

Overall

SWWS 2000 is not the game that’s going to break new ground, but thenwhen it plays as well as this – particularly in two-player mode during analcohol-fuelled session – why change anything?

GRAPHICS
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ORIGINALITY
ENJOYMENT



OVERALL