When you’re competing against FIFA Soccer 2004, and now World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International (both on the Playstation 2), you better be quite the amazing soccer title to not get lost in the shuffle. World Tour Soccer from 989 Sports tries hard to be at the level of its competitors, but in the end comes up just short enough that it probably WILL get lost, and play second fiddle to FIFA and Winning Eleven.
World Tour Soccer 2005 definitely has a world flavor to it with all the teams and players (900 and 18,000 plus respectively), so the game should at least do well at keeping most people happy; unless of course you love a very non-descript team, from a league that only you really know about – in that instance you might find the game lacking in club teams.
All of the standard game modes found in soccer games can be found in World Tour; Exhibition, Season, Career, and Challenge modes, and with the exception of Challenge there’s nothing you haven’t played before. Challenge mode does let you know just how good a player you are at WT2005 – you’ll have to be precise with your passing, make some pretty moves on your opponent, and essentially play soccer the way it was meant to be played (with flash and flair). Or as Ryan put it so well: “press L1, press L1”, (L1 performs a 360 spin move to get by your opponent).
Depending on your point of view, controlling players in World Tour 2005 is either the most realistic experience you’ve ever come across, or the most annoying. There’s about 6 pages of info to read through in terms of controls (at least it seems like it), and you’ll find that doing what you want takes quite a bit of getting used too. The main reason for that is that players act like normal human beings – you’re not going to be able to pass, or shoot a ball before you gain control of it; makes sense doesn’t it?? However that true to life sense causes what will seem like a massive delay between button presses, and their corresponding actions. There are times where you’ll press the circle button to shoot, and your player won’t get rid of the ball until a full 2 seconds later. This does force you to keep track of all your specific player skills; because the better they are, the more likely they’ll get rid of the ball faster. You will notice some players have a shorter delay then others, that however has a lot to do with their ability to gain and keep tight control of the ball. Where this becomes most annoying is when you realize that your shot or pass isn’t going to make it through before your player finally performs the selected action – thankfully 989 lets you cancel whatever you were about to do by pressing the R3 button. You will have to be fast to cancel actions, but at least the option is there.
Most of what I just talked about was on offence, on defense the delay can make things even worse if you don’t try to learn how to play within the structure of this game. Button mashers will find themselves performing tricks they weren’t looking to do. As an example if you slide tackle a player, but do it by mashing the button, your character might steal the ball, and then boot the crap out of it in an undesired direction (like on your own net). There might be times where you’ll be sitting there asking yourself ‘how that just happened’ – that’ll mostly be from those moments where you mashed a button.
All of these gameplay features help make World Tour 2005 a game that is VERY hard to pick up and master, but once you do you’ll have one of the most realistic soccer experiences you’ve ever had. The key is getting passed that initial difficulty – it’s not a game for newbies, that’s for sure.
The graphics in the game are certainly pretty to look at, and the player animations are very well done (not to mention realistic). Where WTS 2005 gets lazy is in the camera; Overheard/Side, Near/Medium/Far – those 2 options mixed up are the extent of your camera options, which is inexcusable for a next-gen title. As Ryan put it, when asking me to check out the camera system, boo. Boo indeed.
Where all soccer games seem to stand out is in the sound department, and World Tour is no different. There are more crown chants then you can count; each one adding to the great atmosphere during a match. The announcing and voice over work is AAA level here, and it’s some of the best integrated work I’ve ever seen. Want to know the easiest way to tell how good the sound is in a sports game? You hear it when you should, and best of all you don’t hear it when you shouldn’t. That’s the best portion of WTS 2005; the commentators let me play the game, and they get excited when they should get excited. I can’t emphasize that enough, because it’s something most of you haven’t experienced yet in sports games.
In the end World Tour Soccer 2005 is a game designed for the hardcore soccer fan. It won’t be easy to enjoy until you truly learn how to play it, but once you do it’ll have almost a simulation like feel to it. Action oriented fans should steer clear of this title, but those looking for an accurate soccer experience should at the very least give this title a try.
