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> Results: World Tour Soccer 2005
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Each time you want to start a new match in 989 Studios' World Tour Soccer 2005, you have to wait a full one minute and twenty seconds. When the game ends, you will often wait at least another thirty seconds while it saves statistics from your last match and loads the menus. Added together with various other menu loads and saving, there is at least three minutes of waiting to play each match. If you think you can handle that along with the couple minutes of loading when you start it up, you will find an ok game of soccer inside. The load time the first time you start a game will leave you scratching your head and you will think your Playstation 2 is not functioning and that the game is frozen, that's how bad it is. When play begins, you do find a reasonable facsimile of the sport on the field. Players from many world teams are here and you get a huge list of club teams to choose from too. The most noticeable problem other than the load times are the poor choices for default options. The camera is too close to the field which provides you with no situational awareness of either yours or your opponent's players before it's too late to react. That's remedied by hitting the options menu and choosing a view farther back. You also don't have the "radar" on by default which is absolutely necessary to get full field awareness as well. Turn that on immediately too. Why these two options aren't set from the start is a mystery as they greatly affect your ability to play well. Unfortunately, the performance of the AI players also contributes to some anomalous play. If Winning Eleven 6 and 7 didn't exist, this game would probably be among the better soccer games you could find. But when you see just how perfectly the players run the field in the Winning Eleven games compared to World Tour Soccer 2005, you immediately see its failings. Often players remain in straight lines up and down the field. They react much too slowly to player input or even the moves of other AI players carrying the ball. Your own defenders often can't be counted on to properly defend. You have to switch players constantly to keep up and even then you can't account for all the AI's better moves. On higher difficulty settings, the opponent team plays better but yours doesn't seem to improve. That's just not fair. Passing is crisp and easy to pull off. The controls are simple to learn but allow for a lot of creative ball movement. One time passes could be a little better, but most of the time you're playing you won't be bothered by it. Where the game really is a drag is in the air. It's very difficult to head a ball and if you're lucky enough to actually hit one, chances are it won't be anywhere toward the goal if you're attacking. While in Winning Eleven 7 creative passing can often lead to a nice cross and volley or header, in this game you make all those nifty moves down the field only to have your cross headed right out. The AI players always have better position for balls in the air and almost always win those confrontations. It's excruciatingly frustrating that you just can't seem to get over this hump even with tons of practice. This part of the game just never clicks. The game looks good artistically and features decent sound effects. The only major issue is that players have those staring eyes you see in so many sports games these days. They look like robots in both facial features and often in animation. There definitely isn't the volume of animation available in this game as there is in its competition. Environmental effects like rain and sunny days are nicely done though and the limited player animation is fluid. The announcers wear on you over time. Too much repetition just kills any appreciation for their good performances. It may seem from the text like this is a really bad game. It's not, it just falls far short of the lofty heights set by the competition. If you only had this and FIFA to choose from, World Tour Soccer 2005 wouldn't be a bad choice. Sometimes it looks and plays "right". Unfortunately for 989 Studios, Winning Eleven 7 is out there and it IS soccer. Even with a reasonably entertaining career mode and a cool play mode where you can post your score to the Internet, the gameplay here just isn't good enough to keep you around for long. You'll be back in the clutches of Konami's football masterpiece in no time at all. Kid Factor: Hey Mom, it's soccer! You don't need a mini van to take the kids there to play it, either! Kids that love the game are better served with Winning Eleven 7. Winning Eleven has bad loading times too but the payoff is so much better. Kids can actually learn how to play the real game better from that one. In World Tour Soccer 2005, they'll only learn how to beat a computer opponent that plays a far less organic game. This game plays like a video game and not the sport itself. Reviewer Recommended Ages: 5+ Genre: Sports ESRB Rating: E-Everyone Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Developer: 989 Sports Reviewer: David J. Long Score: 3 
Hey Mom, it's soccer! You don't need a mini van to take the kids there to play it, either! Kids that love the game are better served with Winning Eleven 7. Winning Eleven has bad loading times too but the payoff is so much better. Kids can actually learn how to play the real game better from that one. In World Tour Soccer 2005, they'll only learn how to beat a computer opponent that plays a far less organic game. This game plays like a video game and not the sport itself.
Kid Factor by Dave Long
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