Everything is evident with soccer gaming. The market is divided between two titans: EA Sports' FIFA and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer. Fans of the first game open packs for money, and the latter enjoy the physics, trying not to die from the gawky menus. However, those who want to dig into tactics and spreadsheets prefer the Football Manager series. These games have licenses and a strong fanbase. But is that all?
Under a thick layer of dust are dozens of attempts to create a fantastic soccer game for PC and online casinos that no one knows or remembers. So today, we're going to try our hand at being archaeologists and try to find something of value in the smoking mountain of soccer garbage. On the menu are familiar nostalgic items and trash.
The best titles are:
- FIFA;
- HaxBall;
- FIFA Street;
- UEFA Champion League.
FIFA Manager Series
Let's start with an easy one. This game will be remembered by everyone who has been following soccer simulators for a long time. EA Sports released FIFA Manager for those who want to play with hands and to coach. Compared with traditional Fifa, there is a much broader base. They were also pleased with the possibility to play matches on their own: though, on the previous generation's engine. So FIFA Manager 07 was more like FIFA 06, not the current version.
Football Manager fans teased the game for its casualness and extra features. However, it bothered everyone that in FIFA Manager, you could sell sausages in the stadium. The coach could get a wife or buy a car, which didn't affect the gameplay. The game was a total loss to the competitor in terms of tactical difficulties.
The series has safely closed on FIFA Manager 14, giving the market to Sports Interactive. But fans are releasing craft patches for the older parts year after year. So you can upgrade the seven-year-old version to FIFA Manager 2021. It works crookedly, but the audience for FIFA Manager is understandable. The game has always been colorful and atmospheric in places where Football Manager resembled Excel spreadsheets.
Football Tactics & Glory
A bizarre experiment in 2015 where they added an element of tactical strategy to soccer. One team goes first, then the other, much like Heroes, but without the gremlins, gargoyles, and addictive gameplay. Instead, it looks sketchy, sparse, and painfully slow. There's no licensing, of course, not even close.
But that doesn't mean the game is at all bad. On the contrary, it's worth appreciating, at least for the bold idea. While everyone was recreating soccer or coaching, the developers of Tactics & Glory found a new angle. You can perceive it only if you abstract your knowledge of soccer.
Perhaps that's why the game received mostly positive reviews on Steam and reviewers. Again, a straightforward experiment where you perform Challenges for in-game currency, pump up the stadium with the academy, etc. But the idea here is much stronger than the execution. Soccer chess could look better.
HaxBall
Before you read the following sentence, keep this fact in mind: I'm not crazy. HaxBall is a good game. You can't tell that from the screenshots, but it's an awesome collective unleashing game. You control a ball in a sketchy soccer game. You only need five buttons: directional arrows and kick. That's it. The rest depends on whether you know how to take a position and assess your opponent's situation.
The main thing you need to know is the browser-based multiplayer, where there is nothing but gameplay. About seven or eight years ago, my friends and I enjoyed participating in hackspace tournaments. And it's fun. Once you've played a few games against the pros, you'll be surprised how many tricks you can come up with in a game with such a small toolkit.
FIFA Street and Urban Freestyle Soccer
After the last point, we need to return to the real world for a moment. Perhaps go outside to get some air. Fortunately, this can be done without leaving the room. The FIFA Street series produced by EA Sports is known to many, although only console owners could play it. There were four games with this title: 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2012.
The concept is mega simple: you take the stars of world soccer and put them on the street box. You can't play a mounted player, but you can use all the experience from yard games in the 5×5 format. The 2012 version had a relaxed World Tour mode, where you can bring a team of rookies up to world level and take them on a ride through the best backstreets in the world. It's not bad.
Also, there is a futsal and freestyle mode, where you get points for feints. Finally, you get a game of soccer, Tony Hawk. The engine is crooked, and the players are difficult to control, but many people still like the network modes. When EA announces another donation factory called FIFA, fans write every time, “When will you bring back FIFA Street?” But it's unlikely to become a regular title: too niche stuff.
Urban Freestyle Soccer is more complicated. You play as a backyard subculture team, like a ghetto gang or a graffiti crew. Each has unique moves, but the movements are generally more or less the same. The game looked a little creepy even in 2003, but it was satisfying how unlike a traditional soccer simulator it was. It was fun for at least the first hour as a kid: when still surprised by new locations and opponents. Then the boredom began, but for a small attempt, it wasn't bad.
Official World and European Championship games
Made by the same EA, so it's essentially FIFA too. But the tournament games had their atmosphere, different from the annual series. We particularly remember FIFA World Cup 2006, which had a decent base of national teams (127 teams), beautiful decoration, and funny design solutions.
The explosion of confetti in the colors of the teams' national flags looked incredibly cool. We don't think there had ever been so much cut-up colored paper in authentic soccer. We remember well my first final for Argentina – the winning goal was scored by Hernan Crespo. And it's been almost fifteen years. Gray games are not so memorable, but World Cup 2006 was not gray. Look at the menu!
Unfortunately, the series began to be treated with negligence from the next game on. The official Euro 2008 game retained the essential elements but felt pale and raw compared to the previous installment. Plus, many players on PC would start making weird noises when you were poking around in the lineup. And back then, that was a terrible sign.
UEFA Champions League
In 2004 EA Sports obtained an official license to produce Champions League games. As a result, we got two more FIFA spin-offs called UEFA Champions League, representing seasons 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. Again, the developers created approximately the same atmosphere of a soccer holiday, as we had in World Cup and Euro, but on a different scale, using the same crooked engine.
The main funny thing about these games is that they constantly threw up different Challenges. For example, to progress through the official campaign, you had to win by starting the game with the score not in your favor or defeating a strong opponent with the reserves. The point of these elements was to make the regular season very different from your FIFA career.
