Previous Next

Sensible Soccer, Kick Off 2 and, er, Sensible Soccer. The list of decent football games on the ST is endless. So what chance does a rank outsider like Striker have?

The game covers an exhaustive number of international footy teams, ranging from Albania to Zambia, well almost. These teams act as skill levels, because, obviously, you've got a much better chance of winning if you play as Germany or Italy. There are also three different difficulty settings.

Striker goes for an oblique look at the action. It's a sort of behind-and-above view which is both visually appealing and works well. It gives you an advantage when you're playing up the pitch, because you can view slightly further into the distance.

The sprites are bigger than those that are in Sensible Soccer, and they're well animated too. A coloured disc indicates the player you're currently controlling - all you need to do is guide this chap over the ball and run like hell with it. For the most part, the ball stays with the player unless he does a spectacularly violent manoeuvre. Simply hit the Fire button to pass and shoot, and there's a neat after-touch facility too.

What sets Striker aside from the other games is its speed - the players rush around like mad things. It's like watching one of those films from the early 1900s. Sliding tackles are the fastest moves on the pitch, and a slow player lagging behind a sprinter can catch up by sliding into him. It's a good idea, but rather unrealistic because the slider moves at about five times the speed of anyone else on the pitch!

This weird little feature aside, the rest of the game is as you hope and expect. The ball moves well, the players tend to get into the right positions and even the goalie has his head screwed on the right way when it comes to attempting to anticipate the shots.

Of course, there are fouls, sendings off and bookings, but strangely enough your ST seems to do most of the nasty stuff - it manages to clock up more yellow cards in one game than Vinny Jones does in a season. Each player also has an injury meter - if a player is repeatedly tackled hard he eventually limps off and has to be replaced. Over the course of a rough game, the injury readings on most of your forwards tend to creep dangerously close to the red line.

Yet another strange feature is the scoreboard thing at the bottom of the screen. This displays various messages, pictures and little animations as the game progresses, to give you an indication of how well you're playing. For example, if you pass back, or dither around too much in the mid-field, the word "Boring" flashes up, and if you make a hash of a scoring attempt, a clown bounces up and waves his arms around annoyingly.

There are extensive options for customising the game, from setting pitch type and weather conditions to turning on the replay functions which shows you the last goal scored over and over again, until you switch it off.

Striker is an excellent game, with more of an arcade feel than its rivals. It's smooth, realistic and very playable. The only real flaw is in the game's speed - it's wonderful if you like a fast, frenzied game, but those sliding tackles are just ridiculous. The options and selection menus give you many facets to change and fiddle with and the only thing that's missing is the names of the players on each team as in Sensible Soccer. In gameplay, the Sensible's game has the edge, but Striker isn't far behind. It has a different feel to it, so the two could happily co-exist. If you're a software soccer fan, get this too.