Overview

Developed by Renegade Software for the Amiga, Atari ST, PC and later on the Sega Genesis, Sensible World Of Soccer is widely regarded as one of the greatest soccer games ever made. While it takes a top-down/birds-eye view of the action like Kick Off 2 and Player Manager (which use very similar game engines), the two game engines are fundamentally different with Sensible Soccer attempting a more tactical game of arcade soccer. This is a review of the Amiga version.

Graphics

As you can see from the screenshots Sensible Soccer uses a camera angle that’s in between the birds-eye view seen in Kick Off 2 and the ¾ view seen in the earlier EA Sports NHL Hockey games. I find this a very nice medium between the two. Another thing you instantly notice about the camera angle is how far zoomed out it is – at any one time you can see at least 1/3 of the length of the field and almost all of the width. Seeing more of the field means that Sensible Soccer skips having a radar altogether. The field is also much more proportional in size compared to the players, as opposed to the Texas-sized fields in Kick Off 2.

The pitch textures are fantastic with different pitches for the different seasons. This is especially cool as a season progresses as you start with a late summer pitch that’s more yellow than green, and end the season with a lush green pitch when the season wraps up at the end of spring. Surrounding the pitches are a ton of details including ad boards, the crowd, stewards and also the dugouts. Even by today’s standards it’s insanely cool to make a sub and to see the sub literally coming off the bench!

The player models are very simple, but I think this has to do with the game’s playable camera angle – it’s hard to have complicated player models when the camera’s zoomed out this far. That said, you can still see simple animations for things like slide tackles, throw-ins, kicking and headers. There isn’t much variation in the player models except for the skin colour and the same lack of variation applies to the kits. The soccer ball itself is bloody massive (it’s almost half the size of an individual player!) but again, the far camera angle makes this necessary.

The game moves at a quick pace but nothing like the hyper-fast tempo of Kick Off. For it's physics model, I think Sensible Soccer’s pace is just about right, it’s faster than a pure simulation of football would be which is fitting for an arcade game, but its also not so fast that you have to forgo the passing game.

While at first glance Sensible Soccer won’t win any awards for graphical design, the little details make the overall visuals far more impressive than the sum of their individual parts.

Sound

The audio in Sensible Soccer is sparse but very functional. The in-game sounds consist of constant crowd sounds and chants. I like the fact that you have noise throughout the match – by comparison Kick Off 2 feels like you’re playing in an empty stadium until you score (insert your favourite Highbury or Old Trafford joke here). The menus have generic music.

Options

In many respects Sensible Soccer’s options don’t only put the games released in the mid 90s to shame, but put the options available in most soccer games released today (ten years later on) to shame! A large part of this is due to developer Renegade employing what appears to be a breech of copyright that would be almost unheard of today. Though the game is not officially licensed by any professional league or players association, it features real and accurate player and team names for…..146 leagues.

One hundred and forty six!

That’s the domestic leagues for Europe (there are 43 of them – most with multiple divisions within them; e.g. EPL, First Division, Second Division and Third Division), North America, South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Hey, you want to play a friendly between Leks Lovech of the Bulgarian First Division and Calcutta Sport of the Indian First Division? You got it. Or maybe you want to something different like Witbank Aces of the South Africa Premier League versus Rotherham United of the English Second Division? No problem.

Oh, and these club teams and players are all in a 20 season career mode where you can start off as a manager of a team of your choosing, participate in an active transfer market where you can buy, sell or even take players on trial, manage the club finances, deal with injuries and suspensions that differ in severity, and you can even be given job offers from other teams if you’re doing well! Just imagine all of that, all in 1994 on two measly 3.5" floppy discs! Incredible. Meanwhile, the guys at KCET have had their thumbs up their asses coming up with new and exciting ways to utilize Vorlander, Harty, Baroja and the rest of the lads in Winning Eleven’s Master League.

In 1994, the premier soccer game had 146 different leagues/divisions. In 2005, the premier soccer game (*cough* Winning Eleven) has 6. Even Fifa 2005 only has 20 leagues. Now I don’t know if that makes Sensible Soccer a game far ahead of it’s time, or it makes current soccer game developers bloody lazy when it comes to leagues and competitions. I understand that creating leagues is more involved in 2005 than 1994, what with modeling player faces, kits, stadia, and, of course, that little licensing thingy……That said, it has been more than ten freakin’ years since then and an almost ten fold decrease doesn't sound like progress to me.

*sigh*

All tangential rants aside, Sensible Soccer’s wealth of leagues and options is truly staggering. On top of the phenomenal career mode there are tons of tactical options as well. To go with the customary pre-set formations there’s also the ability to create custom tactics and formations. There’s also good stats tracking with possession, corners, shots on target, and more recorded. During the league season there’s also tracking of each division’s top scorers. Finally, my favorite little feature in Sensible Soccer is the fact that the game divides the real-time length of each half for into 45 ‘minutes’ so that you have a score sheet that shows realistic times for goals scored. Now while this is the norm for games today, if I’m not mistaken Sensible Soccer is one of the first soccer games to ever have this feature!

Gameplay

The comparisons between Sensible Soccer and Kick Off 2 are unavoidable, not only because of they were both released in the early 90s, but also because of the similar birds-eye camera angles that both games use. However, when it comes to the gameplay the two titles are fundamentally different. Kick Off 2 is a super-fast arcade interpretation of soccer with the focus on attacking play. Sensible Soccer takes a slightly slower, more tactical approach to soccer though it’s still fundamentally an arcade title. Which one is better? Well that’s a very difficult question to answer.

The control scheme in Sensible Soccer is very similar to that of Kick Off 2 with the joystick for movement and a single button for kick/header on offence. The same button performs a slide tackle when on defense. Unlike Kick Off 2, you don’t have performed a well-timed button press to stop/control the ball when dribbling and you can do an automatic direct-to-a-teammate pass by just tapping the shoot/kick button. If you hold down the kick/shoot button then you’ll kick the ball in the direction your player is facing. The strength of the kick is dependant upon how long you hold down the button and also the amount of aftertouch you put on the ball! The aftertouch is even more exaggerated than that found in Kick Off 2 and with practice you perform some truly amazing curving shots and cross-field passes. Overall, the controls are simpler than those found in Kick Off 2. The fact that you can make direct-to-a-teammate passes easily really helps facilitate the passing game, as does the game's slower pace.

The ball physics found in Sensible Soccer are unscripted but not to the same extent as in Kick Off 2. Unlike Anco’s title, you don’t have to practice for weeks to try and dribble around an opposing player. Right out of the gate this makes Sensible Soccer’s learning curve far more friendly. That said, dribbling isn’t as simplistic as it is in today’s games. The ball still isn’t glued to your players’ feet and as you run faster the harder it is to keep control and the more likely you are to lose it. While some people found this system a happier medium, I still prefer Kick Off 2’s dribbling model as it allows for far more precision and the steep learning curve present in that game makes successful dribbling that much more rewarding. The rest of ball physics in Sensible Soccer are also slightly inferior to those found in Anco's game. The ball doesn’t bounce around as realistically and you don’t get the same sense of randomness with the ball bouncing around in midfield. I believe a large part of this is due to the fact that the camera is zoomed so far out that you don’t get the more subtle nuances of interactions between players like you do in Kick Off 2. I also found that rebounds off the goalpost come straight back out into the field of play far too often to be realistic.

Don’t get me wrong though, despite these problems the ball physics are still very impressive and with the exaggerated aftertouch the number of different goals you can score is very impressive.

The CPU AI is pretty good and though you don’t see any real variations in playing styles (except for differences in tactics/formations) the CPU scores a solid variety of goals from direct free kicks to the occasional header from a far-post cross.

So how does the game play? Right from the off it’s apparent Sensible Soccer is a far more realistic representation of the beautiful game most other games of its time. It’s still an arcade title due to the exaggerated aftertouch and game speed but it’s clear that key to success is passing the ball around. The fact that opposing players don’t try to kill you the moment you touch the ball, combined with the simple passing system means you can move the ball around with ease to maintain possession. The game engine is also flexible enough that you also use skilled players to beat defenders and pacy wingers to charge down the flanks. As a result you have a game that’s full of depth, not so much in the skill needed to control your players (as is the case in Kick Off 2), but in the variety of playing styles you can adopt. Combine this with an incredible career mode and you have a game that’s incredibly addictive.

Of course, no game is perfect and it would have been nice to have a slightly more complex dribbling model, defending is a bit shoddy (quite a few missed blocking tackles), and as mentioned before, the aftertouch is maybe a bit too exaggerated, but overall Sensible Soccer is still a damn good game.

Longevity/Replay Value

A career mode with 146 different leagues/divisions. Enough replay value for you? If not there are also more international teams and tournaments than you can shake a very, very large stick at.

Overall

Is Sensible World of Soccer the best soccer game of the early to mid 1990s? Maybe. When it comes to features, it kicks the living shit out of 99% of all live-action soccer games ever made. It’s also no slouch when it comes to gameplay, with a fantastic game engine that allows for a more tactical, passing-oriented game of football. However, when it comes to pure fun-factor I personally find Kick Off 2/Player Manager a tad more enjoyable. I think this has to do with Kick Off 2’s obscene learning curve that makes success all the more satisfying. I also think that multiplayer in Kick Off 2 and ISS Deluxe are better but again, we’re comparing varying degrees of awesome. At the end of the day, Sensible World of Soccer easily ranks up there with the greatest soccer games of all time and if you’ve never played it before it would be a crime not to try either the PC or emulated Amiga versions.

Lavan Chandran 09/04/2005

[Screenshots taken by me]