What does the phrase “Cash Grab” translate to in Japanese? I only wonder because that’s what it seems like Konami is doing with the follow-up to their incredibly disappointing first Winning Eleven game on the Nintendo DS. This game is basically the same game as last year with the exception of a few ‘RPG-style’ power-ups and Wi-Fi play.

Graphics 50/100

I could basically cut and paste the graphics section from my review of last year’s game here and it would largely apply. The top screen is used for the action and the bottom screen can be used to either depict the team’s formation (utterly useless) or the radar.

WE: Goal X Goal still uses the same elevated and distant camera angle as last year (no other angles available) which, while it doesn’t affect gameplay in a negative way, allows the developers to get away with player models that have less detail than even the old PSOne Winning Eleven games. This lack of detail is showcased in the instant replays and all the players still look identical (with the exception of skin colour, hair colour and height).

Animations are also largely the same (they’ve added a 360° spin animation) but even if they did improve them the lame camera angle wouldn’t allow you to appreciate them during gameplay anyway.

There’s only one stadium/pitch and it pales in comparison to each of the 8 different stadiums present in last year’s FIFA 07 for the NDS. TV-style presentation is identical to last year’s game and merely consists of instant replays for goals/near misses. There are still no end of half highlites.

The only new aspect of the visuals are the effects for the various power-ups you can purchase in the main World Tour mode. I’ll speak more about these later but these effects range from vapor trails behind players that have the ‘Speed’ power-up and a neat rainbow effect that depicts the flight of the ball when you cross the ball using a player that has the ‘Curl’ power-up. Whoo hoo.

Last year the graphics in Winning Eleven DS were incredibly disappointing. Now that they’ve pretty much stayed identical for the sequel they’re frankly insulting. Not only does FIFA for the DS look miles better, this is a system that has produced gorgeous 3D games like Phantom Hourglass, Mario 64, Star Fox and so on. Hell, even the Strawberry Shortcake game that my fiancé plays on the DS looks miles better than Winning Eleven.

Audio 10/100

No commentary (still). No crowd chants (still). Menu music is the same generic crap. Meanwhile, FIFA for the DS has commentary and licensed music.

Options 50/100

The game modes present in Goal x Goal are pretty much identical to last year’s game (seeing a pattern here?) with the exception of Wi-Fi play. There is still no league mode and no Master League. You can play in a tournament but these are generic 16 team tournaments. A training mode is present but there are no mini-games or challenges present in this mode.

The main mode of play is again the World Tour mode where you take a team of the default ML stiffs and play International teams from around the world. Each win gets you coins which you can use to get new players. In last year’s game you used the stylus to ‘put’ the coins into vending machine to get a random player. This returns but now there’s also a slot machine that you can use to get players (the more you wager on the slots the better the players on offer).

In the only ‘innovation’ in the game you can also use the points to purchase special power ups…..from a man who wears a giant ‘e’ on his head – I kid you not, the menu screen depicts a vender with a gigantic fucking letter ‘e’ on his head! No wonder Konami can’t afford licenses, they’re spending their money on acid for the programmers! These power ups range from increased speed, increased curl (this one is called ‘Ba-na-na’, seriously), increased strength, and so on. These can then be applied to your players. Whoop-de-doo…

The only enjoyable aspect of the World Tour mode are the random mini-games that pop up every few matches. Most pre-match screens depict a world map and a plane (flown by what looks like a 12 year old) flies from country to country as you play matches. However, every once in a while the plane is shown being flown by…..wait for it….a man with a paper-bag on his head (again, blame the acid). He drops you off at these interesting mini-games that have you trying to score or cross the ball past barriers within a time limit. These are actually quite fun, I only wish you didn’t have to slog through regular matches to get to them.

The vast majority of the teams are international sides with a handful of random licensed club sides. Text is all in Japanese but the menus are fairly easy to navigate. There is an edit mode present but it’s annoying that you cannot edit player/team names for the licensed teams – so if you’re looking to give Tottenham and Roma names using English-text characters (instead of Kanji) you’re out of luck.

Gameplay 50/100

Again, I could cut and paste from last year’s review and it would still apply to Goal X Goal’s gameplay. Nothing has changed and this game still plays like an arcadey (and much less deep) version of the original ISS Pro Evolution on the PSOne – everyone turns in that 45°/90° en-bloc fashion and give and go’s involve automatic pass backs

The problems that hampered last year’s game (and made it much less enjoyable than the original ISS Pro Evo) have stayed pat namely; the easy dribbling/tackling, the small pitch and the unimaginative AI. Even on the hardest of the three difficulty settings it’s still too easy to dribble around the CPU, still too easy to dispossess your opponents, the pitch is too small and all of the AI teams play the same route-one football. They’re also still really crap at playing the offside trap leading to tons of breakaway chances.

It’s not a horrible experience and there are indeed a few moments of fun to be had. The controls are responsive and the ball physics, though primitive, are largely unscripted. However, if you’ve played last year’s game you’ve played this one and there just isn’t enough depth here to keep you playing in the long term.

Replay Value 30/100

I played the World Tour mode just to play some of those mini-games (thank you Mr. Paper-bag-over-your-head Man) and see the different power-ups. Apart from that I’ve played this game last year when it was simply called Winning Eleven DS.

Overall 40/100

Something is going horribly wrong at Konami. This is a company that not so long ago led the way with innovation and gameplay in soccer gaming. Now, however, they’re approaching laughing-stock status and the goodwill that they’ve generated among fans of soccer gaming is diminishing with their every release.

Rarely have I seen such a mailed-in effort for a videogame. For all intents and purposes this is the same game as last year just in different packaging. This ‘might’ be somewhat forgivable if last year’s NDS game was a masterpiece…unfortunately, it was anything but.

Konami should be ashamed of releasing this game. Instead, I suspect they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

What does the phrase “Cash Grab” translate to in Japanese? I only wonder because that’s what it seems like Konami is doing with the follow-up to their incredibly disappointing first Winning Eleven game on the Nintendo DS. This game is basically the same game as last year with the exception of a few ‘RPG-style’ power-ups and Wi-Fi play.

Graphics 50/100

I could basically cut and paste the graphics section from my review of last year’s game here and it would largely apply. The top screen is used for the action and the bottom screen can be used to either depict the team’s formation (utterly useless) or the radar.

WE: Goal X Goal still uses the same elevated and distant camera angle as last year (no other angles available) which, while it doesn’t affect gameplay in a negative way, allows the developers to get away with player models that have less detail than even the old PSOne Winning Eleven games. This lack of detail is showcased in the instant replays and all the players still look identical (with the exception of skin colour, hair colour and height).

Animations are also largely the same (they’ve added a 360° spin animation) but even if they did improve them the lame camera angle wouldn’t allow you to appreciate them during gameplay anyway.

There’s only one stadium/pitch and it pales in comparison to each of the 8 different stadiums present in last year’s FIFA 07 for the NDS. TV-style presentation is identical to last year’s game and merely consists of instant replays for goals/near misses. There are still no end of half highlites.

The only new aspect of the visuals are the effects for the various power-ups you can purchase in the main World Tour mode. I’ll speak more about these later but these effects range from vapor trails behind players that have the ‘Speed’ power-up and a neat rainbow effect that depicts the flight of the ball when you cross the ball using a player that has the ‘Curl’ power-up. Whoo hoo.

Last year the graphics in Winning Eleven DS were incredibly disappointing. Now that they’ve pretty much stayed identical for the sequel they’re frankly insulting. Not only does FIFA for the DS look miles better, this is a system that has produced gorgeous 3D games like Phantom Hourglass, Mario 64, Star Fox and so on. Hell, even the Strawberry Shortcake game that my fiancé plays on the DS looks miles better than Winning Eleven.

Audio 10/100

No commentary (still). No crowd chants (still). Menu music is the same generic crap. Meanwhile, FIFA for the DS has commentary and licensed music.

Options 50/100

The game modes present in Goal x Goal are pretty much identical to last year’s game (seeing a pattern here?) with the exception of Wi-Fi play. There is still no league mode and no Master League. You can play in a tournament but these are generic 16 team tournaments. A training mode is present but there are no mini-games or challenges present in this mode.

The main mode of play is again the World Tour mode where you take a team of the default ML stiffs and play International teams from around the world. Each win gets you coins which you can use to get new players. In last year’s game you used the stylus to ‘put’ the coins into vending machine to get a random player. This returns but now there’s also a slot machine that you can use to get players (the more you wager on the slots the better the players on offer).

In the only ‘innovation’ in the game you can also use the points to purchase special power ups…..from a man who wears a giant ‘e’ on his head – I kid you not, the menu screen depicts a vender with a gigantic fucking letter ‘e’ on his head! No wonder Konami can’t afford licenses, they’re spending their money on acid for the programmers! These power ups range from increased speed, increased curl (this one is called ‘Ba-na-na’, seriously), increased strength, and so on. These can then be applied to your players. Whoop-de-doo…

The only enjoyable aspect of the World Tour mode are the random mini-games that pop up every few matches. Most pre-match screens depict a world map and a plane (flown by what looks like a 12 year old) flies from country to country as you play matches. However, every once in a while the plane is shown being flown by…..wait for it….a man with a paper-bag on his head (again, blame the acid). He drops you off at these interesting mini-games that have you trying to score or cross the ball past barriers within a time limit. These are actually quite fun, I only wish you didn’t have to slog through regular matches to get to them.

The vast majority of the teams are international sides with a handful of random licensed club sides. Text is all in Japanese but the menus are fairly easy to navigate. There is an edit mode present but it’s annoying that you cannot edit player/team names for the licensed teams – so if you’re looking to give Tottenham and Roma names using English-text characters (instead of Kanji) you’re out of luck.

Gameplay 50/100

Again, I could cut and paste from last year’s review and it would still apply to Goal X Goal’s gameplay. Nothing has changed and this game still plays like an arcadey (and much less deep) version of the original ISS Pro Evolution on the PSOne – everyone turns in that 45°/90° en-bloc fashion and give and go’s involve automatic pass backs

The problems that hampered last year’s game (and made it much less enjoyable than the original ISS Pro Evo) have stayed pat namely; the easy dribbling/tackling, the small pitch and the unimaginative AI. Even on the hardest of the three difficulty settings it’s still too easy to dribble around the CPU, still too easy to dispossess your opponents, the pitch is too small and all of the AI teams play the same route-one football. They’re also still really crap at playing the offside trap leading to tons of breakaway chances.

It’s not a horrible experience and there are indeed a few moments of fun to be had. The controls are responsive and the ball physics, though primitive, are largely unscripted. However, if you’ve played last year’s game you’ve played this one and there just isn’t enough depth here to keep you playing in the long term.

Replay Value 30/100

I played the World Tour mode just to play some of those mini-games (thank you Mr. Paper-bag-over-your-head Man) and see the different power-ups. Apart from that I’ve played this game last year when it was simply called Winning Eleven DS.

Overall 40/100

Something is going horribly wrong at Konami. This is a company that not so long ago led the way with innovation and gameplay in soccer gaming. Now, however, they’re approaching laughing-stock status and the goodwill that they’ve generated among fans of soccer gaming is diminishing with their every release.

Rarely have I seen such a mailed-in effort for a videogame. For all intents and purposes this is the same game as last year just in different packaging. This ‘might’ be somewhat forgivable if last year’s NDS game was a masterpiece…unfortunately, it was anything but.

Konami should be ashamed of releasing this game. Instead, I suspect they’re laughing all the way to the bank.