Review: Sensible World Of Soccer (Live Arcade) (360)

The first thing to strike us was the presentation. The menu screens have been taken straight from the original, accompanied by the SWOS theme tune. An instant blast of nostalgia hits, and continues through to the game itself. Kuju have wisely chosen not to tamper too much with the graphics, a problem seen in a few other releases on Arcade (Speedball 2’s 3D players being a recent example of a misjudged graphical “update”). The pitches themselves look a little nicer, you have the option to zoom with the right analogue stick, and the player’s rough edges are smoothed over, but  it’s barely any different from the original in terms of appearance, which is a good thing. The thing is, being based on the 96/97 version of the game (which is the most loved), Gamestyle expected the options introduced in that title to be the only thing ported across - the player ratings, fine tuning of the game engine and so on. They have made it of course, but they are also joined by the 96/97 squads (albeit with some altered names for legal reasons). The fake names can be a source of amusement while loading a match, and serve as a memory test at the same time.

The presentation would be nothing without the gameplay to match, and thankfully things haven’t changed in that department either. SWOS still plays more like a pinball title than a game of football, and all the ridiculous 30 yard banana shots and well timed overhead kicks make an appearance. The single player game offers a multitude of leagues and cups from around the world, and the desire to win as many or as few as you like is still there. However, the real fun begins in multiplayer.

In local play, you can do everything available in the single player game. Friendlies, competitions and custom leagues are open to a group of players to ensure five minutes play turns into an evening, an evening to a weekend. This will be familiar to a grizzled SWOS veteran, but much of the focus on the 360 version is on play over Live. Here things are a lot more limited. Friendlies are available as either a player or ranked match, and on the whole are pretty good, but the option to create an online custom league would have been a great touch. Maybe Gamestyle expects too much of an Arcade title, but we could see people setting up cup competitions online to last over an hour’s play, or even a weekend.

This is perhaps down to the limitations of the server. We found games were generally easy to find, and often played at the game’s standard lightning speed, but others are laggy and tend to stutter throughout, interrupting the flow of play and leading to missed opportunities on goal (Gamestyle felt it has been robbed of a goal on a couple of occasions due to this). Maybe it’s down to users with slow connections, but surely Kuju’s online programmers would be able to smooth this tiny flaw out with a patch. 

These gremlins have little detrimental effect on SWOS. The game plays as well as it ever did, it looks and sounds nicer, and the online play is very enjoyable, if a little glitchy. If more options were made available for play over live, Gamestyle wouldn’t complain. We’re just happy to see this turn out as well as we’d hoped, and not a travesty as some thought it would be. Gamestyle doesn’t mean to sound like a hyperbole filled press release, but SWOS really is that good. It just remains for us to say, if you’re looking for a quality title to download, go with SWOS. It’s the sensible choice.

Rating: 9 / 10

Words by Dan Gill