The Video Game Critic

Since most sports fans are caught up in World Cup mania, has anybody out there been playing soccer games?

I'm been playing the old Genesis FIFAs and also FIFA 14 for the Xbox 360.

I haven't played it lately, but I really enjoy Super Sidekicks 3. It's one of my favorite games on the Wii/PS2 SNK compilation.

I got FIFA 11 (ps2) at goodwill for $2 last month. I was actually pretty impressed. If I had given it more time I may have really enjoyed it

Although I absolutely love football(soccer) I don't spend much time playing football games. There have been a few exceptions over the years, e.g. Sensible Soccer and International Superstar Soccer on SNES. Pro Evolution Soccer was at its absolute peak for 2-3 iterations on PS2 and was perhaps the last time I felt that the balance between fun and realism was struck. I used to love arcade games like Tecmo World Cup and Football Champ, but this style hardly exists any longer.

Nowadays the relentless pursuit of realism paradoxically makes the games less believable to me - it is that more jarring when players don't make intelligent runs off the ball, world class defenders don't react to those around them etc. If I were to play any sort of football games now, it would be a management sim.

Dogtanian has impeccable taste, I agree Pro Evolution Soccer peaked on the PS2. It has suffered since then, pushing for more realism and FIFA has taken the crown back.

FIFA, Sensible Soccer (although the ST/Amiga versions are better due to higher difficulty), International Superstar Soccer (the precursor to Pro Evolution) are great 16-bit games. Management game wise I always preferred Premier Manager for the 16-bit machines (ST/Amiga and Genesis/MegaDrive).

If anyone has a ZX Spectrum there is a rather unique game called Footballer of Year. You have to acquire 'goal cards' and pick the matches you play. The actual game is you taking shots at the opposition the attempts you have depends on the value of the goal card. Really interesting and different worth a look.

Well, I recently downloaded the demo for FIFA 14 for my PS3, and I've been playing that. Otherwise, I really only own one other soccer game, David Beckham Soccer for the PS1. I haven't played that since I first bought it at the start of the year when I started my PS1 collection.

I can't really stand kickball, but maybe a video game version of it could be tolerable. Are there any good arcade-like soccer games? Super Mario Strikers?