Genre: SimulationDeveloper: GraftgoldYear: 1994
Rating: 0.00 / 10.00
(based on 0 votes)
[ Download not available ]
Most don't agree when I say sports games don't belong in PC. It's not that I don't like sports games. They just don't fit personal computers, whose input is made primarily through keyboard and mouse. Particularly racing and team sports games always ask for a joypad in my opinion, and even then, it should be on your favorite console, not on a PC. To make things worse, controls generally don't act as they should in most PC sports games, specially football games.
Well, Empire soccer 94 is pretty much a typical old-school PC football game: addictive action, fast pace. And terrible controls. But the game turns out to be fun, as its good graphics and humorous approach make a hell of a difference.
Whoever decided that it's more "realistic" that the ball should escape your control with each curve you make on the field must have never played football in real life for more than 10 consecutive minutes. In real life, a player learns to keep the ball, even in high speeds, and that shouldn't make you a star. It's the most basic aspect of the game -- controlling a ball with your feet. If you have the ball, opposing players should try to steal it from you, but that's supposed to be challenging. Most pre-96 PC football games seem to ignore this.
Empire soccer has the same problem, although in a passable degree. The ball escapes your control after your first drible. Sensible soccer fans will find this game too easy...
The basic premise: you choose one from the main national football teams of the world and compete for the World Cup. The other usual options are also there, you can play friendly matches, change your team formation and mess with some in-game details. There is no World League (a feature most football games have that actually doesn't exist in real life), and there are two important unusual features. First, the training match. It has little difference from the friendly match, but here you don't pick teams, only the skill level for the computer team and yours. Second, the feature that makes this game fairly unique in its own right: you can pick special skills for each team, and they're purposedly meant to be unrealistic and funny. The skills include curving shots, super dribling and super powers to trample the opposing players down to the ground when they touch you. The computer also has a special skill at random. This feature is pretty much the trademark of this game, along with other light and humorous details like the cartoonish look of players and animations. It's very basic, but it's fun anyway -- although the special skill feature and the animations were clearly inspired from other games, particularly an arcade football game I don't recall the name, gonna have to look it up.
All in all, Empire soccer is quick fun and has some unique features for a football game, so it could be a good choice of game. It's still not half as fun as the main console football games out there.
