PC Soccer Games

So every year, EA Sports comes out with another soccer game for the PC and every year they make a new download just in time for the Christmas season. These downloads are always a catastrophe, in that you spend more time looking at ads for the game than actually playing it before it quits back to the desktop on you.

I stopped downloading these demos a couple of years ago, but couldn’t resist when a pretty nice-looking demo from CodeMasters showed up, touting club football with Real Madrid. Here’s what you get for your 530MB download:

• It starts off with a bombastic set of “made by” and “produced by” screens that are accompanied by the loudest possible volume your PC can attain. The normal volume you were using for other stuff is now way too loud.
• Alt+Tab to no avail, use keyboard shortcuts to decrease volume. Nothing. Hammer the “Esc” and “Enter” keys to get to some sort of menu from which to quit. Game proceeds at own pace, despite all.
• Finally get to a menu, click to quit, and get two screens of marketing for a game that has only tried to deafen me so far. Each screen stays up for ten seconds; keys do nothing.
• Sound adjusted, jump back in.
• Start up a demo game and the typical TV camera zooms in to show the field and the players and everybody’s stretching and damned if it doesn’t look exactly like EA did last year (and probably this year).
• Esc and Enter have varying effects, each dismissing different screens as useless rosters and menus flash by in my desperate search for a game to play.
• Finally get to the field and it plays and handles pretty much like I remember, except, despite using all of the same keys as EA, they managed to switch the meaning of a few, so you end up doing some pretty comical things.

  1. Attempting to strike the ball anywhere in my own penalty box or trying to clear always resulted in a fabulous rendered own goal
  2. Defending was almost impossible, as the run button is no longer “W”, but Shift (which triggers Sticky Keys in windows and kicks you out of the game, crashing it. Shut Sticky Keys off.)
  3. Shooting was interesting as every single shot I took left the stadium and went directly into orbit. Cannot figure out why the default is set to make shooting “impossible”.
• Once the computer has scored on you (or you have scored on yourself), you’re treated to an almost endless litany of replays, which are only somewhat interruptible with assiduous enough smashing of the keyboard and swearing.
• The game, as with EA, is also over in 2 minutes, but instead of quitting to the desktop, you get the aforementioned 20 seconds of advertisting, then get to start the demo over.

Believe it or not, I played a couple of times, but it’s hard to get a feel for the game with such a short demo. Typically, there are pretty scant instructions for how to shoot, etc. Presumably all becomes clear and fun once you plunk down your $50 for a copy of the game.

I think I’ll just wait for next year’s version.