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Thing of the week:
Sensible Soccer
By Ian Grant
The undisputed king of all arcade-style footie games. Yeah, there are Playstation efforts with better graphics and better moves (and better hype) but you can't beat Sensi on the Amiga (gawd rest its soul) for pure midfield-battle-in-the-treacherous-winter-mud thrills.
Some things about Sensi:
- depending on the ability of your players, you can play any style of football, from the long ball to your tall striker to the quick counter-attack (my preferred method) to scintillating wing wizardry
- you can tweak the exact tactical layout of your team, thus determining what your players should do if, say, the ball is played from the half-way line towards the corner flag. So, Andrew, no more blaming the computer when your full back wanders upfield without your permission leaving my winger in acres of space...
- the players behave according to their ability so that Stan Collymore is well capable of scoring with a blinding thirty yard curler into the top corner whereas most of my abortive attempt to manage East Fife was spent trying to bring the ball under control
- the players even look like they should - every player has the right hair and skin colour (attention to detail, very important)
And there's more. Sensible World of Soccer includes data for every league in the world. So, for example, if you end
up as the Alan Ball of Sensi, there'll always be some hopeful club in El Salvador to give you a second chance. Personally,
I spent about ten years building up FBK Kaunas of Lithuania to the point where they beat AC Milan 1-0 to win the European Cup (and what a
goal it was too - not unlike Darren Bazeley's at Northampton, in fact).
But, basically, it all comes down to gameplay and that's where Sensi wins. It's fast and furious but, most of all, it feels like real football. There's even
a referee to hurl abuse at - what more do you want?
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