VR Soccer '96

At first this game seem like a long shot, since my idea of good soccer game being FIFA 98 Road to World Cup. Decided to give this game a chance from lack of alternatives and guess what, I'm not at all sorry. In fact this game is excellent! The graphics, although very outdated, is probably state of the art for its time and still very nice by today's standards and the game is very customizable. One thing though, unlike in FIFA, there are only two keys to operate (shoot and pass). If you want to steal the ball you'll have to make a real effort rather than pressing a key in FIFA. It is very hard and frustrating at first, but as they say, practice makes perfect. Recommended.

The VR soccer demo was the first football game I was allowed to play on my own time, so even if it was fantastically difficult and I couldn't score even if I set the opposing team to be controlled by an absent player 2... It was still amazing. Since then I got the full game. Since then I got good at it. The gameplay had a certain charm. Scoring became a skill, and I developed it. Learning how to execute a successful pass despite the incredibly poor auto-target-selection (pick a player in that general direction unless a player with a preset number on the back is within a hundred miles...) and the tendency to play passes that are much too slow, forcing the recepient who to turn back to receive the ball, the ability of some players to run along with their back to the coming pass until it hits their foot and bounces half the way back again initiating a counterattack against you... That was a beginning of a rant directed towards one of very many design flaws, miscalculations, bugs and bothers in this game. (A lower ranking goalkeeper on a bad day can only kick a ball about 20 meters before it hits the ground. Bad days are forced when playing teams that are nominally worst in their league. I just played through group C. I beat the top teams 4-0, 3-1, 5-0 and whatnot. Against the bottom teams my players are so slow that the animations appear physically impossible. Think tai-chi, only without any explicable reason why they don't fall over...) Yes. This is a rant. Take that as a warning. If you are not playing this game to begin with, don't start. Consider smoking. It'll kill you, but you get to keep your sanity. Still. Every now and then there is a challenging match where the other team has the upper hand but you can win through skill and just a bit of luck. If this review lists a tenth of the flaws in this game, I'd be surprised, but I still play it now and then. (PS: Group A is by far the easiest. My "objective" for group A is to go a whole season with an average of +5 goals per match and full points. I have beaten that average. I have yet to play a season without even a single draw.)

WOW, what a raisin in catalogue. The Game I would never expect to land at GOG :-). Well, game is for sure pumped with fast action. Game was also released on Play Station 1 and it's only proper rival were, at the time, Fifa 96. We have nice 3D graphic, nice for middle of 90's of course, football players are well motion-captured, every one of them described by 8 skills characteristic. Matches take place on good rendered staiums with funny commentary. Plenty of game modes avaiable, meny additional options to set, multiplayer. Basicly all we know from later sport games. Virtual rality Soccer is piece of sport PC games history and game you should buy! Maybe it's pity that in late 90' FIFA series took first place along soccer games...

Until now there's no soccer game in which you could curl the ball into the corner of the goal from a decent distance. The game requires some practice, but after getting used to you cannot image the beautiful goals you can score!!!