Season Ticket Football 2003 (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 0.5 stars Abysmal
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 1.8 (0.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Brett Todd
• Reviewed on: 08/28/2002
• Released on: 08/18/2002
• Originally published on GameSpot: Season Ticket Football 2003 (PC) Review

Season Ticket Football 2003 is the worst sort of sports management title. The Dave Koch Sports effort (best known online as Action! PC Football) is one of those curious amalgams of a migraine-inducing interface and relentless number crunching, a program so needlessly complex that you can't bring yourself to call it a game. Add in continual crashing and you have the leading entertainment option in the circle of hell designated for wife-neglecting couch potatoes who don't move a muscle on Sunday afternoons.

The biggest issue is the interface, which couldn't have been more counterintuitive. Strictly from a visual standpoint, things aren't that bad. But although the graphics are in line with those of the typical, text-heavy sports management sim (in this case, one with literally no sound at all), getting from point A to point B is nearly impossible. This is a problem right from the moment the program loads, as the initial menu screen doesn't actually offer the option of creating a new league. You can load a league, but that isn't much good if you don't have one to load. Not all the buttons even work properly. Hitting "Play" results in a run-time error and a drop to the desktop, unless you have a league up and running. Or, at least it seems that way--it's hard to make any concrete judgments about a menu system that is so vague and obscure.

Getting started with a league from scratch is a nightmare. Absolutely no pointers are given, so you're left to flail about, trying different menu commands in the hope that one actually leads where you're intending to go. Finding your way can take quite a while, as there are many likely candidates under the "Start" and "League Utilities" pull-down menus. Even when you do blunder into the right place, it takes a considerable amount of time to wade through the setup options. Something as straightforward as taking over a single team is about as much fun as applying for a mortgage. Things eventually become sort of clear, although you'll run out of patience with the pointlessly intricate design long before you start enjoying any football management. Never has a game more desperately needed an online help feature or a comprehensive print manual. The on-disc documentation is thorough, but it's poorly written and useless for getting started because it assumes that you have a basic idea of how things work. Virtually nothing is in the CD booklet at all, aside from a table detailing the effects of game time on player fatigue that is so brief it could have been tucked into a fortune cookie.

Continue reading