GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Poor
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 05/21/2004
- Updated on: 05/17/2006
- Released on: 03/25/2004
- Originally published on GameSpot: Freestyle Street Soccer (Xbox) Review
The urbanization of sports games isn't exactly a new trend at this point, but it is still a burgeoning one. Thus far, EA has been the primary purveyor of urban-themed sports games with its NBA and NFL Street games, and the similarly themed game, NBA Ballers, from Midway. So, it is with no small amount of predictability that with the success and quality of those titles, other companies are beginning to put together their own urban sports titles, and they are branching out into slightly more obscure sports beyond the reach of the standard NFL and NBA fare. Released a short while ago as a Blockbuster exclusive rental (and now available in select retail locations), Acclaim's Freestyle Street Soccer is one of the first fruits of this branching-out, featuring gangs of urban thugs not settling their differences with the industry-standard gats and bats, but rather solving these disputes with a soccer ball and a pair of nets. To its credit, Freestyle Street Soccer does manage to do just about the bare minimum required to make a game "urban" at this point, including plenty of curse-happy characters with baggy pants and crazy hairstyles. Unfortunately, it doesn't manage to do the bare minimum to make it a playable soccer game.
Pelé would not approve.
To sum up Freestyle Street Soccer in a quick and concise manner, imagine if someone decided to make a street soccer game, but instead of taking the time to design a cool new gameplay engine, this person simply recycled an older engine from, say, FIFA 98, added a bunch of lame style moves, and then decided to just break the whole thing just for the heck of it.
The basic gameplay is pretty straightforward: When you have control of the ball, you can lob it to a specific player, pass it to a player, send it as far across the field as you can, or shoot the ball. When shooting, you'll begin doing some sort of ridiculous spin-kick animation (or at least something similar), and while you're waiting for that to take effect you can use a small targeting icon within the net to aim your shot as best as you can within the brief time window allotted to you. Additionally, if you hit the L trigger while holding down the shoot button, you can do one of a few different style moves that generally involve flips or head-butts or any other sort of silly trickery you can think of. Off the ball, you can slide tackle, step tackle, and perform some more vicious check moves by, again, holding down the L trigger and pressing one of the main controller buttons. If you build up enough style points by doing crazy stuff on the field, you can eventually perform a "netbuster" attack, which is a nearly unblockable shot.
These gameplay mechanics sound pretty standard on paper, but the way that Freestyle Street Soccer executes them is what makes the game incredibly dumb. Ball possession is rarely much of an issue, as passing and lobbing the ball to specific players is not usually a risk. When you possess the ball, it's pretty much glued to you unless someone specifically comes in and knocks it away from you. Sometimes you'll be performing some kind of hackneyed, Matrix-looking move that actually sends the ball to the ground while you're in the process of doing a 720-degree head-spin. Then the ball will just magically float back up to your legs as they spin in the air, sending the ball toward the net. Not only does it look dumb to begin with, but it is totally incorrect.
The defensive game is where Freestyle Street Soccer really starts to fall apart. Computer opponents aren't particularly adept at intercepting passes, tackling you, or really doing much of anything except running back and forth. When your opponents possess the ball, they are capable of mounting some offense, but defensively they're absolutely worthless. Goalies on either side are especially horrible, challenging at completely ludicrous times, and often just standing idly by as the ball sails right past them. Furthermore, several goalie animations are extremely glitchy, and you'll often see goalies simply teleport around near the net as they poorly transition from one animation to another. In a couple of instances, we even had the goalie teleport from outside the net to inside the net while holding the ball, effectively giving the other team a free goal.
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