| | My brother is an optimist. Going away for the weekend to spend time with some PS2-equipped friends, and not having a chance to borrow my copy of World Soccer Winning Eleven 6 for the trip (entry 303), and not finding a copy of such in the rental store on his way, he picked up the only soccer game they had, RedCard 2003, figuring that it would probably be decent enough. And maybe it would be for someone who never saw professional club or cup football, or maybe for someone who thinks Midway's "Blitz" games represent the pinnacle of sports in digital form.
Presumably the Americans or whoever they were who designed this game saw some soccer footage, and saw what it lacked: gratuitous violence, hot-dogging, and ball hogging. Obviously, they decided, any soccer fan will be thirsty for a game that corrects these appalling deficiencies in the sport. And so they made such a game. You can tackle anyone, even if they don't have the ball, and then listen to the announcers make fun of the ref's blindness--the only place you'll see a red card is in the game's title. You can do stupid-looking wiggle/stumble moves that cut through the defense like butter. You can't really put touch on the ball to get it around the goalie (who is something of a tank in close quarters), but you can just kick it so hard he can't stop it. That's pretty much all you can do, but that should be enough for any red-blooded sports fan, shouldn't it? You damn right.
Of course, I'm better at this game than one in which you have to know a little technique and strategy (ie Winning Eleven). Strangely, that doesn't mean I like it better. No, actually I think it sucks, and I would rather get my cleats handed to me by Winning Eleven any day. You can't even play co-op in RedCard. No. Because "co-op" smacks of Commie-nism. On the plus side, you get to hear really beefy smacking sounds when a tackle occurs, which is about once per second. So let's see:
Beefy smacking sounds: check
Buff guys (NON-GAY): check
Spine-shattering tackles: check
Complete lawlessness: check
Cartoonish-sounding foreigners: check
No Commies: check
Kicking stuff really hard: check
Cool showboating: check
Sounds like a star-spangled winner to me. |
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