The blurb on Football Glory's box reads 'The best arcade soccer game EVER'. Which is a rather bold, contentious statement that may just succeed in persuading the casual Christmas chopper to part with their hard-
Before AF even considers the riposte, "compromised editorial integrity", we're going to have to prove why such a bold, contentious statement is, at best, misguided.
Consider the following analogy. You've just walked into Dixons and you're in the market for a new video recorder. The most important features you're looking for are picture and sound quality. In gaming terms, assuming that this means playability and longevity.
Standard to set
Other features such as play, fast forward, rewind, a tuner and a four-event timer are just expected to be there, so they can't and shouldn't really be considered beneficial features anymore. Merely standard ones.
Take, for example, pitch surfaces. Sensible Soccer boasts seven of them, while Football Glory manages only four. So, in that sense, FG doesn't even come up to a set standard.
And what about the competitions on offer - leagues, cups and the like? Football Glory offers six: Champions League, UEFA Cup, English League (Premiership), Cup Winners Cup, World Cup and the European Championship. Not bad.
There's not doubt that the extra moves are going to win converts to the Football Glory cause.
Whiter shade of pale
But it pales into insignificance when you consider that Sensible World Of Soccer provides over 140 pre-set competitions. So that, if you do happen to be one of the minority of football gans who don't actually support an English Premier League team, you're still going to find that you're catered for.
Consider further that in order to knock the top game off its perch, you've not only got to match what it has on offer, you've got to be bigger and play better than it. FG doesn't manage that.
After you've mastered some basic mechanical control, team formations help players develop their own footballing style and add to the gameplay. For example, you might like playing aggressively. Therefore choosing an attacking formation makes sense. The same rings true if you are more defensive in your approach.
Yet Football Glory only offers four formations. Compare that to the 18 offered in Sensible World Of Soccer, six of which are user-
But don't get us wrong, Football Glory ranks as one of the top five Amiga football games on the market at the moment. The inclusion of novel moves - outlines in the box at the bottom of the previous page - such as speedburst, bicycle kicks and volleys give the game a less predictable nature than Sensi.
Moveable feast
There's no doubt that the extra moves will win converts to the Football Glory cause. Skillful use of them pays dividends, and no matter what the general consensus, there are always going to be significant numbers of people who would rather play an alternative to Sensi's smooth-
Football Glory is a gritty, playable, pretender to the throne of Best Football Game Ever, at present occupied by Sensible Soccer. As such, it'll gain converts to its cause. But, as with most pretenders, the monarch is in possession of all the aces and resources of the state. Which means that Football Glory's going to get its head cut off when it's face to face confrontation with Sensible World Of Soccer takes place in the battlefield of Amiga gamers' pockets.