Soccer 97 PS1 Review

Soccer 97 was developed by silicon dreams and published by Eidos interactive in 1997 for the PlayStation and this game would give access to elements of the English league during the 97-98 seasons where you could play as teams from Arsenal, Chelsea Manchester United and all of the big teams and even from other divisions that give you different modes with exhibition, League modes even an arcade knockout tournament and other tournament modes to play as along with a multiplayer feature. 

The game also has some elements of management functions that give you basic team management elements where you could prioritize various stats of the players and move players around and allow you to change certain dynamics of how players would adapt with the team's elements and so forth. 

But from the play stance and even from a graphical standpoint it is a very different type of soccer game. 

The developers of this game weren't primarily known for working on sports games more notably soccer games as such, so how does this game feel compared to more mainstream titles? 

This game was developed early in 1997 and there weren't too many 3D types of soccer games that had been seen on consoles at that time. 

You had the likes of actua soccer and then actua soccer 2 was about to come out that year as well and you had Adidas Power Soccer and there was quite a few others and even FIFA 97 was in development that would have been released that year also and it was the first game in the FIFA series to be fully 3D as well. 

So many of these type of games being released at that time still weren't fully fleshed out in terms of what they presented and even the play characteristics and the features that were available. 

Yes they were playable to some degree but they could be quite tough for a beginner to come in and play. 

But how does this game feel overall? 

Well In fairness for an early 3D soccer game it may not look it from the outside but it plays actually quite decently, it can be tricky to control and get used to certain features but it has more control elements you feel like you a bit more control over what's going on compared to other soccer games that were available. 

But I just will let you know that the penalties in this game are absolutely terrible among some of the worsts I've ever seen in the game. 

They're just so bad and really badly designed, it's impossible to score penalties or even do it outright you don't have any full control over it at all. 

If you consider it to the likes of actua soccer and even the Adidas Power Soccer series, while they where good games of the time you always felt like at times that you didn't have full control because especially with Adidas Power Soccer because it was more arcade focused you literally had to tackle and two foot tackle players the whole time to get the ball off them and you can never hold on to the ball for long without being taken off you. 

So you couldn't string together passes whereas with this game allowed you to do that to some degree. 

The only issue that I had found from playing the game in general is the poor quality computer AI as when you're playing the game especially you say for instance like in this case as I was playing it, the keepers can be very very silly because the ball will come at you like in this case where you can see the goal the ball was coming right in front of them and what happens is like the ball wasn't coming at any pace they dived for it and then they'd go completely past them and then someone just comes in and sticks on the net when they could have easily gotten it. 

So there was a lot of clumsy elements in it and even sometimes the controllable characters sometimes had questionable methods and how they were moving around the place so the game presented some unique elements but it wasn't as well put together compared to other soccer games but then would have been an early 3D football game it is to be expected. 

You're not gonna know or be able to understand if everything's going to work but for what it does do it works for a very early game it works better than expected just there is a few elements where it does have its flaws and could have been a lot better in some regards as it does have some nice features for a time for what is on offer and it was definitely one of the earlier soccer games to try and represent a more realistic take on football games at that time when you compare it to the more arcade element scene another other games. 

So it did do that quite well although it wouldn't have had as well like the main features that we need to compare to the likes of FIFA even Adidas Power Soccer as an example and even the actua soccer series one thing is that those games did do really well was the atmosphere and ambience that the game had to offer and with FIFA and especially actua soccer had great use of commentary that really made you feel like as if you were part of the game and you're watching TV. 

This game did have that but it didn't feel as good compared to those more mainstream games but it was interesting to see other developers trying to hide and all these type of concepts that they weren't just willing to just settle for focusing on their own types of genres that they would mainly play games or create games for that they were trying for other ideas in different genres as well even though they may not have been executed as good compared to other titles that focus more on these aesthetics. 

But they are still a unique look into the history of sports games especially on the PlayStation and 3D gaming in general and although these games may not be as well designed or even as good in some cases they all did in their own way have to pave the way for future entries in the genre and for that reason alone they are worth a look just to see the differences between them. 

So I would love to know your thoughts of Soccer 97 for the PlayStation if you have played it yourself and if so what did you think of it. 

Do you like these earlier type of 3D soccer games that were seen on the console or maybe not so much, be sure to share it in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Soccer 97, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...