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	World Soccer Winning Eleven 7 International
	Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Genre: Sports / Soccer Players: 1-4 (via Multitap) Similar To: FIFA 2004 Rating: Everybody Published: 03 :12 : 04 Reviewed By: Matt Hart Overall: 9.5 = Must Buy

Screenshots

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Intro
Despite our own country's lack of participation, soccer (or football, or futbol) is the most popular sport in the world. Because of the game's swift attacks, flowing counterattacks, graceful shots, and iron defense, soccer is termed as "the beautiful game" across the pond (in stark contrast to our own "beautiful game": NASCAR). And with this, the newest incarnation of Konami's Winning Eleven series, the beauty has been brought home.


Gameplay: 9/10
This would hardly be any kind of self-respecting soccer game review without mentioning Winning Eleven's rival, the FIFA series. While FIFA takes the popular road - buying every major license for every league, team, and player the world wide and then incorporating those players into a looser, more forgiving, arcade-type setting - Winning Eleven settles for fewer licenses (not having the same money as EA, FIFA's developer) but much deeper, more refined gameplay reminiscent of actual soccer. The downside to this approach is in the included teams and players. Because Konami didn't spend millions on licensing, they weren't able to include proper league team names and the real names of some of the more big time players. The good news is Konami included a wonderfully full-featured edit tool that allows players to rename teams and players to their liking. In fact, WE7 has such a dedicated fan base that users can already fan-made download game saves with corrected team names and player names (and corrected shoe color, uniform logo, stadium advertisement, etc.; these fans are insanely dedicated).

Players previously familiar with the Winning Eleven series will be happy to know that Konami made no small amount of adjustments for the newest iteration of their popular franchise. And while there are several small changes that are nice to see, the biggest such change comes in terms of the R2 button and right analog stick functionality. In WE6 the R2 button was used to sprint at a slower pace than the R1 button, allowing the player to turn and control the ball easier than at a full sprint, but at the expense of speed. The right analog stick was previously used a widely-ignored manual pass. Now, the two buttons combine to perform all the sweet moves, tricks, and maneuvers of the big boys. Side steps, dragbacks, Zidane spins, nutmegs, Cruyff shot fakes, triple feints - the gang's all here, provided the controlled player is good enough to actually pull the moves off. At any rate, the new trick system makes it a breeze to pull of any one of scores of moves, each having a proper time and place to properly pull off.

WE7 doesn't suffer from a lack of modes. In addition to the wonderful Master League mode which serves as the game owner/franchise mode where one can buy a Division 2 team of nobodies in hopes of promotion and an eventual WEFA (Winning Eleven Football Association) cup, there is also an exhibition mode, a tournament mode, a practice mode, and a friendly tutorial to help bring the uninitiated up to speed.

Being the simulation it is, games are generally a low-scoring, highly competitive affair with a focus on possession and positioning rather than constant attacking. But that's just one way of playing. If a team uses a certain strategy in real life, odds are the same strategy will work in Winning Eleven. France uses midfield possession tactics and fast strikes, Nigeria continually assaults the ball with speed, and Germany depends on frequent crosses with strong headers to win. Formations, strategies, and substitutions are all easily handled either before a game or during. Once a certain unlockable is attained, players can even switch strategies without breaking the action of the game. Furthermore, formations can be customized to assign individual players to new locations. On top of that, individual players can also be assigned mindsets, detailing on how to attack and defend and how aggressive to be. With all of these options available, wannabe soccer coaches should find no shortage of ways to customize their team on the road to victory.

The AI is deviously effective. Utilizing a difficulty range based on stars, one star being the simplest with 5 stars being dastardly evil, WE can pose a challenge to even the most soccer-minded, dexterous gamer. The lower difficulties are designed to help newbies become acquainted to the system without being too overbearing, while the upper difficulties use every trick and move in the game to relentlessly pound your team into submission, but does so without ever being cheap - although the AI's cross balls never fail to meet their target. The difficulties are scaled apart very well, there is a very noticeable difference between an opposition's cohesion as the difficulty is adjusted. But the true test of any soccer title's AI is its implementation of referees and goalies. Much like everything else in the game, the referees are insanely detailed - featuring a group of refs from all over the world with different philosophies, ranging from extremely disciplined to "play on". While one ref may allow that exceptionally rough shoulder tackle, another ref may give out a yellow booking for it. All in all, there's enough variation to make players keep it clean out of fear of a booking that may very well take a pivotal midfielder out of the game. Goalkeepers are no pushover either. They will advance on a forward in a 1-on-1 situation, punch out dangerous corner kicks, and shoo defenders out of their field of vision. Furthermore, the game includes a button to manually bring the keeper out should you feel it necessary. Depending on the skill of the keeper, they may make a stupid mistake here and there, but it only lends to the reality of the game. Big name keepers like Kahn (or Kalm in the game), will rarely let an easy shot go past and must be fooled to sneak past. Simply put, better AI-controlled keepers don't exist.

WE's wonderful Master League mode makes a return this year, letting players control a no-talent team of Division 2 rejects in hope of building the team up to a Division 1 caliber team and beyond. With every win, the player team acquires points. These points can be spent via trades and transfers that bring new talent to the club. The better a player is, the more points he costs to acquire and pay salary to. Just like real life, this makes a winning team with a great roster a potential dynasty, as the most successful teams have the most points to spend on the best players (i.e. Real Madrid, or the New York Yankees for a baseball analogy). Of the most important changes to the Master League mode is the ability to change transfer difficulty, deciding how willingly teams trade their players to you and for how much. On top of that, Konami has added a wonderful advanced search option where players can be sorted by skill, position, team, nationality, or any number of other criteria. In this mode (and via the challenge mode) players can accumulate WES points. With these points, the game unlockables can be bought. WE7 features a wide range of interesting and diverse unlockables ranging from replay ball effects to clothes customization to classic teams to a free transfer feature that allows any player from any team to be transferred to any other without any kind of transfer fee or restriction (useful for bringing the rosters up-to-date with their real life counterparts). Between this, and the minimum of 4 seasons required to completely win the Master League, there's a lot of soccer here for any fan.

Graphics: 9/10
Previous incarnations of the WE series have used the Renderware engine to represent the onscreen players. Thankfully, Konami has abandoned the aging technology and have completely reworked the graphics engine from the ground up. Players still don't look as detailed as their FIFA 2004 rivals, some even look downright blocky, but yet they still look remarkably similar to their real life equivalents, right down to the all-important soccer haircut. Beckham has one of his trademark pretty-boy dos, Ronaldo is bald, Maradona (or Maradone in game) sports his mullet, and Shevchenko has his brutish Ukrainian flat-top. But because soccer games are commonly played from a high, wide perspective in order to see the greatest amount of players, the blockiness isn't really noticed. Instead, animation is what's important, and the animation here is unrivaled. Players dribble, shoot, head, and challenge in fluid, unwavering motions. Special animations, like Roberto Carlos' penalty kicks, Okocha's flicks, and Cruyff's foot feints are all here and all represented realistically and beautifully. The stadiums all look wonderful with fully animated and responsive crowds to fill out the immersion. Although FIFA may have flashier, cleaner screenshots, WE7's graphical package is much richer and detailed and is certainly a sight for soccer fanatics to behold.

Sound: 6/10
Love them or hate them, commentators Peter Brackley and Trevor Booking make their return to this year for their trademarked brand of sparse, repetitive, sometime inaccurate video game commentating. But in all fairness, with all of the teams and the inclusion of Spanish commentary, there probably wasn't a whole lot of room for sound. At any rate, the commentating is pretty annoying after several games, as is the menu techno. The crowd noise, however, is fantastic, often swelling over the commentators. What's better is the crowd's stance can be set to favor the home team, the visitors, or to just cheer for good soccer. But in spite of this, sound is definitely WE7's worst point, and after several games, you may find that it just sounds better with the sound off.

Control: 9/10
One thing about the controls is their complexity. Every button on the controller is used, many even have multiple functions for offense and defense. And while the controls certainly have a learning curve associated with them, once mastered, players will find themselves executing amazing moves and wonderful team-play intuitively. The key to offense is touch. Much like real life, putting everything on a shot with little regard to accuracy won't accomplish much besides putting a ball in the hands of a lucky spectator. However, thinking about the shot, and placing more emphasis on a light touch to the right place will reap a goal. In WE7, shots can be powered up by holding the shot button. Players will sound find out that this shot rarely, if ever, results in a goal. Instead, finding a clearing and tapping the shot button will net the goal. And shooting is just one facet of the controls. Every function, every move has so many idiosyncrasies and techniques behind it that I can barely even to allude to the complexity and richness of the controls. But rest assured, this isn't the bad, impossible type of learning curve, instead it's simple - start with the basics (pass and shoot), and then work the more complicated moves into your game. Just like real soccer, the fundamentals are how games are won - everything else is just icing on the cake.

Overall: 9.5/10
Throughout this review, I often times mention how one aspect or another of WE7 is just like real soccer. And that's probably the greatest accolade I can give this game: that it is the most realistic soccer experience that can be had without taking a step on the pitch. Every single facet of the game, from its incredibly rich Master League to its detailed player appearances and behavior to its intuitive, yet challenging controls and gameplay is modeled as close to the real thing as possible. There just isn't a better soccer title than this; everything that's enjoyable about the game is represented here and represented well. For FIFA fans, why drive around in an AMC Pacer when you could have a Porsche for the same price? Get this game. For anyone else, perhaps it's the otherworldly qualities and rules that apply to soccer, perhaps it's the confusing leagues and tournament setups, perhaps it's the "no hands" rule; whatever the reason as to why you don't like soccer, put it aside - this is one of the best sports games available, and it would be a shame to miss it for any reason.

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