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Sega Soccer Slam Review - Gamecube

Sega's new sports title isn't just soccer, it's absolute mayhem. Whilst the basics are still there (get the ball into the goal) you can now let it all out with offensive attacks. Tackle your opponents with powerups, crushing offensive maneuvers, tricky moves and more! Move over red card soccer, this is the new bad ass soccer sim.

Game play

Actually it should be mentioned that it's not a sim at all. It holds it's own unique arcade style with fictitious characters, like half pint the British punk and El Diablo the Mexican wrestler. These people might be better suited in a fighter? Well in soccer slam you can really take it to your opponents. To score a goal you might get a friend to go up and take out the goalie whilst you knock the ball clean into the net. There's also plenty of powerups and special kicks to boot!

The game itself plays very nicely. During play you have a team of three and a generic goalie. Also it's on a shorter pitch than normal soccer; don't worry though as it works perfectly as the ball often changes hands on account of the fact you can belt your opponents. Hitting your opponents actually comes off nicely, as stronger characters can hit harder (although you can upgrade your characters skills in the "quest" mode) but when hitting a person the ball will usually go flying on account of them knocking it. If you decide to steal the ball (which is harder but it also depends on you character) then you get the ball right into you're, well, ankles. Instead of the chance of the opposition picking up the ball again.

Powerups are available to you while you play. The first being just a plain power up which makes you exceedingly strong/fast and so on in the relative attributes for a limited time. You add to this meter by performing combos (like one timers) and generally playing well. The second is spotlight kicks. When in possession of the ball for a long period of time (don't worry it's not that long, the ball changes hands heaps so a "long" period of time is like 10 seconds) a spotlight appears. If you make it into the spotlight (it move around) the game goes into slow motion and you get a crosshair to aim with in the goals. A nice touch is the opponents try very hard to keep you out of the spotlight. The last one is the Killer Kick. This is performed when your combo meter is at it's peak (so don't power up all the time). This works basically like a spotlight except you actually call on it and the spotlight stays still. Once in the spotlight you leap high into the air and are once again given a crosshair. The other advantage over a spotlight is that you kick extremely hard and fast (almost unblockable). This looks spectacular and comes off well ... (continued next page)