Two Slashes

When people think back to all the time they spent playing video games as a kid, they think back to all the time they wasted trying to rescue the princess in Super Mario Bros. or how many times they defeated the Covenant in Halo.  There have to be a few games they considered crap and played only briefly, though, right?  Those games they thought sounded interesting, but were perhaps too good to be true, or picked up from a bargain bin in hopes of getting a cheap thrill, then sold right back to the used game store of their choice?  Why don’t they mention those?

In an effort to share that side of my life as a non-gamer with you, as well as these horrible excuses for entertainment, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and review old and lame games once in a while throughout the summer as a semi-regular feature.  (Of course, I have many to choose from thanks to my siblings, but I’d rather review games you had an interest in, so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or my e-mail inbox.)

Seriously, doesn't this read as Speedball Tournament 2?

This week’s game is Speedball 2 Tournament, Speedball Tournament 2, or something of the sort, and it comes from November of 2007.  (Alright, so it’s hardly old, but I doubt you’d heard of it until just now.)  I really can’t figure the name out, because the logo clearly reads Speedball Tournament (to me at least), but Wikipedia, Steam, and most other sites seem to agree on the first version.  To avoid having to worry about that, I’m just going to refer to it as Speedball.

I wouldn’t have even known about the existence of this game if a friend of mine hadn’t found an online magazine giving away CD keys (and informed me that the game was on Steam, which means this game will be following me to the grave).  I can’t say it’s a bad thing, because I can’t argue with free stuff, but I’m sure they could have picked a better game to give away.  Obviously, this also means that I have never played the original.

If I had to sum this game up in as few words as possible, I would call it the older-teen equivalent to the Backyard series for little kids.  Essentially, it’s the same thing as a game of soccer, except made to be all futuristic, the characters carry the ball rather than kicking it up the field, and there’s definitely some language I wouldn’t expect to find in a kids game going on in here.  There are even little power-ups all over the field.  And, just to take the name into consideration (as well as the opening video and all of the violence), you could similarly compare the game to Unreal Tournament with a metal ball instead of Redeemers and a closed-in pit rather than Morpheus.

Speaking of fields, there are four (at least, four that are unlocked when you start the game, and I’m not expecting there to be any more) for you to play on.  They call come complete with a cute little animated crowd cheering you (or the other team, you don’t really know, do you?) on and booing and cheering as appropriate.  There’s not much to them, because, little things like the general shape of the outer stadium (which you won’t see) aside, there isn’t that much difference between the four of them.

The controls aren’t that hard to pick up, though you’re probably going to resort to what I did and just start clicking buttons and pounding on the spacebar in hopes of watching the little animated characters do something.  It won me a match or two, but it probably isn’t what the developers were intending for you to do.

The difficulty levels are definitely labeled appropriately.  Easy made it seem like the AI wasn’t even on half the time, but step it up to advanced and suddenly you won’t have to worry about who’s carrying the ball, because it most certainly won’t be you.  Unfortunately, it’s a little disheartening to watch the computer score so easily against you in so little time (or maybe I just play a poor defense), which is another reason to put it down rather quickly.

Given that I couldn’t even beat the computer AI, I didn’t want to bother spending the time checking out the multiplayer aspect of the game.  Given that the game’s rated so poorly on MetaCritic (and it’s not hard for me to see why), there probably aren’t that many people sticking around waiting for someone to play.  Of course, there’s some law that states that there’s that one devoted fan signed in and waiting for someone to play against, but he or she will have to keep on waiting, because that most certainly won’t be me.

If there’s one redeeming quality to the game, it’s the music.  It’s of a techno-rock variety, and it’s not that bad to listen to (or perhaps it’s just me). It reminds me more than a little of the older Need for Speed games (think Porsche Unleashed or older).  I may actually go through the effort of ripping it out at some point just to have something more to listen to while I’m doing homework or coding.  But we’ll see.

Would I play this game again?  Maybe.  But I’d probably rather play Half-Life 2, or at least something with a little more polish.  For the little time I’ve actually bothered to play this game, I’d probably give it somewhere around a 5 out of 10.  (Note to self:  Come up with witty grade chart for next review.)

If you’re interested in getting a copy of Speedball for yourself, you can pick a copy up on Steam for $20.