Graphically, TIF2002 is very impressive. On most camera angles, the textures look similar to those in FIFA or ISS, but those rare times when you get a closer view you can actually see a lot more detail than you would expect from a game – blades of grass, seams in shorts and shirts, and other minor details show a game that has been “thought through thoroughly”.
The player animations are also suitably well-crafted. Some of the animations may not link together as well as similar segues in FIFA or ISS, but they still work, and mostly they work better. Worth mentioning is the well detailed faces on the top 100 or so players in the game. Whenever you see them, even at extreme close-up, you’ll recognise them straight away.
The backgrounds are not forgotten either. Rather than cardboard fans, you’ll see all sorts of carry-on happening in the crowd. Flares, motion and flags are all present and as distracting as real life professional soccer could be.
Continuing on with the crowds, we can move on to sound. You’ll not only hear the cheers and roar of the audience as you play through a match, but actual team chants as well. Adding specific details like this can really raise the immersion rate immensely.
Add to these specific chants and things, the very specific nature of a large proportion of the commentator’s voice overs and you have yet another sign of a game that is trying hard to get ALL the details right.
The rest of the sound effects aren’t anything absolutely brilliant, but they don’t detract from the title either – there’s only so far you can go with the sound of boot on ball.
As for gameplay, you won’t find much to complain about in that arena either. Rather than FIFA’s sticky passing where the ball only goes where a player is, TIF2002 allows you to pass it anywhere, which is quite nice.
In addition to the normal shoot and pass manoeuvres, you also have headers, handballs, and special spin and heel-flip moves. The additional moves add to the depth of the game and give you a sense of completeness even in this way.
The standard options in terms of games are here – Quick start, Exhibition match and Competitions, with the competitions being divided into National, International and Special tournaments. Want to play in the English Premier League? Go right ahead. Or maybe you want to see if you can do better with the Australian team than they did themselves? By my guest. Or, as a final example, how about playing in the Schoolboys tournament? Do it all.
Besides the whopping 22 leagues, there is a custom league with 20 teams that can be fully customised. Yes, I did say 22 leagues. So you don’t just have English Premier League, but also 1st Division. There’s not just the top French League, but the top THREE divisions for the French competition, and the list keeps going on.
One of my personal favourites, is the Time Warp teams. Choose from around 20 teams from different decades – set up a game to have a 70’s Glasgow team facing up to a set of players from the 1950’s Madrid teams.
If all of this isn’t enough for you, make your own teams, and these can be customised right down to the n-th degree. There are more than 10 million combinations possible when just picking the characteristics of the player’s head and ethnicity. Add to this the equally diverse customisation in their skill levels, and a real difference in the size of the models based on the height and weight you enter, and you start to get an idea of how much fun you can have with this title.
Finally, you get to multi-player. Soccer has long been a stalwart multi-tap game, and TIF2002 is no exception. Plugging ours in, we were able to have some intense 3 and 4 player action quickly and easily, and have started some major arguments…
