Computer Graphics Memory Disk Space Minimum XT Monochrome 640 KB 360 KB Max/Rec EGA Control: Keyboard only Sound: PC Speaker Notes: can be played from a floppy disk
Reviewed version 2.0 on: 486DX-33, 16 MB RAM, SVGA monitor
With the 1994 World Cup finals just round the corner, I was itching to get a taste of glory managing my favourite team, England, which in real life failed to qualify for the finals. In fact, it is a dark time for British soccer as Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland also failed to make it. No matter, with Goal! 2.0, and some astute management, glory can be had.
Goal! 2.0 is a shareware game of international soccer management. It is purely statistics based with no arcade segments at all. Players take on the role of the manager of an international soccer team, participating in two major competitions - the Continental Championship (in the case of England it would be the European Championship) and the World Cup.
The engine and interface are essentially taken from the one used in One-nil, New Era Software's game of club soccer management in the English League. Control is solely via the keyboard. Implementation of a mouse would have helped, as there are many choices and selections to make, but the lack of a mouse is not at all crippling.
The main screen adequately gives summary information on the squad of 20 players, the next scheduled match, and the continental and world rankings of the opposing team. There are 5 other views which can be accessed from this screen. Team Info shows the tactics, formation, and the overall strengths of the goalkeeper, defence, midfield, and attack of your team. The information of any of the other teams in the database can also be viewed here. Fixture List displays the schedule of all matches, including friendly ones. Your chosen team's matches are highlighted, and you can also tag other matches for viewing, which may help you access your upcoming opponents. Tournament displays the groupings for the qualifying rounds of the championships, the results of matches already played, and the league tables of each group. For the championship finals, the appropriate tables and competition tree information is shown. History gives what most statistics buffs root for - information on top scorers, runs of consecutive wins, losses etc. at home, away, and neutral territories, record wins and defeats, and players with the most caps. All this is, however, only available for your team and not the others. Select Squad brings you to the heart of the game, and will be described in the next section.
Goal! 2.0 also comes with an Alter utility that allows you to edit the names of the players in the database. This is useful in making sure that the squads look authentic with the time period, and is especially appropriate when it comes to the less well known soccer nations. For example, the Singapore squad in reality is made up of mostly Malay players, but the name list looks more like the Cambodian team!
Most of the time, would-be-managers will see the bulk of their game session in the Select Squad view. A wealth of information on each player in the first-team squad, and those in the player pool, is provided. Players are rated on 12 skills and 5 characteristics. Depending on the position and type of player (i.e., goalkeeper, fullback, defensive midfielder, winger, centre forward etc.), different skills will be more important. Managers will also have to consider the player's morale, fitness, and hardness levels when deciding who to pick for the first eleven. If you don't want to go through the entire pool of players to select the squad, one can enlist the help of the managerial assistant (the Ins key) and the best players will be put into the squad depending on your selected formation (4-4-2, 3-5-2 etc.) and player types. I find that the assistant is generally adept at selecting the best and fittest players available, but it pays to be watchful especially when young, untried players are selected over veteran ones.
After selecting the squad (or even before that, when considering formation), managers will have to decide on the strategy to adopt. This often depends on both the availability of players (injury and exhaustion) and the characteristics and strength of the opponents. Strategy can be adopted at the team level and individual level. At the team level, managers have to decide what type of defence system (full-pitch, half- pitch), protection (stand ground, sag to box) and offside (offside trap, play safe) tactics to adopt. At the player level, managers decide on positioning, passing, marking, possession, and tackling. These can be set globally for the whole squad or individually for each player. One can thus carefully tailor each player's style according to his characteristics, a feature which will please the anal-retentive types! Some of the individual options for each player are not given enough coverage or completely left out in the on-line notes (which can be accessed any time except during a match), which is a pity as the documentation is otherwise excellent.
Once all this is decided, it's on to the match. The view changes to a football pitch with ASCII characters (in the appropriate colours of the teams) representing the players running around! The type of ASCII characters can be adjusted to several different modes, the default being letters representing the type of player (e.g. $ for striker, C for centreback, B for fullback). The ball is a small white dot and the referee and linesmen are magenta smiley faces! Despite this seemingly simplistic graphic presentation, the players actually do make fairly realistic plays on the field. One can hit the spacebar to look at the running commentary to see what is going on. The excitement and tension that can be generated from ASCII characters running around puts a lot of today's graphically intensive games to shame. It is a complete suspension of disbelief when one gets emotional, cheering that $ character sweeping past a C and B and hitting the ball past the goalkeeper (a smiley face)! The crowd even cheers (as far as the PC speaker can cheer) when a goal is scored, and the ASCII characters actually celebrate! One annoying aspect is the whistle that the referee blows. It is far too long (at least two seconds!), and I think the programmers know that, for they devilishly say they are proud of the whistle! Thankfully, the sound can be turned off, although it would mean all sounds are off.
The match can be halted at any time to look at the state of the players, and this is particularly important in ascertaining the players' fitness to last the match, and also their individual performance. The team's performance is also rated. Substitutions can be called where desired. At half-time and full-time, match statistics are provided. At the end of a match, press headlines are flashed, which shows what those journalistic hellhounds think of you and the team. One can also skip the entire match and let the program generate a result if desired.
The tournaments are alternated between the Continental Championships and the World Cup. One first plays the qualifying rounds of the particular tournament plus friendly matches in between, and the program will choose a country to host the finals from among the teams that qualify. Teams then go on a tour or organise more friendlies before heading for the finals. The four major continental groupings of Europe, America, Asia, and Africa are not entirely realistic, as the America group is divided into South America and Concacaf (Confederation of North and Central American Football Associations) in reality. 32 teams also qualify for the World Cup finals as opposed to 24 (although there are indications that 32 may be the number in the near future). However, none of these really detract from the sheer thrill of battling for honours on the international arena.
Fitness and Energy - these two characteristics are vital for players. A skillful player who is low on these isn't going to do much on the field. Introducing a fresh substitute in the later stages of a game can run rings around the opposing defence. The morale of a team is also important, a confident team can upset an otherwise stronger team. Morale is boosted when the team wins matches it is expected to win. For example, if England is expected to beat India by 3 goals, anything less than a 3-goal victory will boost the morale of the Indian team, so it is not just winning that counts.
It is also wise to introduce young players now and then to boost their confidence, and crucial players should be rested to avoid injury and exhaustion if the coming match is inconsequential. The program works on a success-breeds-success motif, and doing well in the championships will result in your youngsters starting out with better skills.
Remember that tactics which work against one team may not work against another, so study the tactics of each opponent. If the match statistics show that you are being swamped, a change of tactics is called for. It is also worth the trouble to tailor each players' tactics to his characteristics. For example, a hard player is likely to get booked if you tell him to go in hard when tackling. Change his tackling option to avoid injury; a hard player will still tend to go for robust tackles but the option will check it. The team's default can still be go in hard for tackling.
For myself, I took England to the final of the 1996 European Championships, but they were beaten 1-3 by Germany, the home team. In the 1998 World Cup in the USA, England reached the semi-finals, but were edged out 1-2 by Holland, with Wim Kieft scoring the winning goal in the last minute. A heartbroken England took on Yugoslavia in the play-off for third spot, which became a nail-biter and went into extra-time before the English lads prevailed 2-1. The final between Holland and Brazil was a see-saw thriller, with the score reading 4-4 at full-time. The winning goal came in extra-time, which crowned Holland as world champions.
I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who is caught up in World Cup fever. The shareware version has the save game feature disabled. Upon registration, Wizard Games will send you a disk with the complete version. Despite the simplistic graphics, you will soon be cheering and cursing those ASCII characters as they battle it out in this simulation of the world's most popular sport. Go on lads, do your stuff and bring home the cup!
This review is Copyright (C) 1994 by Sir Launcelot du Lake for GameBytes Magazine. All rights reserved.