Excellent game, overall better than FIFA and World Tour Soccer, but lacking some needs.
User Rating: 8.7 | World Soccer Winning Eleven 8 PS2
Gameplay - Plays like a real game of soccer 85-95% of the time: the moves and motions that the players execute look realistic. However, the computer players on your team can be stupid sometimes and the opposing computer is very cheap for a long time until you get all of the controls right, which can take a while, unless you try TRAINING MODE, which makes a world of difference. But even then, the AI can be pretty tough; but this can be a good thing because it usually always gives you a lasting challenge. Refs do call a lot of fouls, but if you've watched a professional game, you'll see that they do call quite a bit of fouls, and sometimes they make the wrong call, which they do in this game. Although that can be frusturating, it makes the game even more realistic. Graphics - players look 95% like their real counterparts, and you'll have no problem recognizing players. Plus, the celebrations are many in number and some are pretty neat. Their are many details when creating or editing a player, such as the level and size of a person's eyebrows, so it should make it easier to create yourself or other people. You can edit teams' flags and uniforms all the way down to the color of the cleats, and even change teams' names; which is a good thing since Konami can't use all of teams' real names & player's names because of liscensing issues. This may be a turn off for some, but the games' realistic gameplay overshadows most of its liscensing blemishes; besides, you can change teams' & players fake names back to their real names in a matter of (literally) 10 seconds. Sound - Background music is original and not using tracks from real artists like FIFA does. The commentators can get pretty stupid (repeating themselves too much, saying irrelevant things, etc.) but are overall OK. The crowd is pretty good but it would be nicer if they were more into the game and cheered when someone is on a break away and not just when a goal is scored. Value - It's very frusturating and hard for a long time, but pretty soon after losing 2-0 to inferior teams for a while you'll be beating powerhouses 5-0; you will get better by trying out TRAINING MODE. Tilt - IMO this is the best playing soccer game out there; although you'll see other reveiwers giving this game a 2 or a 4 because it's hard, remember that soccer is a hard game and takes a lot of skill, and things don't always go the way you want. If you give this game a chance, you'll be better than any other FIFA playing player ever will at soccer games. If you like arcade games, then buy FIFA, but if you want the most realistic and authentic soccer game to date, then buy WINNING ELEVEN.
