Anyone who is at least somewhat familiar with the video game industry, or at least has been around long enough to play quite a few games, knows that there is a plague that has existed in the medium for many years. It isn’t a malicious plague, like microtransactions, live-service games, or the entirety of Blizzard Entertainment, no no. Nothing as bad as those. However, it has still been around for decades at this point, still getting support to this day, and that plague takes the form of a genre known as… sports games. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all sports games are bad, because that is not true. There have been plenty of sports games out there that can be pretty fun, whether they are spun-off from an already popular franchise, or if they are just simply one-off products that managed to grow in popularity. However, most of the time, these are some of the most generic, bottom of the barrel products you could ever possibly find on a video game system. So I figured, just for the lols, shits, and giggles, I would go ahead and take a look at one of these titles to see if they really are that bad, with the title I chose being FIFA International Soccer.

Anyone who has heard the letters E and A put together at some point in their lives most likely are aware of the FIFA franchise, being a series of soccer games that have been pumped out non-stop, all the way from the early 90’s to 2022, where the series ultimately concluded… only to then be replaced by EA Sports FC 24 just a year later, because we can never truly escape from this series. Now, I myself have never played any sort of FIFA game, nor any other sports title from EA, because I am a normal human being who likes maintaining his mental health, but I have always been somewhat… curious about them. I mean, surely there must be SOME appeal with these games if they aim to keep making one every single year, and a bunch of braindead consumers keep buying them. So, I decided to try one out for myself, and… yep. It certainly is a soccer game, alright.

The graphics are pretty good for what it is, looking colorful and vibrant enough, not just with the main sprites and field, but also for the crowd and the animations of the players, the music is mostly non-existant, with the game mainly relying on crowd noises for most of the matches to add a sense of “realism”, making things more creepy then it should at times, but when there is music there, it is nice enough, the control is pretty confusing, specifically for someone like me who doesn’t typically play soccer games, but whenever you do get the hang of it, it works fine enough, and the gameplay is… basically exactly what you would expect. Nothing there to really wow you.

The game is a soccer game, where you take control of a soccer team from whatever country you choose, take on another team from an opposing country on the field, kick around a big ol’ ball a bunch of times to try to get it into the other team’s goal, fight off your opponents and try to take the ball back whenever you can, and rub your victory in the other team’s face, making yourself feel proud for being the best at a sports game that nobody else has played for over two and a half decades. You get the full soccer experience with this game, along with all of the additions that comes with it, and let me tell you… it certainly is soccer. Can you tell I’m having a hard time trying to describe this game?

For a soccer game from the early 90s, it has plenty of features that you would typically expect from one of these games, and they do get the job done for those curious enough to give the game a shot. There are four primary modes that you can play, each one being a different variation of your typical soccer game, consisting of Exhibitions, Tournaments, Playoffs, and Leagues, and if any of you are familiar with soccer in any kind of capacity, then I definitely don’t need to explain to you what any of those are. Even if they all change up the gameplay slightly, they all function practically the same, and they can be fun for a little bit if you are the type of person who enjoys these games. Not to mention, to its credit, the game does its job well enough. The rules of soccer are well implemented, it plays fine enough, and it does feel good whenever you make a goal. But for me… I really just couldn’t get into it. Not surprising at all, but it might as well be said anyway.

The biggest problem that this game has is that it is a soccer game from the early 90’s. There isn’t anything really wrong with the game itself, but if you were wanting to play a soccer game, there are MANY different options that have been made ever since this game came out, each of them improving on what this game did in many different ways (at least, I assume they did anyway), so if you are going to play any of these games, this would be the LAST option that you would pick. This especially brings the game down for me, because at the end of the day, I still didn’t end up really liking it. I will admit, I completely sucked at it, having no clue what I was doing for a good amount of time, but at the same time, even if I did get any better at the game, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it anymore. I just simply am not the type of person who plays sports games, and for those who do play and enjoy a lot of them, then you may get some enjoyment out of this, but for me, that will probably never be the case.

Overall, despite my personal opinion on it and how it is incredibly outdated, the original FIFA game is perfectly fine as is, having no huge flaws that drag it down anymore other than just being extremely generic for the type of game that it is. I would recommend it for those who are fans of sports games, especially those who are fans of old-school ones, because you will probably find enough to like and enjoy about this title, but for everyone else, you would be much better off playing any of the newer soccer games that have released ever since. Or, you know, you could take the best possible option and just DON’T play any of these games, so that EA doesn’t get any of your money. Although, I will admit, when I heard the EA Sports jingle when I started this game up, I did chuckle like a giddy bitch. What can I say, I love the memes.

Game #433

Veterano de veteranos. Estamos ante el primer juego de FIFA que apareció en la PC y que aún con las limitaciones técnicas de la época, pudo darles vida a más de 24 personajes en un campo de juego con condiciones climáticas cambiantes y tribunas repletas de NPCs (Non Playable Characters). Utilizando el MS-DOS, FIFA 96 (como se llegó a conocer) contaba con unas limitaciones gráficas y técnicas impresionantes; sin embargo, EA Sports logra el cometido de entretener y dejar huella, creando historia y contribuyendo a la industria. No creo que sea considerado un clásico; es más bien una reliquia que debe ser respetada, porque de no haber sido desarrollado, juegos como FIFA 13 no estarían en las estanterías el día de hoy.