Guest Submission by ElyrionX.
Recently, I got so bored with the insane and ungodly difficulty of Ninja Gaiden that I decided to put it down for a minute. So, I popped Winning Eleven 7 International (the U/C version) into my PS2. It’s an excellent game that seriously improves upon its predecessor in many aspects. However, one major flaw becomes apparent right from the start; it’s simply amazing how long the game takes to start up. Getting to the main menu involves sitting through eleven glorious and unskippable screens and pressing the X button a grand total of four times. This is something that is absolutely ridiculous yet entirely avoidable from a designer’s standpoint. I mean, seriously, by the time I get to the main menu, China would have already retaken Taiwan, dinosaurs would once again roam the Earth and Duke Nukem Forever would have already been released AND bashed by the gaming media. I kid you not.
So after what seems like (and probably is) two million years, I finally get to the main menu. I load up my oh-so-elite Juventus team and proceed with my next match. Coincidentally (haha, maybe not), it’s the WEFA Championship Final against a weirdly-named team called Trad Bricks. Hmmm, looking at the players on this team and the jersey that they are wearing, I’m pretty much convinced that space monkeys have taken over my PS2 and changed the name of my beloved Manchester United team (yes, I’m a huge fan and don’t ask why I’m not using them as my ML team) to the impossibly-funny-yet-incredibly-sad moniker that is Trad Bricks. That is pretty much the only possibility. Who else but space monkeys can possibly come up with the name “Trad Bricks”?
The match kicks off and I have possession. Few minutes into the game, I time a tackle late. Really late. And Nesta sends Scholes tumbling to the ground. Here’s the interesting part. Suddenly, the game switches to a cutscene and this strange man in black runs up to my player, Nesta, and flashes him a yellow card. The fact that he has the authority to show my star defender the yellow card obviously suggests that this is a man of power. Great power, in fact. However, try as I might, I could not find this strange man anywhere else on the pitch during play. Could it be that this strange man is the one they call the ghost referee who haunts every single soccer videogame ever made? The referee that only appears when a foul is committed? The referee that never ever makes a wrong offside call? The referee that never gets in the way of teams trying to set up a fluent passing game? In short, the perfect referee. One may never know….
It was a bitter fight till the end of extra time and the score was still level at 1-1. Ultimately, I lost the coveted trophy in penalties. Defeated and humiliated, my team heads for the dressing room, hoping for another shot during the next season. This season has been disastrous, to say the least. For a team that won the double of the Division 1 title and the Division 1 Cup the previous season, losing 4-2 on aggregate to AC Milan in the semi-finals of the Division 1 Cup and coming in 6th place in the Division 1 League was not what I had expected.
On a more upbeat note, Arsenal fans got slapped twice in two matches. As if losing 1-0 to Man U at Villa Park wasn’t enough, they lost 2-1 to Chelsea at Highbury. And the treble goes down the drain. And the dream will forever remain what it is. Just a dream…………..
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